What Do You Know: The Score or the Saint?

Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you," said Jesus to the possessed man from whom He expelled the "legion" of demons in the gospel read on the 6th Sunday of Luke in the Eastern Christian Church (Lk. 8: 39). This phase is seldom singled out for commentary. But God gifts to his people is the reason the Jews and Christians gave offerings back to God.

This is passé in the modern world. Why? We are not really Christians anymore. Instead, we are secular Americans. Christ does not exist in the center of our homes, secular values do. Parents have broken their wedding vows. Parents have not educated themselves or their children in "faith and fear of God." We take our lives, our gifts, and our talents for granted. Even when we say we are thankful our words are often meaningless.

Take this quiz: 1) What is your home sports team latest score -- or the rating of your favorite athlete, or top movie, hit song? 2) What Saint is the church celebrating today? My experience as a parish priest says that most would get an A+ on the first question and an F on the second.

[…]Living boldly in Christ is passé. We will not stand up for Him. We will not have Christ at the center of our personal life and family home. We will not give to support His Church but we continue to call ourselves Christian out of self love proving to be hypocrites.
(Read the whole article by Fr. George Morelli in Orthodoxy Today here.)

Ouch. I failed. I knew the Cowboys beat the Cards last week 34-13. I had to look on my Pocket PC to see that today is the feast of St. Charles Borromeo in the Roman Church, on Microsoft Outlook to find the commemoration of George Augustus Selwyn in the COE, and on the internet to find out about Venerable Joannicius the Great in the Eastern Church. (Let's get real - there's no way I’m going to apologize for not knowing all of them, but it wouldn’t have killed me to know one of them!) I like to think I lead a pretty Christ-centered life, but the truth of it is that my life is a lot more self-centered than Christ-centered. I really do hate having my nose rubbed in it – especially during football season!