Mass celebrated the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Ignatius was in the military and was injured, thus ending his military career. While in the hospital, he wanted books on military glory. They didn’t have any, but they did have books on the life of Christ and lives of the saints. He began reading these and read them intently. He asked himself, what if I followed the path of St. Dominic and St. Francis. As the thought of pursuing a life of holiness, the thought of Christ brought him joy. A change took place in Ignatius. Rather than glory to himself, he wanted to give honor and glory to God. That would be his motto for the rest of his life.

He wanted to go to the Holy Land, he wanted to be a monk, but God had other plans for him. Instead he founded a new community, the Society of Jesus.One of the things he is most known for is his Spiritual Exercises. Everything that we do to rid ourselves of an attachment, anything that we do to prepare our soul for God’s grace is a spiritual exercise. It can be an examination of conscience, a type of meditation, contemplation of mental prayer or vocal prayer. Any of these are spiritual exercises. Just as our physical body needs exercise, our spiritual part needs exercise too.

Another thing he is known for is a retreat that typically lasts for four weeks.

The first week concentrates on sin and hell, the reality of sin and hell. Today we don’t hear of the reality of hell. At the end of each day we should make a general examination of our day and determine the sins we have committed and resolve not to sin again. But St. Ignatius stressed the particular examination wherein we concentrate on a particular fault we have during the day and asking ourselves how are we doing.

The second week meditates on the life of Christ. Two standards are placed before us, that of Christ and that of Satan. 1) Christ - poverty as opposed to riches. 2) Satan - riches.

The third week meditates on the passion and death of Christ. By meditating on the passion and death of Christ, we find strength for our own vocations.

The fourth week meditates on the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Foster acts of love for others. How much our Lord has done for me and has given me!

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will - all that I have and possess. Thou has given it all to me. To Thee, O Lord, I return it. Everything is Yours; do with it what you will. Give me only Your love and Your grace. That is enough for me.

"All for the Glory of God."

Father discussed the reading and gospel. Jeremiah preached against the city. He was seized by the priests and was told he shall die. He was told he deserved to die because he had prophesied against the city. Jeremiah is the precursor of John the Baptist. John the Baptist sought his fate at the hands of Herod, who was overcome by lust and almost against his will had John the Baptist beheaded. The sin of lust overcomes us and we do things that we don’t want to do. With sin we get on the road of slavery. St. Paul tells us the wages of sin is death.

Thirty years ago, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae. Father then proceeded to discuss a paper by Archbishop Charles Chaput on Humanae Vitae. The conclusion of Archbishop Chaput thirty years later is that Pope Paul was right. Archbishop Chaput believes the encyclical teaches the truth and that the message is not a burden and brings joy. Many of the prophecies of Paul VI have come true in the last 30 years: spousal and child abuse, divorce, abortion, VD, culture of death attitude, and imperialism. The world dismissed the encyclical as irrelevant.

Archbishop Chaput says addiction threatens the world today. Sooner or later every pastor comes across an addict. One addicted to alcohol or drugs or another addiction. The addict will acknowledge the problem but confesses he is powerless against it, or the addict will deny having a problem at all. Regardless of how persuasive the pastor might be, the addict rejects the advice.

The world cannot accept the writings of Pope Paul VI, not because of any contradictions within the encyclical or defects in Pope Paul’s reasonings, but because all the addictions of which society suffers.

Archbishop Chaput lists the four main problems Pope Paul cautioned against:

1) Church teaching on regulations of births was ignored. Conjugal infidelity and a contraceptive society will slowly sink in moral degradation. Few can deny that the rate of abortions, divorce, family breakdowns, wife and child abuse, VD, have all massively increased over the past 30 years.

2) Husband loses respect for his wife. He now considers her as an object for his personal pleasure. There is no spousal respect or love for her anymore. Contraceptives have been marketed to liberate the woman, but the real "beneficiary" is the man.

3) Contraceptives place a dangerous weapon in the hands of public policy makers. As we now see, population control is now part of foreign policy discussions. Population control is being forced on the developing world by the developed world as part of the aid packages.

4) Contraception leads to sexual disorientation, misleading human beings to believe they have unlimited dominion over their own bodies. Fertility has become a disease. How can we stop it? How can we hinder it? How can we imprison it? At the heart of contraception is that fertility is an infection that must be controlled. Invitro fertilization and cloning are all descendants of contraception acknowledgment.

Archbishop Chaput says Paul VI was right about so many things that he must have been right about contraception.

Archbishop Chaput gives us a prescription of what we have to do:

1) Pastors and all others must articulate clearly the Catholic view of marriage and procreation. We have to know ourselves the Catholic view of marriage and procreation so that we can explain it. Catholic married love always implied the possibility of new life. All contraception is morally and seriously wrong. With contraception a married couple is holding back their fertility.

2) Priests and the laity must turn their hearts back to God to accept the Church’s teachings and become missionaries to a pagan culture.

3) Go to confession.

4) Preach the truth.

Two final points:

1) The issue of contraception is peripheral. If it is used knowingly, it is a grave sin, because it destroys the essence of marriage.

2) Teach the truth with patience and compassion but firmness. Kids are searching for reality of true love - but in all the wrong places.

Why do we have devotions to Mary? The main reason some Catholics and Protestants do not have a devotion to Mary is through ignorance. They don’t know enough about the person, the privilege She has received or they don’t know the role She plays. They also confuse adoration with veneration. We never adore Mary, we venerate Her. All the venerations we do to Mary will never add up to adoration. In veneration, it is simple, but loving, honoring a creature.

Jesus never gets jealous of our devotion to Mary. He wills that we honor Her. The fourth commandment - honor thy father and thy mother. Mary is our mother in a supernatural sense. Mary is responsible for our supernatural life. She is the one who puts Christ in us. Without Mary, we would have never had Christ.

As Christians we are supposed to imitate Christ. Jesus is the prime example for us of true devotion to Mary. God was the first to call Mary blessed. Therefore, none of us can contradict that. The dictionary says blessed means holy, something that is to be revered, something to be venerated.

Who is Jesus to whom Mary gave birth? He is the second person of the Trinity, the son of God. John 1:14, the word was made flesh. So Mary gave birth to the incarnate word. In John 1:1, "the word was God." Thus, she gave birth to God. Mary gave birth not only to Jesus’ human nature, but also to His divine nature.

Jesus is commanding us through the commandment, particularly the fourth, to honor Mary as our mother.

St. Maxmilian Kolbe was devoted to Mary. When he was young, Mary appeared to him holding two crowns, one of purity and one of martyrdom. She asked him which crown did he chose. He chose both. He later died a martyr. 

History of the Immaculate Conception, a very Franciscan feast. The Immaculate Conception was defined in dogma in 1854 by Pius IX, but it was celebrated long before that. Several saints were not in agreement with the theory of the Immaculate Conception.

William of Ware was the first to defend the Immaculate Conception. Because Christ’s flesh came from Mary, it’s a good possibility that Mary was immaculate. The main problem was preserving the dignity of Christ’s redemption. No one doubted Mary’s purity. The problem was - How was Mary redeemed, yet not a victim of original sin. They needed to find a different meaning of original sin.

St. Anselm had a deeper meaning of original sin. Original sin is the lost of original justice. Original justice means our will is directed by the intellect.

It is greater to prevent someone from falling into sin than to allow them to fall and then pull them out.

Holy Spirit is the flowing of the love of the Father and the Son. Mary is called the spouse of the Holy Spirit. Mary is the manifestation of God’s love for man. We serve God in and through Jesus and we serve Jesus in and through Mary. For every action of God’s grace coming to us comes from the Father through the Son through the Holy Spirit. And the reaction is our love through the Holy Spirit through the Son up to the Father. Mary is at the end of the action, and she is also at the starting point of the reaction. This is because of Her union with the Holy Spirit.

You cannot separate the mission of the Holy Spirit and the Son. Both were sent to bring back souls lost to sin.

As spouse of the Holy Spirit, Mary shares in the distribution of graces. When we consecrate ourselves to Mary, we can give graces to each other.

Anyone who gives himself/herself completely to Mary will understand the truths of God and all His mysteries better.

When you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials.

Trust God and He will help you.

You who fear the Lord, wait for His mercy. Woe to you who have lost hope. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord and not into the hands of man.

Those who fear the Lord seem to please Him.

Father spoke of special blessings granted on this feast day. He discussed plenary indulgences. We must pay for our sins. But, an indulgence after fulfillment of the indulgence requirements takes away the punishment, or stated another way, we pay a small portion of our punishment and God pays the rest.

St. Francis gained this indulgence without the need of the payment of money. The authority of the church to grant indulgences comes from God when Jesus said to Peter, "whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven." An indulgence is evidence of God’s mercy