Homily #141108b ( 13min) Play – Fr. Alan on the life of Bl. John Duns Scotus and how he he gave a lofty, subtle penetration of the divine nature and the centrality of Christ’s Incarnation as the very reason for God’s gratuitous act of love in in creating the universe. This maximized Christo-centrism, in turn, provided the theological basis for the Immaculate Conception of Mary, leading to its proclamation as a dogma of the Church in 1854. For more on the Primacy of Christ go here, and read this:

Ave Maria!
Mass: Bl. John Duns Scotus – Feast – Form: OF
Readings: Saturday in the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
1st: phi 4:10-19
Resp: psa 112:1-2, 5-6, 8, 9
Gsp: luk 16:9-15

Audio (MP3)

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Homily #141108n ( 04min) Play – Today the friars celebrate Bl. John Duns Scotus, and Father tells us that he lived the detachment that today’s Gospel teaches, always seeking God alone with all his heart and mind, and he did this by defending the Mother of God and Her Immaculate Conception. In fact, it was his explanation of the Immaculate Conception which was later used in the dogmatic definition of the same.
Ave Maria!
Mass: Bl. John Duns Scotus – Feast – Form: OF
Readings: Saturday in the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
1st: phi 4:10-19
Resp: psa 112:1-2, 5-6, 8, 9
Gsp: luk 16:9-15

Audio (MP3)

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The post Nov 08 – Homily – Fr Maximilian W: He Defended the Mother of God first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #141126n ( 11min) Play – Father starts with giving us an overview of the life of today’s Franciscan saint, St. Leonard of Port Maurice. While not well known, his work has left a deep mark on the popular devotions and liturgy of the Church, for example, he spread the devotions of the Way of the Cross and composed the “Divine Praises” used at Benediction in reparation for blasphemy. However, there is one thing he called, “The Most Important Cause in the World;” namely, the defense of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and in several ways, his work proved instrumental for the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception 102 years after his death. Father tells us that, as St. Maximilian taught, even thought the dogma has be proclaimed, it has yet to be fully incorporated into the life of the Church, and that this task is now “The Most Important Cause in the World!”
Ave Maria!
Mass: St. Leonard of Port Maurice – Mem – Form: OF
Readings: Wednesday in the 34th Week in Ordinary Time
1st: rev 15:1-4
Resp: psa 98:1, 2-3, 7-8, 9
Gsp: luk 21:12-19

Audio (MP3)

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The post Nov 26 – Homily – Fr Matthias: The Most Important Cause in the World! first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #141127n ( 18min) Play – Father highlights the three elements of Mary’s Mediation: in the acquisition of graces as Coredemptrix, in interceding for us as Advocate, and in distributing these graces as Distributrix. Since she is, by God’s will, the Mediatrix, we need to draw close to her to receive the graces we are in desperate need of. Also, Father points out, the Immaculate Conception forms the bedrock for her other roles, and demonstrates the perfection of the Redemption. These two doctrines, Mediatrix and Immaculate Conception, are harmoniously united in the Miraculous Medal. While she doesn’t need a medal to distribute the graces entrusted to her by God, it is the will of God to use simple things (like the sacramentals) as instruments to bestow graces. And we are also involved in this as well, we need to make use of these simple things God has given us, the Miraculous Medal, Rosary, Scapular, Five First Saturdays, Divine Mercy Chaplet, ect., to receive the graces He desires to distribute through them. God makes Himself very available, but we need to go to Him according to His will and not ours. The sacramentals and sacraments may seem too simple, too available, but how many graces do we waste by not doing the easy things God wants us to. Let us do the simple things like the servants at the wedding of Cana did, and God will work powerfully in our lives.
Ave Maria!
Mass: Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal – Feast – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: rev 12:11, 5-6, 14-17
Resp: psa 45:11-12, 14-15, 16-17
Gsp: joh 2:1-11

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The post Nov 27 – Homily – Fr Louis Maximilian: Do the Simple Things first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #141204b ( 09min) Play – Fr. Elias on the teachings of St. John Damascene, including that Mary was pre-purified, an early expression of the dogma of Immaculate Conception. Father reflects on this early expression of a recently declared dogma as a sign that the Church is the guarantee of doctrine since it is built by Christ on the rock of Peter.
Ave Maria!
Mass: St. John Damascene – Opt Mem – Form: OF
Readings: Thursday in the 1st Week in Advent
1st: isa 26:1-6
Resp: psa 118:1, 8-9, 19-21, 25-27
Gsp: mat 7:21, 24-27

Audio (MP3)

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The post Dec 04 – Homily – Fr Elias: Mary Pre-Purified first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #141208b ( 15min) Play – Fr. Alan explains the fittingness of God’s grace of conceiving His mother immaculately, without sin, full of grace. He uses the explanation first given by Bl. John Duns Scotus which was used by Pope Bl. Pius IX when he solemnly proclaimed the doctrine as a dogma. It boils down to: God can  do it, it is fitting, so he did it (potuit, decuit, ergo fecit)
Ave Maria!
Mass: Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary – Solemnity – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: gen 3:9-15, 20
Resp: psa 98:1, 2-3, 3-4
2nd: eph 1:3-6, 11-12
Gsp: luk 1:26-38

Audio (MP3)

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The post Dec 08 – Homily – Fr Alan: Fittingly Conceived without Sin first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #141208n ( 12min) Play – In recent times, there has been a departure from the tradition of translating the protogospel as “She Will Crush Your Head” to “He Will Crush Your Head.” Leaving this controversy aside, Father tells us that both are valid, and the ambiguous language in the Hebrew underscores the indissoluble union between Jesus and Mary in the work of redemption. Quoting from the Fathers and the Magisterium, Father proves that this prophecy is indeed a reference to the eternal enmity between the Blessed Virgin and Satan. But not just between Her and the Serpent, but also between Her offspring and his. In the end, mankind will be divided between to sides, the offspring of the Woman, and the offspring of the Serpent, and we must choose our side right now.
Ave Maria!
Mass: Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary – Solemnity – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: gen 3:9-15, 20
Resp: psa 98:1, 2-3, 3-4
2nd: eph 1:3-6, 11-12
Gsp: luk 1:26-38

Audio (MP3)

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The post Dec 08 – Homily – Fr Matthias: (S)he Will Chrush Your Head? first appeared on AirMaria.com.

“It is in emptiness like the hollow in the reed, the narrow riftless emptiness which can have only one destiny: to receive the Piper’s breath and to utter the song that is in His Heart”

It is in Our Lady that God fell in love with Humanity. It is upon her that the Dove descended, and the love of God for Humanity culminated in the conception of Christ in the human race.  When she surrendered herself to God, there was indeed a miraculous New Heaven and New Earth. The Spirit entered the world – light and wisdom and love, patience, fortitude and joy entered the human heart and mind, and in the sight of God a springtime of loveliness woke in the world. In the virginal emptiness of the girl, Mary of Nazareth, Christ was conceived; it was the wedding of God to a human child, and the wonder of it filled the earth for all time.’

‘This proved that God knew Our Lady’s trust in Him was absolutely without limit. Everything that He did to her in the future emphasized the same thing. His trust in her trust in Him.  The one thing that He did ask of her was the gift of her humanity. She was to give Him her body and soul unconditionally, and – what in this new light would have seemed absurdly trivial to anyone but the Child Bride of Wisdom – she was to give Him her daily life…

He asked for her ordinary life shared with Joseph. She was not to neglect her simple human tenderness, her love for an earthly man, because God was her unborn child. On the contrary, the hands and feet, the heart, the waking, sleeping, and eating that were forming Christ were to form Him in service to Joseph.

Yes, it certainly seemed that God wanted to give the world the impression that it is ordinary for Him to be born of a human creature. Well, that is a fact! God did mean it to be the ordinary thing, for it is His will that Christ shall be born in every human being’s life and not, as a rule, through extraordinary things, but through the ordinary daily life and the human love that people give to one another.

Our Lady said yes. She said yes for us all…Our Lady said yes for the human race. Each one of us must echo that yes for our own lives.  We are all asked if we will surrender what we are, our humanity, our flesh and blood, to the Holy Spirit and allow Christ to fill the emptiness formed by the particular shape of our life. The surrender that is asked of us includes complete and absolute trust; it must be like Our Lady’ surrender, without condition and without reservation…to surrender all that we are, as we are, to the Spirit of Love in order that our lives may bear Christ into the world: that is what we shall be asked.

How much easier for her (Mary) if she had had at least a guarantee for the safety of the precious burden, Christ, in her. But she was consenting not only to bear her own child, Christ, but to bear Christ into the world in all men, in all times; not only in secluded lives, protected lives, the lives of holy people, but into the lives of those haunted by worry, by poverty, by debt, by fears and temptations, subject to chance, to accident, to persecution, to the fortunes of war…

…In her brief historical life, of which we know so little, the history of the whole world is concentrated, particularly the lives of all the common people of the world, who often do not know themselves that they are Christ-bearers, living the life of the Mother of God. She began at once, as she stood up before the angel, and uttered her fiat, to live all our lives, and Christ in her was subject to the unknown, to the hazards of life in the world, as He is in us.

Caryll Houselander (The Reed of God)

The post The Reed of God first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Conferences #266 – ( 32min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Fr. Elias gives the first talk on this Marian Day of Reflection on Saturday December 6, 2014. The overall theme for the day is the Immaculate Conception and what it means. In this first talk Father focuses on what the Immaculate Conception means for us, the graces that we receive from it. Specifically he connects this to the fifth Marian Dogma of Coredemptrix, Mediatrix and Advocate for us, all of which is summed up in her role as spiritual mother for all Christians, which, in turn, is based on her Divine Motherhood.

For all three talks: http://airmaria.com/tag/marian-day-dec-2014/

Audio (MP3)

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The post Video – Marian Day – 1 Immaculate for Us- CONF 266 first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #150217m ( 14min) Play – In today’s homily, Fr. Johannes stresses the importance of the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows and the role of the seven founders of the Servite order  on spreading this devotion. He also elaborates on the seven promises made to St. Bridget of Sweden for those whose practice this devotion daily.
Ave Maria!
Mass: 7 Founders of Servite Order – Opt Mem – Form: OF
Readings: 

1st: gen 6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10

Resp: psa 29:1-2, 3-4, 8, 9-10

Gsp: mar 8:14-21

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The post Feb 17 – Homily – Fr Johannes: Devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows first appeared on AirMaria.com.