Advent - First Week

Creighton University's Online Ministries
First Sunday of Advent
Daily Advent Prayer
“Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.”

 Entrance Antiphon:
To you, my God, I lift my soul,
I trust in you; let me never come to shame.
Do not let my enemies laugh at me.

Collect:
Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,
the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ
with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand,
they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever .

Today's Readings

Daily Meditation:
Let's begin this week with a deeply felt prayer.
Even if we don't know exactly what we need or long for,
today, let's try to express our desire for God's help and assistance.

The readings invite us to be prepared and to be hopeful.
This week I could ask for the grace to grow in anticipation
of what the Lord is offering me and to ready my heart
to receive it gratefully.

What renewal, what end of 'hostilities' is our Lord offering me?

They shall beat their swords into plowshare
and their spears into pruning hooks;
one nation shall not raise the sword against another,
nor shall they train for war again.
Isaiah 2

Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
Psalm 122 

Liturgical Season - ppt

4) Liturgical Season from Ric Eguia

Advent Reflections -PPT

Advent Reflections 2011 from amycoultas

Advent - ppt

the season of advent from 1annie

True and Beautiful Quotes - Pictures

 

No DNA Test Required - in Photos

No DNA test needed!

 

Christ the King - 34 Sunday C

Thomas O’Loughlin

Introduction to the Celebration 

Way back in January we began the year by celebrating the Baptism of Jesus when a voice was heard calling him ‘the beloved Son’. During the year we have greeted Jesus under all the views of him we find in the gospels. Now today, at the end of the year, we greet him with the all-embracing title: Jesus Christ, Universal King.

The Christ is the one who will gather us all together at the end of time, the one who will judge the living and the dead, and then present his kingdom to the Father. In our pilgrimage of faith that kingdom of justice, truth, and peace is to be our beacon, and Christ our guide. But before we join Christ in his banquet, we must ask pardon for the times when we followed other paths and other ways, when we listened to false prophets of greed and materialism, and for when we have failed to work for the coming of the kingdom. 

Kennedy's Speech on peace - 50 Years Ago

33 Sunday C - Fighting Back or Falling Back - Homilies

Introductory Story:

The world’s “canned laughter”

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) tells a parable of a theater where a variety show is proceeding.  There are musical acts, dancers, magicians, comedians, acrobats – one amazing act after another. Each act receives thunderous applause from the audience.

Suddenly the manager comes forward. Speaking calmly, not wanting to panic the patrons, he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that the theater is on fire. Please get up and move in an orderly fashion to the exits. There is plenty of time for you all to leave safely, but please do so at once.”
The audience think this is the most amusing act of the evening, and again cheer wildly, thinking the manager is a comedian! He again implores them to leave the burning building, but he is again applauded vigorously.
Even when smoke and flames appear at the back of the stage, the audience thinks it is part of the act done for special effect. The manager soon realizes he can do no more, so he runs off the stage and out of the building. The audience, meanwhile, whistles and cheers and claps in appreciation of the manager’s “performance.”
“And so,” concluded Kierkegaard, “will our age, I sometimes think, go down in fiery destruction to the applause of a crowded house of cheering spectators.”
And so it is today.  Those who attempt to warn others of the impending doom to come are laughed at as part of “the show.”  The prophet has become a comedian, like someone out of a Monty Python skit.  The cynical world laughs at the message, believing it is all a joke.
Yet the world indeed is on fire; the whole theater is destined to be turned to ash – and one day soon. Despite the witnesses God has faithfully called — including the message of His Son – the canned laughter of the world, the mindless cheering, and the idiotic applause will continue, right up to the end of the age….
As it was in the days of Noah…. until the flood came and swept them all away….

Easter: RESURRECTION - Illustrations

As Vice President, George Bush represented the U.S. at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest. There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life, and that that life was best represented by Jesus who died on the cross, and that the same Jesus might yet have mercy on her husband.
Gary Thomas, Christian Times, October 3, 1994, p. 26.

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