Living out your Faith

Dear Parishioners,

It has been a brutal week of intense cold with two snow days off from school.  Like many people, I took advantage of the time to get caught up on a few items: grading, emails, cleaning, etc.  I was especially grateful to have Fr. Brian Conner, my first pastor, come by and help organize the parish office.  We cleaned out two trash barrels full of outdated items!  It was great to have the advice of someone, who knows their way around pastoral work, to help put things in perspective of what is necessary, extra, or dated.

Having the proper perspective is necessary to navigate the details of life, but especially so for living out our Christian lives with all charity and without apology for it.  A great voice for informing Christians about this kind of proper behavior is Trent Horn.  He is a Catholic Apologist, defender of the Faith, for Catholic Answers, while also running his own podcast, The Council of Trent, and writing several books of his own.  On these platforms, Trent does a great job engaging the Faith about various topics of the Faith, while giving sound advice for how to engage in dialogue about the Faith and Catholic principles with Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics, and Atheists.  He has debated with major figures in the media and notable personalities.  His methodology is always calm, polite, intelligent, and engaging.  He comes prepared by knowing the position of the other side while in the debate he seeks to clarify their position so that the audience knows what the other side believes.

Trent recently had a podcast about how to deal with violence directed toward Christians.  In this, he discussed how Christian charity demands we hold people who threaten violence accountable for their actions.  Even so, we shouldn’t be cruel, vindictive, or vengeful toward people who disagree with us or even want to hurt us.  Our Lord suffered unjust violence, but he did not lash out at his persecutors. Jesus told us to, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  On the other hand, we should not be doormats that only care about appeasing the violence of another person, group, or ideology and say we shouldn’t care what they do.  After all, Jesus says to, “turn the other cheek.”  BUT Christian charity actually demands that we hold violent people accountable for their actions for the good of those they threaten and for the good of the violent person’s soul.  True Christian charity would care for the good of those who do violent actions noting that if they get away with their crimes they would think that they could get away with other acts of threatening people, assaulting people, or maybe doing even worse things to them.  Christian charity demands that we hold anyone who threatens violence accountable for his or her actions where their threats should be made known to their employer, to their school, and to the authorities.  This should not be done out of a cold desire for vengeance but out of a loving desire to get that person help and to prevent him or her from committing an even worse sin.

Trent Horn has many more great insights that you can check out at this website https://www.trenthorn.com/.  He is a powerful advocate for the Pro-Life movement and I have found that his insights have been helpful for applying the Faith to our lives today.  May God Bless you all and stay warm 😊

In Christ,

Fr. Luke Fleck