Bishop Dave was a man of prayer and service, with a heart for the poor and a passion to share the good news of God’s mercy and love with everyone. Please join
@lacatholics
in honoring his memory with
#aHailMaryforBishopDave
"Do not be satisfied with anything less than Truth and Love, do not be content with anything less than Christ."
Thank you, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, for pointing us to Christ. May the angels lead you to paradise.
So very sad to hear the news of
#KobeBryant
’s tragic death this morning. I am praying for him and his family. May he rest in peace and may our Blessed Mother Mary bring comfort to his loved ones.
#KobeBryantRIP
.
@lacatholics
call on Catholics and people of goodwill to stand against hate in any form after the
@Dodgers
reinstated plans to honor the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” who were set to receive the Dodgers’ Community Hero Award. Read on
@AngelusNews
:
There is no question that
#abortion
is the fundamental injustice in American society. If a child has no right to develop in the womb and be brought into this world — then there is no foundation for any human rights in society.
#OneLifeLA
#MadeForGreater
The election to
@USCCB
president is an honor — not only for me, but also for
@lacatholics
and for every Latino Catholic in the country. I promise to serve with dedication and love, and to always try to follow Jesus Christ and seek his will for his Church here in the US.
#USCCB19
#Abortion
is not just a “Catholic” issue. Modern biology shows us that human life begins at conception. The embryo does not “become human” somewhere down the line. Within a few weeks in the womb, the embryo has a tiny face & a beating heart. This is a unique, personal human life.
I was reading one of the last letters that St. Thomas More wrote to his daughter Margaret, who he called Meg. He is imprisoned in the infamous Tower of London where he is about to be executed, and he writes:
Together with my brother bishops, we prayed for
#KobeBryant
, his daughter, and all victims of Sunday’s helicopter crash. Join me in praying that their souls, through the mercy of God, may rest in peace. (Video credit: Gian Luca Gangemi,
@EWTN
)
Let's pray for all our women religious today, who do so much to make this a true City of the Angels. And let us work together to bring a spirit of peace and mutual respect to our community.
Read our latest on
@AngelusNews
:
It is important to remember that as Catholics our faith is not a set of ‘positions’ that we hold on ‘issues.’ Our faith is rooted in what Jesus has revealed about God’s purposes in creation and his will for every person.
My brothers and sisters, today is a special day for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. We are ordaining 8 new priests. Our Lord has called them from many different walks of life and today they are taking a new path, a path of joy — a path of following the call of Jesus.
We can never take the Eucharist for granted. The Eucharist is the most powerful force in the universe. In our worship, heaven is brough to earth, and earth is lifted up and offered to heaven.
Let’s pray for our Holy Father Pope Francis as he undergoes his medical treatments at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital. We entrust him to the tender care of Our Lady of Guadalupe and we ask that she keep him close in her love.
But as Catholics, we believe that even the lives of the worst and most dangerous criminals are sacred. We hold out hope that even those lives can be changed and rehabilitated — through the mercy of God.
#RespectLifeMonth
We as Catholics believe that God made men and women with different bodies but equal dignity and worth — their differences are meant to complement and complete each other in the bringing about new life.
#NationalMarriageWeek
St. Joseph was an ordinary man — a husband and foster-father. Long ago, he walked the earth just as we do. But now, he can hear our prayers and, I think, whisper them into the ear of God.
Friends, there are many injustices in our society, but the most fundamental is the one our society rarely acknowledges — the routine taking of innocent human life every day through abortion. So let us pray and work for an end to this injustice.
#9DaysforLife
Lord, we pray for an end to this tragic practice. Give us the grace to work day by day to make it possible through our love and witness.
#9DaysforLife
#LACatholics
Every single word of the Eucharistic celebration is carefully chosen. Much of what we say and do in our worship has been handed on in the Church down through the centuries from the earliest days.
My brothers and sisters, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, our Lord is still taking bread, giving thanks, and feeding us with the bread of eternal life — and he is doing that through the hands of his priests.
Friends, join me in praying for our brothers & sisters in
#Ventura
and
#Sylmar
who are facing devastating fires & high winds. Pray for the families & their homes & also for the firefighters & rescue workers. May God keep them all safe and put an end to these fires!
#ThomasFire
Notice how Jesus appears to the disciples while they are working. After the Resurrection, the apostles still had responsibilities, they were no different than us. Just as Jesus came to them, Jesus meets us in the realities of our ordinary, daily lives.
I am very sad to report that our beloved Auxiliary Bishop David O’Connell has passed away unexpectedly. May Our Lady of Guadalupe wrap him in the mantle of her love.
When we eat the supernatural food of the Eucharist, the bread and wine become part of us. His flesh becomes our flesh, and our lives are joined with his.
My brothers and sisters, there is a new rival ‘salvation’ narrative that we hear being told in the media and in our institutions by the new social justice movements. It is a powerful and attractive narrative for millions of people in American society.
Like St. Juan Diego, let us rely on these words of Our Lady of Guadalupe: “Am I not your mother? … Are you not sheltered underneath my mantle, under the embrace of my arms?” She is our Mother, “the source of our joy” — may we always turn to her!
Fasting does not mean starving yourself. It just means learning to live with less, trying to be less selfish. It means making little sacrifices, little offerings to God, with a spirit of penance and sacrifice.
“In good faith, Meg … my own good daughter, do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.”
Jesus became flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He gave his flesh on the cross for the life of the world. And now, he gives his flesh and blood to us in the Eucharist to be our food — our strength in the journey of life.
Our God is a God who loves us so much that he humbles himself to share in our humanity. A God who reaches down to lift us up, who dies for us, so that we can share in his divinity.
The martyrs from the early Church declared: “It is not possible for us to live without the Eucharist, the food of the Lord.” Let us live with that intensity.
Friends, more than forty years of legalized
#abortion
in our country is too long. There have been too many innocent lives lost. Too many men and women wounded in body, mind and spirit. Too many consciences compromised. Too many Rachels weeping.
Jesus Christ could have risen from the dead and gone back to Jerusalem in a cloud of glory, but instead he appears quietly. This tells us something about how God works in our own lives. Jesus comes to us, one-on-one and heart-to-heart.
The Church is not a political party and we are not activists. We are Catholic — before everything else — this is our identity and this is who we are.
#LACatholics
God is totally interested in your life. In his love for you, he wants to hear about your joys and sorrows, the things that disturb or frustrate you. Nothing is too small to bring to God.
Jesus came down from heaven and offered his life on the Cross — all for us. And he comes to us again and again in the pages of Scripture and in the Eucharist.
Let us keep seeking the heart of Jesus — examining our own hearts and rooting out the things that separate us from him. We need to keep asking for the grace of conversion.
The Eucharist is the true miracle of divine love and divine life. Every time we receive his Body and Blood, we need to ask for the grace to open our hearts to his love and allow him to shape our lives.
Friends, pray for our city & our nation tonight. No one in America should suffer cruelty, violence, or unequal treatment because of their race or color of their skin. Racism is a blasphemy against God who creates all men and women with equal dignity. Let our protests be peaceful.
“God’s grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. … I shall … with good hope commit myself wholly to him.”
We all know the story of America’s founding, however there is America’s ‘other’ founding which occurred more than a century before the Mayflower, Madison, and Jefferson. It began in the 1500’s with Spanish and French missionaries proclaiming the love of Jesus Christ. 1/3
What beautiful words of faith and hope for us! Let us ask St. Thomas More to intercede and pray for us all, but especially for our fathers, who are with us, and those who have gone before us.
When the Blessed Mother appeared at Fatima, she revealed herself as “Our Lady of the Rosary” and instructed that a chapel should be built on the site. At Fatima, she said that we should pray the Rosary every day for peace — peace in a violent world, but also peace in our hearts.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus is merciful when we cry to him. His heart is moved by our suffering. Through affliction and adversity, Jesus will never abandon us.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is the bright star that shone in the sky of the New World in the first evangelization of the American continent. And she is the bright star that continues to shine above our nation, as we pursue the new evangelization of this country.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus promised us: “I am with you, always to the close of the age.” Jesus is always with us, we are never alone. And we need to make the way of Jesus the way for our lives.
Friends, tomorrow I will ordain nine fine men to the
#priesthood
. For these past 8 years, God has been blessing the family of God here in LA with growing numbers of men who are answering the call of Jesus to follow and serve him as his priests. Thanks be to God!
#NewLAPriests
“Today’s decision is also the fruit of the prayers, sacrifices, and advocacy of countless ordinary Americans from every walk of life... We share their joy...Their work for the cause of life reflects all that is good in our democracy…”
Friends, following Jesus means that sometimes we are going to come into conflict with the authorities in our society — just as Jesus did, as well as the saints and martyrs.
Please join me in praying for my friend, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the president of the
@USCCB
. He suffered a mild stroke in Houston. Thanks be to God, he is ok and is recuperating nicely. Let us pray for his full and speedy recovery.
The Son reveals the mystery of the Father and his Spirit of love. The Son shows us that before the first stars were placed in the sky, God loved you with an everlasting love and he wished for you to be born.
My brothers and sisters, in Holy Week we are reminded of the simple and beautiful truth that Jesus loves each of us in a personal way — and that he gives his life for us.
Friends, marriage, in every culture and every age, has been recognized as the lifelong union of a man and woman for their own well-being and for the creation and nurturing of children. Marriage is the foundation of society.
In all her apparitions, Mary’s message is always the same as it was at Tepeyac: She is the mother of all humanity, of every person of every race and language. And where she is, her Son cannot fail to be, with his love and salvation.
The cross is more than just a symbol: it is the path of salvation for the Christian. It is not enough to wear a cross; it is necessary to carry it in our own life — it must become the weight of daily life that every Christian shares with our Lord Jesus.
On this day, 43 years ago, St. Oscar Romero was martyred as he celebrated the Holy Eucharist. He died for his witness to the Christian faith. But he is not a saint because of the way he died. He is a saint because of the way he lived.
Our God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, God did not make death — death entered the world through our sinfulness. But death does not have to be the final word in anyone’s life. Because Jesus Christ has conquered sin and destroyed death.
My brothers and sisters, Mary is our mother! And like every good mother, she wants to protect us and help us grow. She is deeply interested in our lives.
Please join me in praying for the victims of this morning’s school shooting in Santa Clarita. May God comfort their families and loved ones and bring healing. May Our Blessed Mother keep them all in her maternal care and may God give them peace.
God is expecting something from us in return. God is expecting us to “give back” to him. Those talents and gifts he has given to us — he wants us to share with others. That’s what we are here for. That’s what our lives are all about.
Advent is the season for renewing our awareness of God’s presence in our lives. God’s presence in your life is not abstract or vague — he is totally present in your life and in my life. He is with us, walking with us.
We are looking for our happiness in the wrong places — in places that don’t include God. And Jesus is reminding us today that only God alone can make us happy — only he can give us the living water.
During Lent, we can ask Jesus: “Jesus, make our hearts like yours.” We can ask for hearts that are merciful, generous, and open to the needs of others.
The Eucharist is our great reminder — heaven is our true homeland. During this Easter season, let us turn back to the Eucharist, meeting the living God and following his path to eternal life.
My brothers and sisters, it is not always easy to love the people in our lives. Sometimes the people who are closest to us are the people who are the hardest to love. So we have to try harder — to love as Jesus loves.
St. Augustine said: “If we are brought to Christ by force, we believe without wanting to. This is violence, not freedom… we can only believe if we want to.” Jesus has given us the freedom to choose him, to follow him. This decision must be given willingly and freely!
Abortion and euthanasia are social issues. If the child in the womb has no right to be born, if the sick and old have no right to be taken care of — then there is no foundation to defend anyone’s human rights, no foundation for peace and justice in society.
#RespectLifeMonth
The priesthood is not about power and prestige. It is not an office or occupation. It is a sacrament. It is a response to God’s call to serve souls. We pray especially for the eight men that have answered God's call and are being ordained to the priesthood today.
#LApriests
The rosary is the prayer of the saints. And it’s the prayer of the popes. And it should be the daily prayer of ordinary Catholics like me and like you.
#MonthoftheRosary