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“Standing Firm in One Spirit” (Philippians 1:12-14, 19-30)Today we are observing what we call “St. Matthew’s Sunday.” Our congregation is named in honor of St. Matthew, the great apostle and evangelist, and his festival comes up on the church year calendar this week. So we’ve taken to using one of the Sundays closest to St. Matthew’s Day, September 21, as a time to call special attention to the life and ministry of our congregation. We thank God for this little church we have here in Bonne Terre. It is an outpost of the gospel where can come and be refreshed...

Philippians 1:6 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

“Reasons to Rejoice, in Whatever Situation” (Philippians 4:4-13)Maybe you saw the story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this weekend, “Worrying makes things worse.” It begins like this: “If there’s one word you heard more than any other to describe the mood of the economy last week, it was: fear. Fear was in the faces of traders on newspaper front pages and cable TV. Fear was quantified in the hefty drops in stock markets each day, in the 18 percent plunge the Dow Jones industrial average took between 8 a.m. Monday and 3 p.m. Friday. And all week, fear threatened to...

“Fuhgeddaboudit! It’s Who You Know. Press On” (Philippians 3:4b-14)OK, let’s get this out of the way first. That part in today’s Epistle where it says, “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss. . . . Indeed, I count everything as loss. . . .” No, St. Paul was not a Cubs fan! Just wanted to clear that up right off the bat. But now to more serious matters. . . . We just said, when we confessed the Nicene Creed, “And I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” OK, so...

“A Manner of Life Worthy of the Gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:12-14, 19-30; 2:1-18)Is the Christian life just about “pie in the sky when you die and the sweet bye-and-bye,” or does it have to do also with how we live our lives in the here and now? Obviously, by the way I ask the question, you know I’m going to say the latter, that the Christian life does have a lot to do with how we live our lives during these days. The fact that we have eternal life does not mean that our life now is unimportant. Our...

Philipians 2:13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. both to will and to do of [his] good pleasure;God works in converted men a will to that which is spiritually good; which is to be understood, not of the formation of the natural faculty of the will; or of the preservation of it, and its natural liberty; or of the general motion of it to natural objects; nor of his influence on it in a providential way; but of the making of it good, and causing a willingness in...

Comment on Philippians 2:6-11"Plan of Salvation Is First Fulfilled in the Son"VATICAN CITY, OCT. 26, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today at the general audience, which he used to comment on a canticle in Chapter 2 of the Letter to the Philippians. * * * 1. Once again, following the course proposed by the Liturgy of Vespers with various psalms and canticles, we heard resound the amazing and essential hymn inserted by St. Paul in the Letter to the Philippians (2:6-11). In the past we already underlined that the text comprises a double...