Sermon Central
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You Will Be My Witnesses
Contributed by W Pat Cunningham on May 15, 2010 (message contributor)
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1. Being Christ's Witnesses
Contributed on May 15, 2010
Christ calls all of us to witness to the love of God and the presence of a Savior
Monday After Ascension “You Will Be My Witnesses” 17 May 2010 Jesus came to reverse the curse of Babel. In the Mesopotamian plain, human beings played gods in their arrogance, and God scattered them over the earth, multiplying their languages. In the upper room, and at Pentecost, ...read more
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2. Why Would I Do That? I Love My Brother.
Contributed on May 22, 2010
Only if we love Christ and experience His love for us will we want to share Him with others.
Monday after Pentecost May 24, 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses The readings from today’s Gospel give us a clear and bold testimony about how the first generation of Christ’s disciples lived out the command of Jesus to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth. Peter, writing to the ...read more
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3. Evangelism--A Mission Of Delight
Contributed on May 29, 2010
The Church's mission--and ours--is to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal.
Monday After Trinity You Will Be My Witnesses 5/31/10 The Church is always celebrating the presence of the Lord Jesus in Her midst. Zephaniah’s words to the wounded people of Israel must have seemed strange when he first prophesied the Lord’s presence, but they were almost ...read more
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4. They Won't Believe Unless They Hear It From You
Contributed on Jun 6, 2010
We don't witness because we see only downsides; yet many will go to their graves without faith unless lay people preach the Gospel by word and deed
Monday of 10th Week in Course 7 June 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses Why do we hesitate to boldly share our faith with those we meet? I think the reason is that we see only personal downsides to the action. Elijah spoke the word of God to the king of Israel. We’ve forgotten the king, ...read more
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5. Not To Smite, But To Save The Evildoer
Contributed on Jun 12, 2010
Our witness to love our enemies, and to so live that we attract them to Christ and the Church, is a union with Christ's sacrifice
Monday after Eleventh Sunday in Course June 14, 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses There’s something satisfying in seeing the smiting of the evildoer. “Ah, justice is done, finally,” we say when someone gets his comeuppance. But God does not desire the death of the sinner in his ...read more
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6. The Church Exists To Evangelize
Contributed on Jun 19, 2010
It is essential that we prepare ourselves for evangelization by studying the teachings of the Church.
Monday June 21 2001 St Aloysius Gonzaga You Will Be My Witnesses The people of Israel were called out of the desert and planted in the Holy Land to be a light to the nations. It was their vocation to draw pagans to true worship of the true God. Instead, they imitated the pagan worship of ...read more
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7. Leave The Dead To Bury Their Dead-Follow Me
Contributed on Jun 26, 2010
We are called to bring the Gospel to a world that is full of men and women who have no awareness of their need for God.
Feast of St. Irenaeus June 28 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses The incident reported in Matthew’s Gospel today, is one in which a “man of the book,” literally, or one who studied Torah, declares his willingness to follow Jesus to the end of the earth. Another one, just ...read more
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8. Evangelizing Our Culture
Contributed on Jul 3, 2010
We must boldly and strongly confront the culture of death with the Truth of the Gospel in our evangelization.
Monday of 14th week in Course July 5, 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses The easy course of action for any people is to acculturate themselves to the people around them. That’s what the Hebrews did when they entered Palestine. They saw that the indigenous people worshiped the Ba’als ...read more
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9. Evangelization In Web 2.0
Contributed on Jul 10, 2010
If we are to evangelize modern culture, we must do so with a clear and effective understanding of modern media.
Monday of 15th week in Course July 12, 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses The people of Israel were given the land of Palestine so that they, by the beauty and truth of their worship and living, would attract pagan society to the worship of the True God and the goodness of righteous living. ...read more
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10. Witnessing, Not Proselytizing
Contributed on Jul 17, 2010
We can only evangelize the people within the culture of death by understanding the culture and standing with the people to share the Word of God.
Monday of 16th Week in Course July 19, 2010 I did an informal survey of the network TV commercials one evening and was not surprised at the results. Most of the ads were for automobiles and trucks. The rest were for discretionary purchases or for merchandise you couldn’t advertise on ...read more
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11. The Bound-Tos And The Kaint Hep Its
Contributed on Jul 24, 2010
We don't have to be experts in order to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ
St. Anne & Joachim July 26, 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses A few years ago, a U.S. President was facing his last term and began to wonder about his “legacy.” In other words, what would he be remembered for? Jeshua ben Sira, whom we know as Sirach, wrote the answer about a hundred ...read more
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12. Listen More Than You Talk
Contributed on Jul 31, 2010
We cannot leave unbelievers in ignorance, but in sharing the Gospel it is more important to hear what they need than to prescribe a treatment for a disease they don't even know they have.
Monday of 18th Week in Course August 2, 2010 You Will Be My Witnesses Jesus’s reluctance at the wedding feast of Cana, a reluctance summarized in His words to Mary, “woman, what is this to me and to thee, my hour has not yet come,” came from a deep understanding of human ...read more
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13. Ministering To Hispanic Catholics
Contributed on Aug 7, 2010
Xenophobia destroyed the Jews in Nazi Germany; we must not let it stand in the way of our mission.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross–August 9, 2010 You Shall Be My Witnesses Here at the beginning of August, the Church gives us feasts that are pointed reminders that Jesus, who predicted His own assassination, was not the last Christian martyr, only the first. I’ve often commented ...read more
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14. Calling The Sheep To Return
Contributed on Aug 14, 2010
It is a priority for us to call those who have left the Church to return to fellowship and the sacraments.
Monday of 20th Week in Course August 16, 2010 You Shall Be My Witnesses The people of the Old Covenant were twice exiled from Judea. To this first group, stuck in Babylon, the priest Ezekiel was sent as a prophet. A mime prophet. He acted out in his life the reality of exile, suffering, and ...read more
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15. Not As The Pharisees Convert
Contributed on Aug 20, 2010
We must be converted daily to the following of Christ, and be sensitive to the signs others demonstrate that they are ready to hear the message and be healed by Christ.
Monday of 21st Week in Course August 23, 2010 Today’s Gospel verses betray the Hebrew original of Matthew–one after another, Hebrew words come tumbling from Jesus’s lips: oi, as in oi vay–woe in English, peroushim, the separate ones we call Pharisees, ben Hinnom, which ...read more
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16. The Excitement Of The Witnesses Of The Risen Christ
Contributed on Aug 27, 2010
Just as Mary Magdalene and the disciples, we too must recover our excitement about the Resurrection, so we can share it with others.
30 August 2010 Monday of 22nd week in Course You Will Be My Witnesses When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness ...read more
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17. What Happens After We Are "cut To The Heart"?
Contributed on Apr 20, 2019
Why does our human frailty hesitate to believe that mankind will one day live with God?
Tuesday of Easter Week 2019 In Monday of Holy Week, the Divine Office gives us a snippet from one of St. Augustine’s sermons. He asks, “Why does our human frailty hesitate to believe that mankind will one day live with God?” Christ gave us the gift of His own death, so why would He not in love ...read more
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18. When To Be Seen; When Not To Be Seen
Contributed on Jun 19, 2019
Do we let our good deeds shine out or do we do them in secret? Is Jesus talking out of both sides of His mouth here?
Wednesday of 11th Week in Course 2019 A priest I know preached recently on this passage from St. Matthew’s Gospel and pointed out that this part of the Sermon on the Mount appears to contradict the earlier passage that tells us not to hide the good that we do under a basket. So do we let our good ...read more
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19. Witnessing To The Culture Of Death
Contributed on Mar 7, 2020
We must work and pray, as St. Benedict told us to do. Work for the spread of the kingdom in our families and communities, and vote as a Christian must, for godly men and women who will resist the culture of death and legislate for life, peace, and goodness.
Tuesday of the 2nd Week in Lent 2020 For our first reading today, I have chosen to begin earlier in the first chapter of Isaiah than the Lectionary suggests, and to add the verses the Lectionary omits. The Lenten readings take a great deal of the very long prophecies of Isaiah, but they omit ...read more
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20. Nobody Ever Spoke Like This Man
Contributed on Mar 27, 2020
The viral pandemic is forcing us back into our homes, our families, so that we can give voice and action to our repentance.
Saturday of the Fourth Week in Lent 2020 “No Man Ever Spoke Like This Man” As I write these lines, our nation and the world is continuing in the grip of a health crisis that is unparalleled since the pandemic of 1918 and the year following, which was a flu that killed 50 million human beings ...read more
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21. Fight The Obsessive Evil
Contributed on Jan 30, 2021
Our evil habits are harmful to ourselves and everyone around us. Repent, and ask Jesus to heal and forgive you.
Monday of 4th week in Course 2021 One of the most helpful actions that a husband and wife can share with each other is from time to time to tell each other the story of their love. My wife and I are in the fiftieth year of marriage, so we have a fifty-one year story to share with each other and ...read more
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22. Growing The Flock Of Christ
Contributed on Apr 24, 2021
In a world hungry for meaning, hungry for joy, hungry for hope, we must share the story of Christ and His Church.
Monday of 4th week of Easter In Palestine, sheep have been for dozens of generations the basis of animal husbandry. Sheep produce milk and wool–they are not used for meat. Sheep are also pretty stupid, so they need shepherds to keep them from getting into trouble and being killed. Every night ...read more
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23. Beauty And Poverty?
Contributed on Feb 26, 2022
This place of danger was called “the eye of the needle.”
Homily for Monday in 8th week Sir 17:20-24; Mk 10:17-27 In the ancient world, a world without weapons of mass destruction, the safest place to be when the Egyptians or Assyrians were roaming the Levant with their scythed chariots was a walled city. But every city has to have gates, so the gate ...read more