Although it is already Saturday, I would like to post about last Sunday. This is in reference to the readings from 10/14/2012 and the homily which followed, presented by the local Catholic priest. The Gospel reading is about the rich man who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. He claimed that he kept all of the commandments his entire life. Jesus then told him that he was lacking in just one thing, and He told the man to sell his possessions and follow Him. The man couldn't comply with that command, and then Jesus went on to point out just how difficult it was for a rich person to enter Heaven.

I'm assuming that we've all heard of the "Name It and Claim It", scripture-twisting philosophy. In short, it goes something like this: God loves me, God wants good things for me, having wealth and health is surely a good thing, therefore God wants me to have all of my desires. The idea could stop there and be bad enough, but it goes on in most cases to claim that God gives His believers certain powers so that they supposedly are able to name that thing which is desired and then claim that thing by invoking the power of God.

Since we don't see this happening in the Bible, we can safely assume that it's a bunch of huey-balluey. But last Sunday, Fr. Ken presented quite a different meaning for naming something and claiming it. He said that the Gospel reading of the day teaches that we all have things that can stand in our way of following after Christ. He referenced the other passage where men put their homes and family before obedience to Christ. Anyway, Fr. Ken said that those things that stand between us and Christ need to be "named and claimed" so that we can deal with them and put them out of the way. I thought it was quite a clever play on the name-it-and-claim-it false teaching. It was a tough message, 'cause who wants to give stuff up? But I thought he did a very good job in presenting it.

He also talked about how the bishop situation was going to play out, since we just lost Bishop Vann to the Diocese of Orange in California. Fr. Ken said that a council would be voting on a new bishop in the next year or so, and it will likely be someone who is already in the Diocese of Fort Worth. That doesn't really make sense to me - why one diocese could have one appointed and how the other would have to find their own, but whatever. Anyway, he SAID that he would not be the next bishop, but I hope he didn't speak too soon about that. He would probably make a very good bishop. Anyway, that's all I've got for now.