Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time - November 15, 2015

During the week, I usually have lunch with the children in school. One day recently a young boy asked me about what it was like when I was his age, “back in the 1990s.” I let him know that he had to go back to the 1960s, and the look on his face showed his amazement that someone my age was still walking around. That helped prepare him for the shock of learning that I grew up in an age when we did not play video games.

It is always interesting to look back and see how things have changed. I recently read a book on the history of Commodore computers, having used a Commodore when I was first ordained. Among other things, the book reminded me to appreciate what we have today. Certainly there are dangers in today’s world that we never worried about when I was young. I wrote about some of the dangers in my Ponderings over the summer. But today I would like to offer some thoughts on resources that can be helpful for Catholics.

An obvious place to start for any Catholic is the local parish and diocese. We have a very helpful website at stmalachypgh.org for the parish or stmalachyschool.net for our school. If you are looking for information about some of our neighboring parishes, try the diocesan web site at diopitt.org.

On a national level, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a web site that I use just about every day. USCCB.org has the readings for Mass for every day, which I use for homily preparation, as well as the entire Bible that makes it easy to find a passage. For worldwide news, the Vatican’s website at Vatican.VA offers official Church messages. That can be helpful considering the way that Pope Francis’ message is often twisted in the secular media. And for travelers, MassTimes.org is very helpful for finding where the local churches are and when they offer Mass.

For mobile devices, there are quite a few apps that are helpful. I should mention that I use Apple, so my familiarity is with apps for the iPhone and iPad, though I know that some of them are available for other devices. There is an app version of MassTimes.org and of the Vatican web site. The daily readings and other prayers are available through the iMissal app. And one of the best overall apps, from what I have seen, is called Laudate. Laudate gives users the New American Bible (through the USCCB website) and the old Douay Rhiems Bible as well as the full text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and quite a few official Vatican documents, including documents from the Second Vatican Council. There is quite a good selection of prayers (including a whole selection in Latin) and devotions and much more.

Again, all of this is just a selection of all that is out there, and I am only writing about things that I have used. The key point is that our modern technology can be a help to our faith. We have to be careful, but we can find some wonderful resources.

                                                                         Father H