Enhancing our Catholic Home: On the Inside



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Over/Under-Interpreting Salvation

By: Kristina M. DeNeve

Adult Faith Formation Coordinator

Diocese of Honolulu

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us the path to salvation is not automatic. We under-interpret Jesus whenever we assume that because God loves every individual (true!) that the path to salvation is super wide and everything/everyone goes through. We risk Jesus saying, “I do not know where you are from.”

However, we must also be careful not to over-interpret teachings like this one from Vatican II: “Hence, they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it” (Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 14).

We over-interpret when we assume that someone raised in the Catholic faith (maybe even receiving all the sacraments!) has experienced Jesus’ love, has an ongoing relationship with him. Unfortunately, as today’s Gospel points out, many Catholics have eaten and drunk with Jesus, have heard him teach, yet do not know him. You and I must work to change this.

Belonging to the Church does not guarantee salvation. But ignoring it certainly doesn’t help!!

It’s Not Just Materialism

By: Kristina M. DeNeve

Adult Faith Formation Coordinator

Diocese of Honolulu

Diocese of Honolulu

I suggest today’s Gospel is not just about materialism. It also reminds us why Christians cannot be “spiritual but not religious.” Today’s parable reminds us that we need church, that we cannot go it alone.

Here’s how: Our inclination is always towards more, what Fr. Ron Rolheiser calls the holy longing. But, more of what? Which “more” will actually be good for us, and good for other people, and good for the environment? Left to our own devices, we are always at risk of taking “more” for ourselves, thinking others are (or will eventually be) okay and forgetting entirely about the environment.

Vatican II had this to say: “In language intelligible to every generation, (the Church) should be able to answer the ever recurring questions which men ask about the meaning of this present life and of the life to come, and how one is related to the other.” (Gadium et Spes, Church in the Modern World, #4).

We need the Church - all its members - to help us know whether this “more” is truly good.

Inserts for Bulletins, Newsletters & Websites

18th Sun. of Ordinary Time, August 3-4, 2013

Readings can be found at:



Questions, Comments Suggestions?

Contact Kristina kdeneve@ or

808-230-6767

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19th Sun. of Ord. Time, August 10-11, 2013

Readings can be found at:



Questions, Comments Suggestions?

Contact Kristina kdeneve@ or

808-230-6767

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21st Sun. of Ord. Time, August 24-25, 2013

Readings can be found at:



Questions, Comments Suggestions?

Contact Kristina kdeneve@ or

808-230-6767

Good Steward, Evil Steward.

Good Creation, Forgetful Creation.

Kristina M. DeNeve, Ph.D.

Adult Faith Formation Coordinator

Diocese of Honolulu

What’s the place of evil today? Of sin? In some ways, we think too simply about sin and evil, yet, in other ways, we complicate matters unnecessarily. Today’s Gospel and Vatican II both point to an appropriate understanding.

“Often refusing to acknowledge God as his source, man has also upset the relationship which should link him to his last end. Man therefore is divided in himself. As a result, the whole life of men, both individual and social, shows itself to be a struggle, and a dramatic one, between good and evil, between light and darkness” (Gaudium et Spes, Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 13).

By pointing to God as our source, Vatican II affirms our innermost being as “very good.” Similarly, the Gospel calls us stewards, which was a high honor and responsibility in Jesus’ time.

The challenge, we are told, comes in forgetting our place. Sin and evil manifest in huge atrocities like genocide and human trafficking. But, quite simply, evil begins, sin begins, as soon as we forget God created us, when we forget, are not vigilant about being God’s stewards.

Inserts for Bulletins, Newsletters & Websites

20th Sun. of Ord. Time, August 17-18, 2013

Readings can be found at:



Questions, Comments Suggestions?

Contact Kristina kdeneve@ or

808-230-6767

Division and Setting the World Ablaze

Kristina M. DeNeve, Ph.D.

Adult Faith Formation Coordinator

Diocese of Honolulu

Last week, I shared a quote from Vatican II about every person being divided within him/herself. How fitting that today’s Gospel now talks about divisions among individuals!

For me, the key to today’s passage, however, is not the litany of family divisions. It is where Jesus says he came to set the world on fire and wished it were already blazing.

“The Christian is certainly bound both by need and by duty to struggle with evil through many afflictions and to suffer death; but, as one who has been made a partner in the paschal mystery, and as one who has been configured to the death of Christ, he will go forward, strengthened by hope, to the resurection” (Gadium et Spes, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 22).

Baptized into Christ’s death, we are called to Jesus’ narrow path, to die to self out of love for others. The way Christ ended all division was through love, dying for love of us. We too set the world ablaze whenever we die to self and love more fully.

Mary, The Assumption and Vatican II

Kristina M. DeNeve, Ph.D.

Adult Faith Formation Coordinator

Diocese of Honolulu

For much of my life, I admit I struggled with the role of Mary. I was raised with an emphasis on Jesus as my Savior and my best friend. So, why did I need Mary? And why did I need holy days of obligation to celebrate her feasts?

I sometimes still have pangs of this questionning. However, overall, as I grow in faith, I also grow to know/experience how Mary, first among saints, points to my destiny.

“The Blessed Virgin’s salutary influence on men originates not in any inner necessity, but in the disposition of God. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it” (Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 60).

Mary shows me how to follow Jesus while I live. And, with her Assumption, “the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven is the image and beginning of…(the People of God)…as it is to be perfected in the world to come” (Lumen Gentium, 68).

Inserts for Bulletins, Newsletters & Websites

Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 2013

Readings can be found at:



Questions, Comments Suggestions?

Contact Kristina kdeneve@ or

808-230-6767

Inserts for Bulletins, Newsletters & Websites

22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time,

August 31-Sept. 1, 2013

Readings can be found at:



Questions, Comments Suggestions?

Contact Kristina kdeneve@ or

808-230-6767

The Lowest Place on the Outrigger Crew

By: Kristina M. DeNeve

Adult Faith Formation Coordinator

Diocese of Honolulu

New to Hawaii, I recently joined an outrigger paddling team. What lessons I’ve learned about not taking the place of honor! From not responding when other Novice B women scold me to giving up my seat at practice and regatta, I’ve found myself seeking lesser places on my team. I have even come to desire giving to my teammates in ways they will not notice. I assure you, this motive is new to me!!

Christ’s attitude of taking the lowest place at the banquet table is meant for those of us who wish to be his followers. But it is also meant for the hierarchy and institutional church as well:

“Just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men” (Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 8).

Loving our enemies and seeking the lowest places require constant effort. They never come naturally. Not to individuals nor to institutions. Not even after a season of paddling.

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