I am awful at chess. Like, bad. But the other thing is I try to protect all of the chess pieces on the board, which means I don’t honestly try to protect my king. This is the only thing that you need to win the game. And if you don’t have the king, you lose. Jesus Christ is trying to get this across in the gospel today. You have everything if you have Jesus and nothing else in your life. But if you don’t have Jesus, if you don’t have the king…

My favorite word in the gospel for this Sunday is the conjunction “but.” I love the part where the apostles say to Jesus, “Jesus, we have worked all night. We have caught nothing. But at your command, we will lower the nets.” The word “but” is so powerful because it shows the relationship with Jesus. A lot of the time, we don’t use that word. All we ask is the question, “Why?” “Jesus, why am I suffering like this?” “Why would…

So, this Sunday is so awesome. We are celebrating the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also known as Candlemas. All of these candles will be brought into the church and blessed because we are celebrating the light of Christ coming into the temple for the first time. The people of Israel have been waiting for this moment forever. This would be like all of our churches having an empty tabernacle for hundreds of years…

If you’re a Marvel fan, what would it be like if Iron Man was real? If you’re a Harry Potter fan, what would it be like if Hogwarts was real? If you’re a Pokemon fan, what would it be like if Snorlax was real? Now, imagine that you’re an Old Testament Jew. What would it be like to realize that the Messiah was real? That’s what you would be dreaming about. That the Messiah, the Son of God, is true and real. In the gospel for this Sunday…

Guys, Muppet, Yoda, beats CGI, Yoda, any day of the week. We see this in The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke Skywalker is Yoda’s apprentice. Luke follows everything that Yoda says because Yoda has moral authority; we see this moral authority and the gospel for this Sunday at the wedding of Cana. Mary says to the servants, do whatever he tells you, and they do it because Mary has this moral authority; because of…

I was just in the Gulf of Mexico, went to the beach, and saw something crazy. I saw a father placing his 2-year-old son on the edge of the water, and he sat there and let his son walk forward. The son took one step into the ocean, looked back at his dad, smiled, turned back, and took one more step forward, and he kept doing this. This little 2-year-old boy felt safe amid a vast, powerful, dangerous ocean because he knew…

So, the latest Terminator movie was set for the future in 2024. It was predicted that by 2024, artificial intelligence would take over the world. Well, we are now past 2024. It is a new year, and AI hasn’t conquered us yet. But we always fear that we have no clue what will happen in this new year. Crazy things may happen, heartbreaking things may happen, amazing things may happen, but guess what? Jesus stays…

Okay, so fish are fascinating. Did you know that salmon swim upstream for almost 2,000 miles every year? This is insane. This Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, and the family are like fish always swimming upstream. No matter what is going on in the culture, no matter what is happening in the world, the family is always being counter-cultural, going against the grain, bringing life, and providing…