On This Rock
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View the blog posts and Homilies by Father John Hollowell on his blog called On This Rock.
On This Rock
3d ago
Pornography and the temptations of Jesus
The Devil tempts Jesus in the desert, and we first of all need to understand that Jesus was in fact TEMPTED.
It can be a temptation for us to think of Jesus as a robot, or that Jesus is God pretending to be a human being, but he is a human being like us. In the book of Hebrews, we find in chapter 4 that Christ was tempted in every way we are, but did not sin.
And so I would like to briefly preach about one of the greatest temptations to sin that our world has ever known. And that is the temptation to view explicit material, par ..read more
On This Rock
3w ago
What does Jesus mean by “Whoever is not against us is for us”?
Jesus says in Mark 9: 39-40: “There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us."
But we have to weigh this quote from Jesus with this other quotation of His that we find in Luke’s Gospel (11:23) “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
Saint Augustine actually demonstrates how both of these statements of Jesus are in harmony.
“A person who worked miracles in the n ..read more
On This Rock
3w ago
Forgive and you will be forgiven
Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German theologian who was a great friend of Pope Benedict. I read a book by Dietrich von Hildebrand several years ago, and what he wrote about forgiveness brought me great clarity about what forgiveness is, and also clarity about what forgiveness is not.
He wrote that we must forgive everyone interiorly, and so he first points out obstacles to us forgiving a person interiorly. Those 2 things are 1) Hatred for the offender (which most Americans recognize as not being forgiveness). But the 2nd obstacle ..read more