I was ordained a Catholic priest for the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois in 2006 at the age 69. After graduating Saint John’s University, New York, B.A. ( 1965) and M.A. (1967) in English I taught a year of high school and a few years of college at Thomas Nelson Community College, Hampton, Virginia and Kansas State University where I pursued, but did not complete, a doctoral program in English. In 1972 I returned to New York where I entered business and held various managerial responsibilities over several years, marketing, public relations and retail sales and began my own small retail business. During these years I dabbled in theater and politics, worked for a Congressional campaign ( 1974) and later for my own candidacy for New York State Senate in 1978 and lost. I began studies for the priesthood at Holy Apostles Seminary, Cromwell, Connecticut where I received an M.S. in Divinity (2005), was ordained and moved to Rockford, Illinois. I am in a continuing process of life advocacy, writing, teaching, speaking and family counseling. I reside in Saint James Parish, 535 Caswell Street, Belvidere, Illinois 61008.
Contact: tom.bartolomeo@gmail.com
The Sabbath, our Sunday, God willed to be our weekly day of rest and reflection so important that he made it a commandment, "Keep holy the Sabbath", that we not ignore its benefits strengthening our relationship with God and his Son's relationship with us. If your mother or father has told you and your children, "Don't be a stranger", you know what I mean. What regrets do we carry with us after our mothers and fathers have passed away? Are your children on that same glide path to a dead end? It is for all these reasons that you are here to maintain your relationship with your eternal Father, His Son and your Brother and His Holy Spirit.
Date posted: 2013-06-16
"Whatever." How many times have we heard or said, "whatever". Play it safe. Go along , get along, and do "whatever". So much of our conduct is influenced by the conduct of others. Has our sense of reverence for God and for each other fallen into such indifference or "whatever"?
Date posted: 2013-06-13
There is much more to reverence in Church than some rules of etiquette. Reverence should spring from the dignity we hold within and extend to some one else, some place or occasion and should also reflect our own personal sense of dignity and worth we have in the presence of God in Church.
Date posted: 2013-06-02
If pigs could fly and fish could walk. Our lives are more surreal than we realize. Why do we dream unless there is another reality? Do we sleep so we can dream? We know that without sleep - we would die in 72 hours. In our unconscious dream-state we sort out all kinds of things, real and imagined. We could not, however, imagine, awake or dreaming, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Date posted: 2013-05-26
How pesky our eyes, ears, feelings and emotions can be. They dominate so much of people's lives when God is calling us to live in the spirit. This was the central admonition the Apostle Paul gave his parishioners: "If Christ is in you the body is dead because of sin, while the spirit lives because of justice. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will bring your mortal bodies to life also, through his Spirit dwelling in you."
Date posted: 2013-05-18
Generally speaking many people, when asked, would say that at their death they would hope and pray to go to heaven and many, perhaps some here, may not really know what that entails. A reward for living a good life however one see it? If that is true then there are these concerns we should have about Jesus' instructions. "No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven" to which Jesus added, "the Son of Man, who is in heaven."(John 3, 13). I am tempted to stop here and let you figure that out.
Date posted: 2013-05-11
Context is everything. Everyone one else has context, other things defining them. For example, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy . . . Mom!" You may smile knowing what the mother will say before she actually says, "What!" You suspect that the mother may be physically present but her mind may be off in the clouds somewhere until her daughter or son breaks the spell with "Mommy . . . Mom!" All you moms experienced that in one variation or another. You put it in context.
Date posted: 2013-05-11
Unrequited love did not deter Christ nor his disciples in The Acts of the Apostles. All those conversions came with a price, often with persecution and bloodshed. "You are deceived" we are told by St. Jerome, "if you think that Christians can live without persecutions." Or let me put it another way, quoting a famous 20th century convert, C. S. Lewis, "If you want a religion that is really comfortable, I don't recommend Christianity."
Date posted: 2013-04-27
"My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me." Of course, Jesus wasn't talking about sheep herding. He was saying that once we truly know him then we will follow him. But then there are other voices which lie and drown out his voice. Chief among these are the personal lies we justify.
Date posted: 2013-04-21
Most do not see death the same way. Many live lives in fear of one thing or another which explains why so few face this evil world with courage and hope either afraid of reprisal or afraid of offending anyone - the 'mind my own business' Catholic who 'goes along to get along' who is not Apostolic to his relatives, neighbors and associates the way the Apostles were. They can always 'go fishing', I suppose.
Date posted: 2013-04-18
The Apostles found both support and suffered opposition from their own and from strangers, the help and the persecutions they endured, the hatred and the love they received from friends and enemies, the imprisonment and exoneration they received from various courts of law, the plots they avoided, the amazing interventions of the Holy Spirit in their conversions.
Date posted: 2013-04-08
We must first recognize the fact that our disordered, diseased natures are conflicted, a kind of schizophrenia, a body in control of mind and will or a spirit (soul) in control. Left to our own devices - without God's - we devolve sadly into a lower nature, lonely and 'misunderstood', we think, never really happy, satisfied or at peace.
Date posted: 2013-03-31
There are times when some of us who have survived some painful injury are reminded of the experience in the visible scar tissue which remains.
Date posted: 2013-03-29
To this day at nearly every funeral service I have conducted I have meet many who are confounded by issues of life and death not grasping Jesus' teaching, "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (John 12, 24-25) (Italics mine). Where is our treasure: "in this world" or in the world to come . . . without Christ or with Christ?
Date posted: 2013-03-28
What is there not to love as did Blessed Theresa of Calcutta who embraced Christ daily in the flesh of a men or women dying in the gutters of streets in India or Pope Francis who will celebrate Holy Thursday washing the feet of adolescents in prison. All saints, canonized or only known by God, live the lives they profess, "Christian and Catholic".
Date posted: 2013-03-23
It may seem that the prodical son, his forgiving father and the "woman caught in adultery" were the only people in both stories who saved their souls. Some would say, "Father, you are being a little too harsh, aren't you? If we mean well that should count for something". And whose parts in these gospel dramas would we be playing were we today found in their circumstances? How many self-righteous Catholics who refuse to accept Jesus suffering in his Church today expect to rise into heaven someday while disavowing the teachings of Christ and his Church?
Date posted: 2013-03-16
How the parable ends for the older son we do not know. We have good reason to believe that the repentant younger son did return to work on his father's estate alongside his older brother and confess his sinfulness to his older brother as well. I think the father is counting on that outcome and the conversion of his older son besides. The father waits.
Date posted: 2013-03-09
Today, traditional Catholic values have been so much compromised that many Americans including Catholics view same sex marriage and homosexuality as morally acceptable. Many may quietly acknowledge the immorality of homosexuality while disproportionately sympathizing with the 'rights' of the homosexual, a matter which is not lost on the public.
Date posted: 2013-03-03
As I began to prepare for this Sunday's liturgy, the 3rd Sunday of Lent, a labor we bear together in living out the Word of God at Mass my thoughts turned to the momentous events of last week, the retirement of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI. The readings for the Mass and the Pope's final words and farewell melded as one in my reflections.
Date posted: 2013-03-03
For those whose "citizenship is in heaven" - they will endure as Saint Paul would have them - "eagerly wait for our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ . . . . Therefore, my brothers and sisters," he tells us, "whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, in this way stand firm in the Lord." (Philippians 3: 19-21-4: 1). Shall we be among the "descendants" of Abraham, among the stars Abraham gazed upon?
Date posted: 2013-02-23
Some Catholic Church leaders have publically stated that they would rather risk jail than cooperate with the administration's mandate. But time is on the administration's side the closer the first of August approaches. The administration's tactics all along have been to stall and confuse while the Church appears indecisive. The bishops need to respond definitively sooner rather than later. It may take the action of just one bishop and one diocese to spell out its civil actions as recommended here for others to follow suit.
Date posted: 2013-02-17
We are told that Jesus "emptied himself" to become man, had no more human advantage than us. All his miraculous works were accomplished for our sake, not his. Who among us has ever sweated blood fighting temptation? Our greatest temptation is presumption, an insidious sin.
Date posted: 2013-02-17
I can still remember as a small child receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday. I couldn't really comprehend the meaning of it, but I innately knew that it was important, and I was careful to keep some of my ashes on my forehead through the day. The next morning when I checked in the mirror the smudge was gone. How did I lose it, I thought.
Date posted: 2013-02-14
Many of the unexpected consequences brought on by the pill and other contraceptives have now become more apparent since Pope Paul VI in 1968 foresaw in the Encyclical, "Of Human Life", the grave moral and social disorders which contraception would usher into our lives.
Date posted: 2013-02-10
Our day of reckoning is coming, actually began last January first and will take another turn on this August first. I am speaking about the implementation of the federal government's Health and Human Services mandate that we all pay and provide for contraceptives, abortions and sterilizations - free of charge to all takers. That's how far we have come in this nation, a mandate for health insurance so a girl as young as twelve can get some contraceptive pill or have an abortion without her parents' knowledge or consent. Think about it. It's the law, The Affordable Health Care Act at work because we did not speak up loudly enough. The problem is this law is being inserted into our lives a little at a time–enacted over a span of four years so we wouldn't feel the impact all at once or comprehend the depth of its perversity.
Date posted: 2013-02-08
Acceding to any accommodation which does not include all Catholics, lay men and women, business people, medical practitioners, teachers, truckers and ordinary church goers would gravely weaken the unity of the Church.
Date posted: 2013-02-02
We all bring to church and to Mass our biases, often unconsciously our consumer mentalities, a consideration of what we gain in exchange for our patronage. Can we accept that Jesus came among us to serve our real needs not the ones we seek? And what advantage exactly does Jesus and his Church exact from us? Before his departure and victory over sin and after his resurrection He gave his Apostles the authority to forgive sins. He actually trusted the absolution of sins to those who had grievously sinned against him when they had abandoned him at his arrest and crucifixion. Certainly, with such generosity he proved his desire to forgive us our sins.
Date posted: 2013-02-02
We need to start and carry forward a new "conversation" of life where so many have been mislead by the culture of death which sacrifices life for pleasure and life alone and which, we all know, is so fleeting--while a child lives forever as does his father and mother. How deceived and short-sighted we can be worrying about the burden or expense of having children although it did not prevent our parents from bearing us. The association of adults and children in life can reveal so much about ourselves, often opportunities to revisit our own childhood mysteries and improving our own lives. This is the gift of life children give their parents and all of us.
Date posted: 2013-01-26
I don't want to disappoint, shock or scandalize you, but you should know that Jesus can do just so much in this world. The fullness of his power and grace and glory is in heaven, not here. That was always the case when he was born, lived and died here--clothed in the flesh and blood of fallen man. In strictly human terms Jesus Christ failed here. It was his resurrection from the dead that changed that, that will change our failures at death, too - if we choose to accept God' power and grace and glory now and hereafter.
Date posted: 2013-01-19
Heaven is not a welfare state of being, a state where we simply consume happiness. We have to lay up a treasure of good works in heaven to draw from before He receives us. The gospel and the Bible is our play-book and our play-script to be followed which I hope we all have in our homes and consult regularly. Without reading its stage directions and performing our assigned parts we will have no place in the company. Actors call it method acting, literally living the character you have been cast for by the director.
Date posted: 2013-01-13
The story of the Christ-Savior, as God chose, would still have unwound from a wood cradle to a crucifixion tree. Christ, the light of the world and author of life itself came to conquer the darkness by his death. The Magi came to enlighten us, to seek Him, too, not hide from God's law but defend his truth whatever danger we face as sojourners in this world. Each of our epiphanies will be linked to the Magi's dangerous journey, believe me. The Magi, the three wise men, came to instruct us about this.
Date posted: 2013-01-05
Men, what divorced or single mother's boy in your extended family needs the companionship of a man? And ladies, what girl? What boy or girl in the Big Brother Big Sister's program needs an adult mentor to spend afternoons with? You will find a Big Brothers Big Sister office in Rockford on Y Boulevard. My young boy at Big Brothers would stare at the door waiting for me, his mother told me, until I arrived. In three weeks we were fast friends. Without healthy Catholic normalcy in their lives besides their mothers your niece, nephew, or neighbor's child will, statistically speaking, fail at marriage themselves or avoid marriage and cohabitation without first encountering a positive adult man or woman' leadership. Would you want a New Year's Resolution which may save a child's life? I have just given you a great one.
Date posted: 2013-01-01
The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is the model God set in our world for us to emulate, the mutual support of mother, father and child facing the adversity of world which is not our permanent home. Why would anyone think that children are a burden? Where we once a burden to our parents?
Date posted: 2012-12-29
John, the last Apostle of Jesus Christ, survived long enough in this world to live until the second century after the birth of Christ recorded the future of mankind in the Book of the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible. It may seem fanciful, speaking of Christ as the light, but where else do we have "all that is good" but in God, the source of our life and light, of Truth and Justice. Light was the first act of creation and the first measure of the Son of God as Man in John's gospel - the first and the last light which shines in the world which the darkness will not overcome - waiting for the future in the Book of Revelation where the Lamb of God illumines heaven "who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.
Date posted: 2012-12-24
Too many parents have traded away their personal responsibility of their children to hired surrogates. "Dinner's in the fridge. I have a meeting to go to. See you kids later." Leave the work of raising children to daycare, to schools and, yes, to church. Nature, however, rebels against such accommodations in our relations to God and family. In greeting his own family and neighbors Jesus pointed to each of us our responsibility: And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, "Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother", Mark 10, 49-50.
Date posted: 2012-12-22
Everyone wants to be happy, yearns for happiness. Who does not wish to be happy? I've never met a man who complained about being too happy. Here and there we get a taste of it, not often enough, but a taste of happiness nonetheless. Think of those happy personal experiences we've had. How one way or the other they involve others, and if they do not how we will search out others to share our happiness. Even the little "thank you's" we share with each other are signs of gratitude, happiness and heaven. Imagine a world without 'thank you's'. We know we have acquired this taste for heaven - "not as the world gives" -- Jesus told us, but in the "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you always. ... Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful", John 14:27. This love, this peace, this taste for heaven, operates in all circumstances including sorrow and pain, the first gift of heaven we may experience here.
Date posted: 2012-12-17
Why would anyone then choose contraception and forfeit the blessings by our Blessed Mother who dispenses the graces of child bearing and family to other mothers and fathers? Should we forfeit these gifts of life as mothers and fathers because of fear or the cost of raising children or the inconvenience of earning less and sacrifice family for a job or more possessions?
Date posted: 2012-12-13
In the spiritual order a child may grow apart from his parents' faith for various reasons. It is not determined instinctively as in physical nature. We decide freely how we grow as children--in God's grace or not. Regardless, our children remain our children and God's, like marriage 'for better or for worse'. But by necessity of nature and by God's decree we complete his plan and purpose as fathers and mothers ordained long before Creation. Note in the creation story of Genesis, God said "it is not good for man to be alone" after he had first created man. Was God remiss in his remark, "it is not good for man to be alone", or was God drawing our attention to the two, male and female, becoming one in order to bear children.
Date posted: 2012-12-10
Wives and husbands, you are donors of new lives in a new heaven and new earth for the family of God. The stakes for you and your own can not be greater than they were for our Blessed Mother when at Jesus' Presentation in the Temple at the hands of the priest Simeon Christ shed his blood for the first time at his circumcision and Simeon declared: "Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed - and a sword will pierce even your own soul - to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed, Luke 2:33-35. May the love of our Savior pierce your hearts, and you be converted and know the love of our Lord.
Date posted: 2012-12-07
As we begin Advent I would suggest a new frame of mind for this season of promise, a simplified sense of time in the manner of Jesus Christ. As many of us Jesus also had much on his mind, the imminent tribulation he endured before his final entry into Jerusalem and his crucifixion, but still managed to instruct his disciples that "the Light is with you" [referring to himself] "for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you ... while you have the light, believe in the light", John 12, 35-36. Peter, his Apostle, described the Light like a "lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rise in your hearts", 1 Peter 1, 35. Compared to eternity our lives can truly be understood as one day, "a little while", waiting for the night to pass and the rising of "the morning star" before dawn and the final Advent of Jesus Christ.
Date posted: 2012-12-02
Summary: "What is truth" - real truth? He is Jesus Christ, "the way, the truth and the life." Only his "truth . . . will free us" from this world or the world of the walking dead, John 8, 32. Pilgrim, we celebrate his kingdom at his death and God willing at our own deaths for this reason. Anyone here believe he will live forever? So why do so many act as if they were going to live here forever? That would be hell. Pilgrim, were you born for his kingdom? Then follow his way, truth and life. He is the only truth which will free us from the world outside.
Date posted: 2012-11-25
Do we recognize the signs of tribulation' in our time - rampant obesity, coronary angina, diabetes, sexually transmitted viruses and AIDS? We treat their symptoms - infection, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness and acid reflux - with drugs and medications rather than their possibly underlying vices, gluttony, lust and sloth? Greed, pride, envy and anger, what are their symptoms? Is anyone angry at me for mentioning this?
Date posted: 2012-11-17
Jesus calls all of us, would cast all of us in his eternal peace and glory. Our lives are in rehearsal for Christ's second coming. Lord, may we all be ready. For "many are called but few are chosen". Lord, help our unbelief.
Date posted: 2012-11-10
All we have to do is carefully observe small children and learn again who we once were: innocent at first, sullied then by worldly interests and finally scandalized by the behavior of adults eroding away our simplicity and innocence. Then they, our children, became us. The gift of children returns to every generation a child who is father to the man and mother to the woman - if we choose to be more like our children, unattached from soulless possessions, sympathetic to the needs of others, comforting, merciful, peaceful and courageous witnesses to the Faith.
Date posted: 2012-11-03
Give the Beatitudes a try. They may make you happier with fewer worries and anxieties.
Date posted: 2012-11-01
The outcome of our national elections does not decide our salvation. Our opposition to intrinsic evil does, particularly upholding traditional marriage, the dignity of human conception and the protection of the life of the unborn child. Evil of such magnitude trumps and far outweighs any and all other considerations. We can not be so blind to the truth and not "cry out and say . . . with courage" as did Bartimaeus: Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me . . . I want to see.
Date posted: 2012-10-28
God could give us a free pass, but why would he? No value, no glory in that. Besides, we would be 'uneasy' among so many who made sacrifices for others and out of place in heaven. Easy come, easy go. Whatever our relationships, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins, employers, employees, friends, neighbors and strangers - our glory is serving others, not ourselves, both as benefactors and beneficiaries, all in one, in the sacrifices we make.
Date posted: 2012-10-27
We return to Jesus' question, "Why do you call me good?" Why?
Date posted: 2012-10-13
As the human body needs to replace its aging cells for the physical health of the body the human soul needs to replenish its pro-creative male or female powers for the spiritual growth and health of the whole person. These powers continuously enhance and renew themselves in a variety of pro-creative activities not only as fathers and mothers but as teachers and students, doctors and patients, priests and laity - as benefactors and beneficiaries bound together. In the mercy and Spirit of Christ it may be the recovery of God in man and man in God.
Date posted: 2012-10-08
Parents can find help raising their children in the faith outside the usual sources. All it takes is determination and faith.
Date posted: 2012-10-06
Then there is a moment of respite in the story of conflict between good and evil and our sinful passions which reap a whirlwind of death and disease. You would think that divorce, Aids, sexually transmitted diseases and the psychological wounds of contraception, abortion and sterilization would be enough to dissuade us from such conduct. But in that moment, Jesus takes "a child . . . places it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, 'Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me'."
Date posted: 2012-09-25
We are challenged daily to think like God, live in the presence of God especially in difficult and distracting circumstances and consider the finality of our lives.
Date posted: 2012-09-24