Happy Sunday of Quinquishima. We're about 50 days out from Easter, several days out from Ash Wednesday.

And today's readings, if you didn't notice, were about the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity.

We have faith, hope, and charity mentioned directly by the Apostle Paul in the lesson.

And then, of course, in the gospel, we have this man healed through his faith.

Rather, Christ heals him because of his faith, on account of his faith.

And so today's little video is going to be called excuses and freedom.

I'm going to tell two little stories, and I want this to tie in to really this

notion that accepting that God expects us to live in freedom without excuses is exactly

part of our redemption. What I mean is this. Many people when they look at us traditional Catholics

because we don't really like to play that game a lot of reduced culpability, a lot of people who are, as I call them, neocon nontrads, quickly quote St. Thomas Aquinas and other old documents.

And they quote it rightly, pointing out that for a gravesend to be mortal, it has to be done with full knowledge and full

consent of the will. That's true. They also have to remember that even the new catechism

talks about how that little game only works if you have invincible ignorance. Invincible ignorance

means you couldn't have known, wouldn't have known, shouldn't have known because of the circumstances

in your life. Otherwise, if you can't claim that, it's invincible ignorance, but we're not going to

talk about that today. Rather today, again, I'm going to talk about excuses and freedom. Two

little stories, they might sound a little bit disjointed. I'm going to try to bring them back

together at the end. I just read one of the best books I read in quite a while called The Big Hustle by Jim Walberg.

And Jim was in prison for about 10 years for armed robbery.

He was an alcoholic, a drug addict, and now he tours the world, other places.

Well, most of the United States, partly the world too, talking about addiction,

how to beat it, how to support those in it, and he started a lot of homes for those who struggle

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