Fr. Larry Richards is the founder and president of The Reason for our Hope Foundation, a non- profit organization dedicated to ”spreading the Good News” by educating others about Jesus Christ. His new homilies are posted each week.
Live recordings of the sermons preached at our regular services here at Aspire Church, Manchester UK. For more information visit our website at http://www.aspirechurch.co.uk or email info@aspirechurch.co.uk
Welcome to the Enjoying Everyday Life TV podcast with Joyce Meyer. To learn more, visit our website at joycemeyer.org or download the Joyce Meyer Ministries App. By supporting Joyce Meyer Ministries, you can help us reach hurting people around the world. To find out more, go to joycemeyer.org/donate
Love God, love people, and change the world. We believe the life and lessons of Jesus aren’t just good advice, but are Good News for us here and now. As a church, we are all about following Jesus and know there’s no end to that journey—we’re more about becoming than arriving. We are committed to becoming a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multiplying movement of Christ followers, equipping and empowering our kids and students to not only be the church of tomorrow, but the church of today.
Heritage Baptist Church exists by the grace of God and for the glory of God, which is the ultimate purpose of all our activities. We seek to glorify the God of Scripture by promoting His worship, edifying and equipping the saints, evangelizing the nations, planting and strengthening churches, calling other assemblies to biblical faithfulness and purity, encouraging biblical fellowship among believers and ministering to the needy, thus proclaiming and defending God’s perfect law and glorious ...
Victory BGC is a church in Bonifacio Global City that exists to honor God and make disciples. It is a member of Victory Philippines and under Every Nation Churches and Ministries.
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Threshold is a Peabody Award-winning documentary podcast about our place in the natural world. Each season, we take listeners on a journey into the heart of a complex environmental story, asking how we got here and where we might be headed. In our latest season, Hark, we hand the mic over to our planet-mates and investigate what it means to truly listen to nonhuman voices—and the cost if we don't. With mounting social and ecological crises, what happens when we tune into the life all around us? Threshold is nonprofit, listener-supported, and independently produced.
It’s the night of the last supper, the first mass. It's also the night we commemorate the ordination of the apostles to the priesthood and their commission to “do this in memory of me.” So it’s a special feast day for all priests and a special night to contemplate my vocation. It is the tradition, then, to preach on the priesthood. I am, afterall, a priest for you. Also, there are certainly other men here called to this great vocation, so it is worthy of our meditation.…
We learn today that the things happening in silent monasteries, the things happening in your homes, the things happening on the streets of Missoula amongst our homeless are of much higher consequence in eternity than the endless power grasp we witness daily on the news. The home, the monastery and convent, the streets, that’s where the action is.…
In the beginning, some 13.8 billion years ago, our universe was empty. Perhaps we can’t even say empty because there was no time, no space, no matter; there was nothing. Then came that wonderful moment we have titled The Big Bang, when there appeared the whole of our universe contained in a concentrated ball of energy smaller than an atom. That ball exploded outward in every direction. This explosion began as pure energy but quickly congealed to produce matter, and after some time (400k years), atoms appeared. Where these atoms were more densely compacted, the power of gravity increased and produced clouds of matter. As the density increased, temperature increased. When the temperature rose above 10 million degrees, protons fused, massive energy was released- boom, we have our first batch of stars.…
Our first reading today speaks of God’s wisdom, saying “She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire; Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed, for he shall find her sitting by his gate.” God yearns to know us, he sits by the gate awaiting us while we insist he is far away, that we must go on a great journey and hope against hope that we might find him.…
Growing up, perhaps more than any other thing in the modern world, is the difference between us (me) and the saints. If we look at the beatitudes, we see a collection of simple and mysterious blessings. We see Jesus raising up very particular states of life as makarios. This is hard to translate but we generally say blessed or fortunate. The word suggests those who possess these beatitudes possess something others desire but cannot, for whatever reason, attain. It is not some psychological state but a state of being. It’s a subtle thing, a rising tide that fascinates us until it overwhelms us. Because again, we may grow in worldly respect, outward success, and education, yet we are nonetheless slaves to the world. What are we to do? What did the saints do? Soren Keirkergaard, the great father of Existentialism, when speaking to the beatitudes, said the saint is the one with a pure heart, and “purity of heart is to will one thing.”…
We speak of women making the heroic choice to keep their child. It is heroic because they are moving forward into an unknown world- most likely poor and alone. Having a child is terrifying when you have a spouse, a stable home and a job. If we are going to win the battle for the protection of the unborn, this most important and fundamental of issues, we have to step forward heroically, we have to sacrifice so women who find themselves poor and alone can do so confidently.…
What does Jesus say today? “Whose image is this on the inscription? (Ceaser’s) Then render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” What belongs to the state? The things of the world. If we put our hopes in worldly things, we will put our hopes in the state and every new failure- the state always fails- will bring bitterness, rage, and resentment.…
Jesus appears when the storm is peaking, casually walking upon the waves, and when they cry out in terror, he calls to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” When he steps into the boat, the storm dies. There is no battle, and Erasmo points out that this story is “restructured to deploy only one truth, the unquestionable and eternal supremacy of the incarnate Word.” The only battle left is the battle within our hearts. Do we believe Christ has already won? Are we convinced the powers of evil have been overcome and subdued? Or are we cowering before the storm wondering if Jesus will ever show up? Look at the shift in the gospel when Peter realizes the implications of Jesus words. He yells out “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”…
Power is a fact of life, it’s a part of nature and will always be acquired by the capable and the ambitious. How we employ it will change the world. Do we employ the power we possess as Christ shows us? Do you wield it with charity, with mercy, and always with an eye to the poor? Or do you let your passions dictate your actions? Do we use the power we’ve been given to preserve our reputation, raise ourselves up at the expense of those around us?…
Yesterday I had the opportunity to do the Butte 100 mountain bike race. I decided to give it a shot when quarantine hit and everything else had been cancelled. Still, until yesterday I had never ridden more than 57 miles. It was fascinating to see how my body handled the prolonged grind, because with experiences like that you are just running an equation. You burn more calories than you can take in, so it’s a matter of time before you are depleted. All I had to do was ride 100 miles before I was toast, and I made it. But this homily is not about the Butte 100...…
The Parable of the Sower hits us anew each time we approch it. God works in our soul no matter our state. Let's dig in to see where we stand, and where we ought to go from here.
What a perfect first reading for my inaugural weekend at Christ the King parish. I think we need to hear those lines again: “Rejoice heartily, O Daughter Zion, shout for joy oh daughter Jerusalem! See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, meek and riding on an ass, on a colt the foul of an ass.” What a prophetic passage, planted on the 14th sunday in ordinary time awaiting my arrival at Christ the king to be fulfilled. Because, you see, Jesus comes to us, but he comes riding on an ass… that’s me. I’m young, in decent shape, and I may not be the best looking but I’m a hard worker.…
Fr Kirby says goodbye to the parish and town he served for his first three years. Looking to the next generation, and looking back to martyrs from the past generation, he wraps up his time in Butte, America.
There is exactly one road to perfection for each of you from the BC class of 2020. It’s narrow, rocky, and difficult, but it’s possible. That road involves simply following Christ. Jesus tells us in the gospel, “I will not leave you orphans, I will send you the advocate, the spirit of truth to be with you always.” It’s your choice, you’re free. You can go off to college and party, go hard, follow your bliss, whatever, and it will give you a shallow sense of rebellion, you will in fact be following the crowd in every single way. To be Christian today is the true revolution. Christ is waiting for you. Sacrifice what he asks you to sacrifice and trust he knows where he’s taking you. That’s the road to greatness, to joy, and the world needs you to follow that road. If you do, you will find when you speak, the crowds around you will listen with one accord, unclean spirits will be cast out, the crippled and paralyzed will be healed.…
Death. It’s not a pleasant word. I remember when I first began to understand the idea and I would try to imagine it. There I was, 7-year-old Kirby standing there with my eyes closed, imagining what it meant to cease to exist. It was physically disorienting, so much that I would occasionally get vertigo and just fall over. Then my mom taught me about heaven, about eternal life with God, and hell in it’s eternal torment and separation from God. I was just as dizzy and confused thinking about eternity as I was contemplating an end to existence. The idea of death for those without faith involves falling out of existence. For us with faith, we know it is eternal life. Yet both ideas are beyond us, too much to comprehend, and like everything we cannot grasp and measure, it terrifies us.…
It's been a while but I'm back posting my homilies! I love preaching on Holy Thursday. A priest once gave me a penance to pray for a particular family and he told me, “Kirby, I believe I was called to the priesthood- more than that- I believe I was born in order that this family could know God loves them. They have suffered a tremendous amount, so God created me and sent me to tell them they don’t suffer alone. Jesus Christ suffers with them and loves them.”…
As it turns out, when we get the exact thing we want, it doesn’t make us as happy as we think it will. When we are denied our deepest desire, it’s not as disastrous as we assume it will be. You finally get your dream truck, that beautiful F350 Platinum, and a month later when the newness wears off, it’s just a truck with a lot of chrome and a substantial monthly payment. You get your dream promotion, yet you still have all the insecurities you thought would disappear when the announcement was made. Reverse the fortunes: you wreck your new truck or lose your great job. The initial shock wears off, it’s a year later and here you are, your life didn’t implode. What does this tell us about happiness and who we are as humans?…
Praised be Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe! Our last address to an earthly king was a collection of 27 grievances against his majesty, George III (which were promptly ignored), followed by Declaration of Independence which changed the course of history. Yet here we stand as Catholics declaring ourselves subservient to another king. Not just any king, but the King of the Universe! There is nothing democratic about this feast. We can make no grievances, declare no inalienable rights, nor can we rebel against him who admits he harvests where he has not sown and gathers where he has not scattered seed. So are we taking part in a fundamentally unamerican celebration? Should we rather name Jesus President of the Universe that we can maintain our dignity?…
Can Christians reconcile the story of creation with evolutionary theory without compromising an authentic reading of scripture or Christian anthropology? Is it necessary to see evolutionary theory with an openness to God in order if we are to explain the process reasonably? I assert the answer to both of those questions is: Yes. Listen in and let me know what you think! Note: I purposely avoid the phrase Intelligent Design in my talk because of all the baggage it currently carries with it. However, David Galernter puts forth a formidable argument for it in his article Giving up Darwin. He is mostly citing Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt, which i have not had the chance to read yet. Bibliography (not comprehensive but these were my main sources): Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind. Yuval Noah Harari The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How our Brains Became Remarkable. Suzana Herculano-Houzel, MIT Press, 2016 What is so Special about the Human Brain? Ted Talk, Suzana Herculano-Houzel Giving up Darwin, David Galernter Jordan Peterson, Various Talks and Lectures on brain development as well as his lectures on the creation story. Did Adam and Eve Exist? Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OP, this is a lecture series that Fr. Nicanor gives in various contexts,but I have listened to various lectures from him on similar topics.…
Whenever Jesus talks about the end times, final judgment, heaven, hell, or anything in the field we refer to as eschatological, his advice to the disciples is to be vigilant, to watch, to be ready at all times. We must focus our lives on the Lord in a focused and vigilant way, listening to Paul’s two crucial commands to “pray unceasingly” and “Never grow weary in going good.”…
Since the dawn of time, humans have yearned for immortality. Even Friedrich Neitzsche, certainly no Christian thinker, said “All joy wills eternity, wills deep, deep, eternity.” Today’s reading ends with the proclamation, “I choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!”…
If we pray without growing weary, and do so with an openness to whatever God has in store, we will know Him. That is, in the end, the only thing that matters. If I have Christ as my friend, a cancer diagnosis does not destroy my life, rather it becomes as beautiful opportunity to show those I know and love how to suffer joyfully. We look to Blessed Chiara Badano who, upon hearing her cancer diagnosis as an 18-year-old declared, "It's for you, Jesus; if you want it, I want it, too.”…
St. Thomas Aquinas writes in his beautiful hymn Adoro Te Devote: Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived: How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed; What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do; Truth himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true. The beautiful Hopkins translation speaks to the beautiful mystery of the mass.…
This is the 1st of four lectures given to the Catholic Youth Coalition on Fundamental Theology. This lecture was on the existence of God. Can we discard the idea of God without losing the ability to explain the world as it is? I don't think so, here are the reasons why: 1. We cannot explain the origin of the universe. 2. We cannot explain human consciousness. 3. We cannot claim there is any meaning in the world. With those questions to guide the conversation, we will explore it all more in depth in the next three lectures.…
C.S. Lewis says it’s precisely the greatest moments of our life which make it clear that nothing in this world will ever make us happy. Looking back to the image in the gospel, we calculate the cost of the building and realize it’s beyond our means, we look at the battle of 10k v 20k and realize we can’t win. What are we to do? Sue for peace? Settle for mediocrity? That’s not the Christian way. C.S. Lewis follows his insight with another saying, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”…
There is a certain relish in bitterness, cynicism and a feeling of helplessness that gives us an escape from culpability for our actions- or lack of action- and wins a certain amount of sympathy from our peers. If there is one thing this attitude toward life does not accomplish (there are more than 1), it is any real meaning or happiness. But how can it be that striking out to find my personal happiness could be the thing that makes me unhappy? Let’s figure out why our current attempt is failing, then we might look to the gospel for an answer to the predicament.…
“I have come to cast a fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already blazing!” Jesus doesn’t come to preach bland tolerance, but love, and love is an all-consuming fire. There are two fascinating and terrifying things I want to point out concerning fire: First, is its ability to annihilate everything in its wake. Second is its ability to transform what it consumes into itself. Both are at work in the gospel.…
Is this gospel a threat? In a sense, yes, but not one based in fear. Jesus speaks strongly on this subject because the consequences are so great when we fail. When the gospel is not preached, young people’s lives have no meaning and it naturally follows that they will want others to feel the profound suffering and emptiness they feel, so we end up with this absurd violence.…
Is Machiavelli in step with today’s scriptures? Yes and No. Ecclesiastes does, in the beginning, point to the inherent volatility of life, but it takes the problem much further and makes a much deeper and more profound claim than The Prince. For Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiates, takes into account the possibility that someone could live as Machiavelli suggests and “labor with wisdom and knowledge and skill,” yet even that man must die.…
I remember walking into the YMCA courts in BIllings when I was a kid and seeing one of the new kids fiddling around with a basketball. It was obvious he had never played the game. At best, he had maybe seen a few nba games on a bad TV, because what he was doing was not basketball. Me and a few buddies gave him the general overview of the game and played a bit with him. At first, giving him the rules just made him depressed, but he was an athletic kid so after a few months, he began to pick it up. By the following year that kid was a decent player, and continued on to love the game in all its beautiful minutiae. That, brothers and sisters, is how we are in this life. If we don’t know the Lord, we are like a kid thrust out on a court with a ball in our hands, but no clue how to play. Our guides on how to live as a human being and raise a family are Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, and the best hope for happiness is making $1 million dollars or accruing 1 million followers. What a weak and pathetic existence, running around with no clue who we are.…
Be courageous, trust that you are a member of Christ’s body, and no matter the mess in the Church, your mission as a Christian is always to preach the gospel and draw souls to Christ and his love. We find that love in the Church, we find our mission in the Church, and those outside may only hear that truth if they hear it from you. The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few. Butte is 75% baptized Catholic, where is everyone? Let’s go out and get to work!…
many of us witnessed Nathan Scheidecker from Butte give his life to Jesus Christ and his Church in the priesthood. He left everything to follow our Lord in this day and age. Just so all the young men out there and families of young children know, it will be at least three years before we have another ordination, and if you were there yesterday and saw our presbyterate, it was not the youngest crew. Who will step up? Who will follow the Lord? And I don’t just mean in the priesthood, though that is an urgent example. I mean in the Church. In every age there is a crisis and in that crisis God raises up saints to renew the Church. We are called to be saints, anything short of that is a failure.…
Roy and Aislinn: You realize all the sacrifices you will have to make in your married life together and you chose it anyways. Correction- You have NO IDEA the sacrifice that's involved in married life. If you think you have it figured out, good luck. But that’s OK, it doesn't matter that you don't know what's coming because one of the beautiful gifts we have as human beings is the capacity to commit our lives to a thing even when we don't have full knowledge of what the future holds.…
You might know someone (Or you might honestly be this way yourself- You know, I have a friend) who thinks like this: I like the idea of God, I might even say he exists because the universe doesn’t make sense without some prime-mover, some uncaused-cause. But the Bible, the Incarnation of God as man, the Trinity, the Church, doesn’t it just seem a bit absurd!? We can’t prove any of that, there is not way to reasonable walk through the idea of a Trinitarian God- it’s faith without the verification of reason! How would you answer that friend?…
Jarrett and Nicole. The love you have for one another- if you are willing to die to yourselves- will bring souls to Christ. Our culture loves the idea of mega- individualism, then we're all confused and sad when our relationships grow bitter and resentful. When anyone in that dark place sees marriage lived sacrificially as we're called to live it, they are immediately compelled.…
Perhaps when you distill the teachings of Christianity you can glean something that strikes us as profound. That was, after all, the whole project of many modern philosophers and political scientists. Thomas Jefferson edited his New Testament to do exactly that. Yet, that isn’t what Jesus is saying! The newness of the gospel comes, as Benedict XVI says, “From the gift of being-with and being-in Christ.” For the Christian, being always precedes doing.…
We were created by God created by his Word. From the beginning to the end of our lives, God’s voice, his word, is the only one that satisfies. When we listen to any other voice, we know they are thieves tempting us to leave the fold and no matter how enticing the voice may be, we all know a thief can promise nothing good.…
Western culture is no longer the relativist. The new cultural moral code is absolute, but certainly not based in natural law. The Atlantic published a fascinating article on this phenomenon called “The Death of Moral Relativism.” The author pointed out, “This new code has created a paradoxical moment in which all is tolerated except the intolerant and all included except the exclusive.”…
You are baptized, you are sons and daughters of God and so you can do the same when you face the enormous dragon that has planted itself on the narrow way that leads to eternal life! Do not shrink from the great journey, do not shrink from the Christian life, it is the only life worthy of your dignity! Nothing else will make you happy, not a $100 million condo overlooking Manhattan, nor any amount of fame or power or pleasure. Only friendship with the risen Christ can satisfy our hearts, so face that dragon and become the saint you are called to be.…
So many of our lives are defined, marked indelibly by the death of those we love. No matter when, whether it was your wonderful grandma who died when she was 90 or whether you lost a child or friend in their teenage years, we see so clearly the evil of death and we do not understand it. Jesus is the only worthwhile answer to the question of evil. The only other alternative is to deny the existence of God, and in doing to declare that all suffering and evil is, in fact, meaningless. For without God there is no meaning at all. That is no answer.…
It’s lent, the perfect season to seek out the Lord in new ways. Do something crazy and foolish for him. When I was at Carroll, my friends and I tried to fast in impossible ways, we did middle of the night prayer vigils at the grotto or up on Mount Helena, tried to pull all nighters during holy week. In almost all this we failed, but we did it because we loved Jesus and wanted to know him, and it was a blast. If you want to get in over your head on a great adventure, there is no better friend to do that with than Jesus Christ.…
This, the final part of my four-part formation for the CYC board in the Diocese of Helena, addresses the moral life. The main question is: Does God want us to be happy? We need to ask this because what the Church demands often seems to go against our interests, against our happiness. But is it worth it? If I'm gay or transgender, can I be happy in the Catholic Church? Listen in!…
When we come to an impasse, when life presses in on us and we face some impossible trial or suffering that will surely overwhelm us, we frantically look around, and seeing nothing that will heal us or satisfy us, we begin to reach for things that can never satisfy. Our desperate imagination tells us this artificial thing can bring satisfaction, that some shadow is, in fact, real sustenance.…
The beam here is sin, the only one who can remove it is Christ. So, before we judge our brothers and sisters, we turn to Christ and recognize our sins, our shortfalls, our total incapacity to live the charity he calls us to. When we do, we are forgiven, we are healed, and our sight is restored. It is then that we begin to judge rightly and confidently because we judge with the judgment by which we are judged; we judge with forgiving hearts. As Christians we do not name the evil of the world for what it is out of superiority but to warn those around us it will never bring joy. We don’t judge the actions of others in condescension, but in hopes they will turn to to God for the same joyful forgiveness we have received.…
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Fr. Larry Richards is the founder and president of The Reason for our Hope Foundation, a non- profit organization dedicated to ”spreading the Good News” by educating others about Jesus Christ. His new homilies are posted each week.
Live recordings of the sermons preached at our regular services here at Aspire Church, Manchester UK. For more information visit our website at http://www.aspirechurch.co.uk or email info@aspirechurch.co.uk
Welcome to the Enjoying Everyday Life TV podcast with Joyce Meyer. To learn more, visit our website at joycemeyer.org or download the Joyce Meyer Ministries App. By supporting Joyce Meyer Ministries, you can help us reach hurting people around the world. To find out more, go to joycemeyer.org/donate
Love God, love people, and change the world. We believe the life and lessons of Jesus aren’t just good advice, but are Good News for us here and now. As a church, we are all about following Jesus and know there’s no end to that journey—we’re more about becoming than arriving. We are committed to becoming a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multiplying movement of Christ followers, equipping and empowering our kids and students to not only be the church of tomorrow, but the church of today.
Heritage Baptist Church exists by the grace of God and for the glory of God, which is the ultimate purpose of all our activities. We seek to glorify the God of Scripture by promoting His worship, edifying and equipping the saints, evangelizing the nations, planting and strengthening churches, calling other assemblies to biblical faithfulness and purity, encouraging biblical fellowship among believers and ministering to the needy, thus proclaiming and defending God’s perfect law and glorious ...
Victory BGC is a church in Bonifacio Global City that exists to honor God and make disciples. It is a member of Victory Philippines and under Every Nation Churches and Ministries.