We all need to ask ourselves:
- Do I listen carefully to the voice of Christ's Vicar on earth?
- Do I pay attention to the guidance God wants to give me through his Church?
- Do I value this great gift properly and actively?
In past ages, before the Internet, and much further in the past, before the printing press, people had an excuse for wondering what Christ's Church was saying about current issues and events.
It wasn't so easy to find the teaching of Christ's Vicar.
Not so for us. For us, it is easy. We can keep up with the voice of the Vicar with a few clicks of the mouse.
We all use many sources of news and social commentary. We owe it to ourselves, and to Christ, and to the Church, to use regularly at least one reliable source that gives the Church's perspective and the Church's news.
We shouldn't learn about what Christ is saying through the false interpretations of Christ's enemies; we should go right to the sources themselves.
And it's so easy!
[Here you can recommend your favorite sources. You may also want to have some samples available/printed out in the narthex, or even arrange to share news with a good Catholic news service on your parish website. We recommend the following sources: www.zenit.org, which publishes all of the Pope's discourses and sends out a daily Church news email; www.ncregister.com, the weekly national Catholic newspaper that has many of its articles available on line, and Faith and Family magazine (free trial issues - https://www.kable.com/pub/fafa/subdom.asp), which focuses less on news and more on parenting and family issues, both from a practical and a catechetical perspective.]
- I know some people who have the home page of their computer to Catholic sites like zenith.org and catholicexchange.org, so that the first thing they see are headlines about what the Pope is saying and what's going on in the Church.
- Others have made the commitment not to check the sports page until they've checked the Catholic headlines.
Christ is constantly speaking to us, giving us the meaning behind the headlines.
I can think of few things that would please him more than if during this Mass we renewed our commitment to listen well.