Aflame for Christ
Weekly homilies of Fr. Joseph Gill, priest of the Diocese of Bridgeport, CT
Episodes
Every good story features a sidekick. And the great story of salvation history, with its Protagonist of Jesus Christ, invites us to be His friends. But what does a human friendship consist in - and how does it relate to our friendship with Jesus? How do we distinguish a real friendship from a counterfeit one? Let us seek to be friends, not just slaves, of Jesus Christ!
The very crux of human history is when God became man. We hear it so much that we often lose the awe at this mystery - God is one of us! Tune in to hear how we can understand the Incarnation in a deeper way.
Our creed states that we believe God is "creator of heaven and earth". What happened at creation? How does it show God? Can we believe in a Creator and also believe in evolution? How does the Bible reveal creation? Tune in to find out!
There is a huge difference between a leader and a boss. Bosses look to reward themselves; leaders seek the benefit of others. Leaders set a vision which leads to the flourishing of those entrusted to their care; bosses rely on titles and honors. Jesus Christ shows us the pinnacle of leadership, and many of His saints such as St. Padre Pio are also examples of how a shepherd is called to lay down his life for the sheep!
The Trinity is the greatest mystery of our Faith - but that doesn't mean we don't know anything about it! How do we get a glimpse at understanding how three Persons can be in one God? Tune in for the third installment of the Dash Through the Creed series!
Much of our faith is invisible - the soul, Heaven, the power of the Sacraments. Our Catholic faith must be grounded in something more solid than what we feel and sense. Even if we don't actually experience God, we believe the testimony of those who saw the Risen Christ, who were willing to die testifying that He is alive. This gives us strength to believe them, and to believe all that the Apostles taught, even if we do not see it w...
How do we know that God exists? There are good reasons for believing it! Tune in to hear Fr. Joseph discuss the existence of God - how do we know that He exists?
Christ invites us to approach His Heart, and the door of access to Him is His mercy. He purchased that most precious treasure at the cost of His blood, but now gives it to us freely through the Church: the Feast of Mercy, the Divine Mercy Image, and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Let us turn to His mercy now, for the door of mercy is closing quickly before the day of judgment arrives!
In our fallen nature, we are drawn to darkness. We want to love the light, but so often we are drawn back into the chaos of sin. Do we really believe that Christ wins in the end, and that He offers us a better way to live, a way that leads to authentic joy and fulfillment? We often seek happiness in dead-end things of the world; but Christ is not in the dead-end tomb any more - He lives, and invites us to live in Him!
Since the beginning of time, men and women have cried out to God in the midst of suffering, "Why have You done this to us? Have you abandoned us?" God's answer to these raw and honest questions is the Cross. When we gaze upon the Cross, we see the meaning and the answer to human suffering - found so profoundly in a God Who suffers with us, and Who transforms suffering, through love, into something redemptive.
Saints have been made from every walk of life, but the one common thread is that all holiness requires humility. And humility is the great theme of Holy Thursday - the humility of Our Lord in becoming a Servant of the servants, washing their feet; the humility of the Apostles, who must recognize their desperate dependence upon God; the humility of Jesus in offering His life in the Holy Eucharist. We see, at this most sacred Banquet...
Our world tells us that self-fulfillment is the purpose of life. "Live your dreams, pursue your own path, make the most out of it!" But Christ offers us a different, better way to live - a life lived for others, giving of oneself so that the fruit of virtues and the fruit of sanctified souls is borne in your life. Paradoxically, it is in dying to oneself that we find true joy and fulfillment - as Pope St. John Paul II says, "Man ca...
Our world is a mess...but Our Lord didn't hesitate to jump into it, even to "taking on" our sin for us. But many times we prefer the mess of our sin to the clean new life Christ desires for us. During this Lenten season, we have a profound opportunity to leave the mess of our sins through repentance and Confession, and embrace the joy and peace which come from our faith in Christ as Lord of our lives.
How do we best worship God? In the way in which He Himself intends! God has made it clear how to worship Him - in the Old Testament, He told His people not to make any idols or images of Him (hence, the problem with the Golden Calf) and in the New Testament, Jesus told us to "Do This in Remembrance of Me" in the Eucharist. Only when we rightly worship God will we find a rightly-ordered life filled with peace and tranquility!
All of us feel tempted to sin. Our nature is weak, and the counterfeit happiness that sin offers us certainly feels attractive! So how to we overcome the universal experience of temptation? And why does God allow us to be tempted at all, knowing that it can separate us from Him? Tune in to hear how to deal with temptation!
Memento Mori - Remember your death. Lent, and particularly Ash Wednesday, gives us the opportunity to reflect upon the shortness of life and the length of eternity. At the end of our lives, only two choices remain - an eternal triumph in Heaven, or an eternal tragedy in Hell. But Lent is a course correction, so that we may pursue Heaven more eagerly!
The average American spends over $1,700 annually on beauty products. But our demeanor and countenance has less to do with creams and makeup, and more to do with how it reflects the state of our soul. Sin disfigures us, while true beauty comes from a well-ordered soul resplendent in virtues.
A simple three-word prayer that can make you a saint: "For You, Jesus." It transforms everyday life - the joys and the sorrows, the mundane and the extraordinary - into a living sacrifice. Pray it often, and you will sanctify everything. For You, Jesus.
Jesus Christ demands allegiance over family, work, and recreation, but many people fear that to give Him rule over our life would be to become "too radical". Why does He deserve our total gift of self? Because when the Innocent One dies to pardon the guilty, He has purchased our lives with an incomprehensible cost - and we have received a benefit far outweighing anything we could imagine.
In a world where we are surrounded by a cacophony of voices from advertisers, the media, TikTok, and other people, it can be hard to hear the Voice of Christ. Yet His voice cuts through all the chaos and confusion with the clear light of Truth. How is His voice different from the messages we get from the world? And how can we best hear His voice in the mayhem of our noisy culture?
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