The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Numbers 21:4-9 + Philippians 2:6-11 + John 3:13-17
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
September 14, 2025

In the Catholic Church, some feasts fall on the same date every year.  St. Patrick’s Day, for example, is always March 17th.  Christmas Day is always December 25th.  The Assumption of our Blessed Mother is always August 15th.

Other feasts fall on a different date each year.  These feasts include Easter Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, and Pentecost.

Today the Church celebrates a feast that is always celebrated on September 14th.  Because it’s always celebrated on that date, of course it rarely falls on a Sunday.  So the average Catholic does not have many experiences of being at Mass on this feast day.  That’s unfortunate, because today’s feast is like a magnifying glass that focuses our sight on the mystery of our Faith that’s at the heart of what it means to be saved.

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Today’s feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross has an historical background to it, apart from the historical event that took place on Good Friday atop Mount Calvary.  The actual cross on which Jesus was crucified was lost for many years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  That’s not surprising, since pagan Rome ruled the Holy Land at the time that Jesus walked on this earth. The crosses were their “property”, which they used to kill those condemned as criminals.

However, some three hundred years after the events of Holy Week, the Roman Emperor Constantine became Christian, and by extension, the Roman Empire was—metaphorically—baptized.  Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine, in the year 326 discovered the cross on which Jesus was crucified, and she found it in the tomb where Jesus had been buried.

So the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which you can still visit today, was then built on the site where the cross was found.  Today’s feast marks the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 335.  Although the building was consecrated on September 13, the next day in continuing ceremonies, the cross of Jesus was brought outside the church and raised high so that the faithful could pray before it. Then the faithful came forward to venerate it.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because our Good Friday customs of the priest processing with and raising up a replica of the cross, and then the laity venerating the cross comes from that historical event in the fourth century.  However, all that’s just historical background.  The heart of today’s feast begins with what happened on Good Friday some two thousand years ago, and the means by which God achieved our salvation from sin.

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You know, one of the technologies that’s come to shape our world in recent years is drone technology.  Like every human creation, this tech can be used for good or evil.  In war, drones can be used by invading militaries to cause massive destruction and death.

But drones can also be used for beneficial purposes.  For example, in business drones can help in the conduct of geographical surveys by giving a view of things from above.  Likewise, you may have appreciated on a personal level drone footage taken of the Grand Canyon or the Mississippi River.

The perspective is what drones bring to the table.  Drones help us to see a familiar sight from a new perspective.

But have you ever seen drone footage of a church from above?  It can be revealing.  If you were to look, for example, at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, you would notice that the physical church building was designed and constructed in the shape of a cross.  St. Peter’s Basilica has a head, two arms, and a long body, just like the crucifix that hangs in your home, and just like the crucifix that hangs in this church at the top of the high altar.  Of course, only very large churches are large enough to be built in that shape, which is called “cruci-form”.  However, it’s not only buildings that are meant to be formed in the shape of a cross.

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You are meant to be formed in the shape of a cross.  You, as a Christian, are meant to be shaped by Christ into the shape of a cross.  And you are meant to actively shape your life into the shape of a cross.

This doesn’t happen in a physical sense, of course.  It happens when your thoughts, words, and actions reflect the love that Christ poured out from His Sacred Heart on the Cross on Good Friday.  Jesus did not have to die on the Cross in order to redeem fallen man.  Jesus is God, and so He is All-Powerful.  He could have redeemed fallen man in any one of an infinite number of ways.  But He chose to die on the Cross in order to forgive our sins.  Jesus chose the Cross as the means of our salvation in order to reveal the depth of His love for fallen man, and He wants you to chose the Cross as the shape of your daily life.

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Now, no matter how old you are, whether nine or ninety, God is calling you right now to shape your life in the form of the Cross.  Of course, you already make many sacrifices each day as part of your vocation:  for many if not most of you, as spouses, parents, and grandparents.  Yet in addition to those sacrifices of thought, word, and action that reflect the love of Christ from the Cross, there are other, very simple ways in which you can shape your daily life.  I only have time to mention one of them, but if there were more time, I’d also speak about the simple prayer called The Sign of the Cross, and how important it is to pray it intentionally.  I’d also speak, if I had more time, about the importance of having crucifixes that have been blessed in the main rooms of our homes.

However, since time is short, just consider Friday penance as one way of shaping your life in the form of the Cross.  A lot of Catholics have never even been taught that every Friday of the year—not just during Lent—every Catholic is obligated to carry out some type of penitential sacrifice.  In olden days, the Church specified what type of penance this was to be:  that is, years ago, every Catholic every Friday of the year was obligated to abstain from eating meat.

Today, by contrast, each Catholic gets to decide what type of penitential sacrifice to carry out on a given Friday.  It can be abstaining from meat, or praying the Stations of the Cross, or reading from one of the four Gospels the account of what happened on Good Friday.  Nonetheless, regardless of which type of penance is chosen each week, every Catholic has the obligation each Friday to carry out some type of penitential sacrifice, in recognition of what Jesus sacrificed for us on Good Friday.

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God is eternal.  He’s outside time, and so He has a divine perspective from which to see all of creation, and all of time, including what you and I call the past, the present, and the future.  From this divine perspective, as God looks “down” from Heaven, He can see the shape of your life stretched out from the day you were conceived to the day on which you will die.  He can see whether the shape of your life on this earth is the shape of the Cross. God asks a lot from you as a Christian.  He sets the bar very high when it come to what He expects from you.  To put it simply, He expects your life to reflect the life of Jesus.  He expects the love in your heart to be the love of Jesus’ Sacred Heart.  Of course, that’s not humanly possible unless God’s grace infuses your life, in order to empower your thoughts, words, and actions.  God gifts us His grace through the Cross of Jesus Christ, and none of His graces are better suited to shaping our lives to the Cross than the graces of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

The Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Wisdom 9:13-18  +  Philemon 9-10,12-17  +  Luke 14:25-33
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
September 7, 2025

“… when things are in Heaven, who can search them out?”

Last Sunday’s Scripture readings pointed our attention to the virtue of humility.  Today the Scriptures point to another virtue.  This virtue helps us know what’s best for us, and helps us figure out how to achieve it.  The author of today’s First Reading rhetorically asks:  “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?  For the deliberation of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans.”

Use your imagination to picture the following scene, which can help us understand this virtue better.  Image that someone—let’s call him Mr. X—takes you to Colorado to the base of a 12,000 foot high mountain.  He tells you that nine other people have also been brought to the base of the same mountain, at different points around the base.  The person who reaches the mountain’s summit first will receive $100 million.  The person who makes it to the top second will receive $10 million, and the third will receive one million dollars.  When you agree to participate, Mr. X hands you a backpack, and leaves you there, looking up at the mountain’s peak.

The question is:  what do you do first?  Will you immediately put on the backpack and start climbing the face of the mountain in front of you?  Is that the best way to start, to “just do it”?  Or would asking yourself some questions first make more sense?

Maybe you need to ask yourself if the face of the mountain that you see in front of you is the best way to the top?  Maybe you need to ask what’s in the backpack?  Maybe there’s a set of maps inside, which detail every angle of the mountain, and reveal that if you walk along the base to the northwest for twenty miles, you’ll find a tram that offers an express ride to the top?

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Now, that mountain is just an illustration.  The point is that in this imaginary scene, like in our life on earth, the virtue of prudence helps us reach our goal.  If you were an impulsive person, and just shot straight up the mountain on your own two feet, you might be wasting a lot of time and energy.  If you were to stop first and ask yourself some questions, you might save a lot of time and energy.  The same is true in the Christian life.  The virtue of prudence is one of the chief moral virtues that can help in this regard.

“… when things are in Heaven, who can search them out?”  “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?  For the deliberation of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans.”

The answer to these questions, posed by the author of today’s First Reading, is seen more clearly in the light of the virtue of prudence.

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So to shift our attention to the Christian life, consider a question that’s related to that imaginary mountain, the top of which you want to reach as soon as possible.  Consider this question, but be careful, because it’s a trick question.

“When you pray, should you pray for a good thing?”  The answer is “No.”  Most people would answer “Yes” if they were asked this question.  But they would be wrong.  The reason why we should not pray for a good thing is connected to the virtue of prudence.

Our Catholic Faith teaches that the moral virtue of prudence enables us to do two things:  first, to see our “true good” in a given circumstance; and second, to choose the means to reach this “true good”.^[1]  The second of these is like the means by which we ascend that imaginary mountain.  There are difficult means to reach the summit of the mountain, and then there are simple means.  The moral virtue of prudence helps us choose the best means for reaching our goal.

However, what is our goal?  Is it just any old goal?  No, the moral virtue of prudence helps us choose our “true good”.

So what is this “true good”?  This “true good” is not just the good as opposed to the bad.  The true good… is the best good, out of many good choices.  The true good… is the best good, chosen from among many good choices.  That’s what the virtue of prudence is all about.

When we are little, our parents teach us to make moral choices by recognizing right from wrong; good from bad; what is holy from what is evil.  This is the first stage of moral wisdom.  This is the foundation of making moral choices.  It’s essential that we understand that difference.  In fact, to put it bluntly, this difference is the difference between Heaven and hell.  But as a Christian, you have to build upon that foundation.

The foundation of Christian morality is about good versus bad.  We build on that by hearing God call us beyond only choosing what is good.  God wants us to do far more:  He wants us to choose what is best over and above what is merely good.  It’s in this sense that God does not want you to choose a good thing:  God wants you to choose the best thing.  “Good” is not good enough.  Only “the best” is good enough for God, and for you.

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This morning at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV canonized two new saints.  The younger of the two, St. Carlo Acutis, died at the age of fifteen from leukemia in the year 2006.  The older of the two, St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, died at the age of 24 from polio in the year 1925.

St. Pier Giorgio was a great outdoorsman.  He especially loved hiking in the mountains, and leading groups through the Italian Alps.  A phrase he often spoke became his motto in life:  “Verso l’alto!”, which you can translate into English as “to the heights”.

That motto wasn’t just about scaling the Italian Alps.  It’s about the spiritual and moral life, and seeing God as the summit of our life.  Each moral and spiritual choice of our life on earth either brings us one step closer to God, leads us downwards, or leaves us stationary, treading water, so to speak.  God desires that your whole life on earth—every day, and every thought, word, and action—is motivated by a desire for that summit.  “Verso l’alto” means recognizing that God Himself is our truest good, and that at every given moment, there is a path for us to discern which can best lead us to that truest good.

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[1] So prudence guides both our human intellect (in seeing the “true good”), and our human will (in choosing the “true good.  Prudence is really the most practical of all the virtues, because it guides the marriage of our intellect and will in daily life.

The Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Sirach 3:17-18,20,28-29   +   Hebrews 12:18-19,22-24   +   Luke 14:1,7-14
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
August 31, 2025

During the three years leading up to His Passion and Death, Jesus taught throughout the Holy Land.  All four of the Gospel accounts show Jesus as a teacher, but St. Matthew in his Gospel account highlights Jesus’ teaching.

Sometimes Jesus teaches by means of short parables, and at other times by long sermons.  The first and greatest of Jesus’ sermons is His Sermon on the Mount, which takes up three of the 28 chapters of St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel.  This sermon, which you can find in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew, makes for excellent spiritual reading.

Jesus, like any good teacher, knows that a teacher’s first words are key.  The first words that a teacher speaks to his students—at the start of a school year, or on any given morning when class begins—can set the tone and set the stage for all that’s going to be taught.  Jesus makes use of this principle.

So what are the very first words that Jesus speaks in His first and greatest public sermon, the Sermon on the Mount?  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”[1]

These words are the foundation of Jesus’ teaching, upon which the rest of the Sermon on the Mount is built.  And since the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest of Jesus’ sermons, you could argue that these words are the foundation of all Jesus’ teachings:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

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So what exactly is Jesus referring to when He talks about being “poor in spirit”?  What does your daily life look like if you are “poor in spirit”?  The fourth-century bishop St. Gregory of Nyssa explained that when Jesus preached about “poverty in spirit”, He was speaking about humility. Specifically, St. Gregory wrote that Jesus “speaks of voluntary humility as ‘poverty in spirit’; the Apostle [Paul] gives an example of God’s poverty when he says:  ‘For your sakes He became poor.’” [2]

So the key to reflecting upon today’s Scriptures is that humility is a kind of poverty.

In that quote of St. Gregory there are two points to help us focus on today’s Scriptures.

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The first point is to recognize the importance of the word “voluntary”.  Jesus teaches us that voluntary humility is poverty of spirit.  Jesus is not speaking about the kind of humility that’s forced upon us.  Poverty in spirit is only the kind of humility that we freely choose.

In today’s Gospel passage, “Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees”.  It’s interesting:  at this home, everyone is observing everyone else.  The evangelist tells us that, on the one hand, “the people there were observing [Jesus] carefully”.  But on the other hand, Jesus tells His parable “to those who had been invited” because Jesus had noticed “how they were choosing the places of honor at the table”.  They were choosing, not humility, but humility’s opposite:  self-promotion.

Within Jesus’ parable, He shows us how there are two kinds of humility.  Jesus begins by describing the kind of humility that’s forced upon oneself.  Jesus describes someone seating himself “in the place of honor”, and then being forced by the host to embarrass himself by moving down to “the lowest place”.  This is what’s called “humble pie”:  involuntary humility.  Life serves up to each of us lots of helpings of humble pie.  Humble pie is not the humility that Jesus wants us to cultivate, although we can respond to humble pie in a virtuous manner.

But then, Jesus describes the kind of humility that can be virtuous when we cultivate it.  What does Jesus tell us to do?  “[T]ake the lowest place[,] so that when the host comes to you[,] he may say, ‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’”  In other words, practice the virtue of voluntary humility.  Don’t get frustrated with how often life serves you “humble pie”.  Take the initiative:  practice the virtue of voluntary humility, and you’ll find yourself eating much less humble pie, or at least, having less spiritual indigestion from the humble pie that life serves you.

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Still, even if we understand the need to practice humility voluntarily, there’s a problem.  It’s very difficult to do.  As in Jesus’ parable, there’s often embarrassment connected to acting humbly.  To take the initiative of voluntary humility is difficult.  To humble oneself before, not only God, but also others is difficult.  How can we overcome the difficulties connected with acting humbly?

The answer, of course, is Jesus.  The Apostle Paul gives us an example of God’s own voluntary poverty when Paul says to the Corinthians:  “For your sakes [Jesus] became poor.”  St. Paul is referring to God the Son leaving the riches of the Kingdom of Heaven, and entering our poor world within the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, assuming our frail human nature.  In terms of His human life, this was Jesus’ first act of voluntary humility.  We meditate on this first act of humility in the First Joyful Mystery of the Rosary:  the Annunciation.

But of course the reason that Jesus entered our sinful world was to offer His Body and Blood, soul and divinity for us on Calvary.  We meditate on this second act of humility in the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary:  the Crucifixion.

So Jesus gave us two great examples of humility:  both being conceived at the Annunciation, and dying on Calvary; both becoming human, and offering His humanity on the Cross.  But how could you or I possibly be strong enough to imitate such examples?  The answer is a third example of humility that Jesus offers us.

Maybe we ought to recall the rest of that verse from Second Corinthians that St. Gregory of Nyssa quotes.  Here’s the entire verse:

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ[:]  that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.”

It’s not the mere example of Jesus’ poverty that makes you rich.  It’s by entering into Jesus’ life—His Body and Blood, soul and divinity—that you become rich in God’s grace.  Only this grace can make you strong enough to practice the virtue of humility on a par with Jesus’ own humility.  This is only possible through the Eucharist, which Jesus instituted at His Last Supper.  We meditate on this third act of humility in the Fifth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary:  the Institution of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at Jesus’ Last Supper, where the Son of God takes bread and wine and changes them into His very Self.

In today’s First Reading, Sirach counsels you to “[h]umble yourself the more, the greater you are”.  Through Baptism, you are a child of God.  So indeed you are.  That is a profoundly great vocation:  a demanding one.  To be faithful to that vocation, your humility must be the humility of God’s only-begotten Son.  Thanks be to God, He has called you as His child to the head of the Banquet Table of the Eucharist, to devoutly and humbly receive Jesus’ own life, so that He might truly live in you, and through each of your thoughts, words, and actions.

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[1] Matthew 5:3.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church 2546, quoting St. Gregory of Nyssa, De Beatitudinibus 1; cf. 2 Corinthians 8:9.

The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Isaiah 66:18-21  +  Hebrews 12:5-7,11-13  +  Luke 13:22-30
August 24, 2025

It might be hard to believe, but not everyone loves going to school.  In fact, even an enthusiastic student might find something not to like.  For some students that might be walking a long distance to school.  Growing up, our parents refused to drive my sisters and brother and me to school unless the temperature was below freezing.  I looked it up on Google Maps:  the distance from our home to the primary school was 0.7 mile.  That’s practically a marathon!  Actually, most of the time I enjoyed walking to school.  But if the weather were ever bad and I complained to my father, he’d just say:  “It’s good for you.  Builds character.”

Another reason some people don’t like school is the discipline.  I attended the public schools in Goddard for twelve years, so I did not have the benefit of Catholic schools, or Catholic schools’ nuns, or Catholic schools’ nuns’ rulers.  But given that my elementary education started fifty years ago in a small town in Kansas, our principal still used corporal punishment.

But while punishment can take many forms (some more prudent than others), it’s more important to recognize that punishment itself is just one form of discipline.

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Discipline has two different forms.  The second is punishment, and at times that’s certainly needed:  in the classroom, in the home, in civil courts, on the practice field and the court, and at the moment of death.  However, you’re going to have a hard time growing in the Christian life if you don’t recognize another form of discipline that’s even more important than punishment.

While the second and lesser form of discipline is punishment, the first and more important form of discipline is what we might call the “trials of training”, as Saint Paul proclaims in today’s Second Reading.

These “trials of training” are not punishment.  But they are necessary for success.  This is true regarding lots of  earthly endeavors.  For example, think of a football team.  A player might tell his parents that the coach put the team through a “punishing workout”, but the player doesn’t mean that the coach was punishing the team for doing something wrong.  Just the opposite:  the coach was training them through trials to help them achieve a victory, because success demands the trials of training.

Consider what Saint Paul explains in today’s Second Reading about:  first, trials; and then, training.

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The discipline that prepares for success is a trial.  St. Paul writes to the Hebrews about this:  “Endure your trials as ‘discipline’; God treats you as sons.  For what ‘son’ is there whom his father does not discipline?” 

Fathers discipline their children in two different senses.  Fathers administer punishment when needed, but they also apply discipline in the first and more important sense, so that their children don’t become soft, and waste their childhood on things like video games and smartphones.

“Endure your trials as ‘discipline’”.  These words of St. Paul are spoken to each of us.  However, we need to think about the many different kinds of trials that you’re likely to face during your earthly life.

The word “trial” has many meanings.  One meaning relates to the courtroom—a courtroom trial—but clearly that’s not what St. Paul is referring to when he insists that the Hebrew Christians ‘endure their trials as discipline’.

Another sense of the word “trial” means a bad experience, as in the phrase “trials and tribulations”.  That kind of trial is simply part of life’s constant ups and downs.  This is part of what St. Paul is getting at, but there’s still something more specific that he also wants us to think about.

A third sense of the word “trial” is part of the phrase “trial and error”.  This kind of “trial” is connected to the simple verb “try”, as in the old adage:  “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”  This kind of “trial”—connected to the word “try”—is an important part of our Christian life.  How many people never succeed at something because they never try at something, because they don’t want to fail, and don’t want to be a “failure”?  They don’t understand that in life on this earth, anything that’s difficult enough to be worth doing will demand your failure, as part of the price for success.

This kind of trial—the “trial” that comes from having to “try, try, again”—is something very simple.  It’s like the trial of learning your multiplication tables, or the trial of learning how to drive a stick shift, or the trial of learning how to throw a football accurately to a receiver fifty yards away.  This kind of “trial” is a basic building block of success, and that includes success in the Christian life.

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So this phrase “the trials of training” has two parts:  trials and training.  St. Paul wrote about trials when he counseled us to “[e]ndure your trials as ‘discipline’”.

But what about training?  In today’s Second Reading, St. Paul does refer to discipline as training when he writes to the Hebrews:  “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.”

The verb “train”, like the verb “try”, is not very exciting.  To train for a new job at work, or for a new position on the team, or for the role of altar server at Holy Mass, is simple.  It’s not very exciting and in fact is pretty routine.  But routine is also at the heart of success.

Consider an example.  Athletes get tired of, and maybe even bored with, running the same drills and plays over, and over, and over again.  Why do the same drills and plays have to be run so many times?  Most of us know the answer to that question from our experiences in life:  the discipline of the “trials of training” make it so that what we’re doing—running a play, solving an equation, driving a stick shift—becomes second-nature, so that we don’t have to think about each and every step.

The problem is that many people don’t think that the trials of training—that the connection between trial, training, and success—has any connection to the entire Christian life:  most especially, to Christian prayer, to Christian morality, and to frequent, devout reception of the Sacraments.

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Many Christians simply think that if you get baptized, and don’t commit mortal sin, that you will go to Heaven.  In fact, that is true:  if you are baptized, and don’t commit mortal sin, you certainly will go to Heaven.  But is that all there is to the Christian life?

If the Christian life amounts to no more than these three steps—get baptized as a baby, don’t commit mortal sin during your life, and from your deathbed go to Heaven—then everything between your day of baptism and your day of death just boils down to avoiding mortal sin.  Is that all that the Christian life amounts to?  We know that the answer must be “No”, but we might not be sure why the answer is “No”.

If the Christian life on earth did amount to nothing more than avoiding mortal sin, then discipline would only relate to that middle stage of avoiding mortal sin.  On the one hand, to avoid falling into sin, we need to be disciplined to become strong enough to resist temptation.  But when we do commit sin, then we are disciplined through punishment.

So is that all that discipline is for in the Christian life:  to avoid temptation, and to be punished when we do sin?  Some Christians actually do reduce discipline to Christian morality, and their Christian life is flat because of it, like a can of pop that’s opened in the evening and tasted the next morning.

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Discipline is meant to be part of our entire Christian life, including the devout practice of the Sacraments, daily prayer, as well as morality.  Nonetheless, all of that discipline in your Christian life has a higher aim:  namely, allowing the heart of your Christian life to flourish instead of withering.  The heart of your Christian life is life in Christ.  Not just a life modeled after Christ’s, but a life lived in Christ, so that Christ lives in you and through you:  not just for an hour on the weekend, but flourishing every day of the week, bearing grace into your family, your work, your community, and even your struggles and failures.

The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Jeremiah 38:4-6,8-10  +  Hebrews 12:1-4  +  Luke 12:49-53
August 17, 2025

When I was a boy and a new school year would start, my new teacher would ask my name.  When I told her, without fail she would say, “Oh!  You’re Angie and Janelle’s little brother!”  And then she would add, “Did you know that Angie accomplished this and that in high school?  And did you know that Janelle accomplished that and this in high school?”  Well, of course I knew, because every night for 18 years at the supper table my brother and I heard all about our sisters’ latest accomplishments (and their latest boyfriends, and their latest fashion choices).

A brother or sister often wrestles with the fact that he’s so much like his siblings, yet does not want to be just a carbon copy of his siblings.  He wants to stand on his own two feet and distinguish himself as an individual.

This is just as true in the spiritual life as in the life of the family, the domestic church.  That’s what Saint Paul is talking about in today’s Second Reading when he writes to the Hebrews that “[s]ince we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us[,] and persevere in running the race that lies before us[,] while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”

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Within the Church, this “cloud of witnesses” is another way to describe our “siblings in the Catholic Faith”.  In the Apostles’ Creed, we call them the “communion of saints”.

In today’s Second Reading, St. Paul preaches about the connection between the communion of saints and the divine virtue of faith.  In the verses leading up to the Second Reading, St. Paul offered examples of what the virtue of faith looked like in the lives of several Old Testament patriarchs:  Abel, Enoch, Noah, and most especially, Abraham.

In his description of Abraham, St. Paul uses a particular phrase over and over to describe what faith helped Abraham accomplish.  St. Paul writes:  “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place” unknown to him.  “By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country”.  St. Paul goes on until he reaches the greatest example:  “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac” in sacrifice.[1]

These verbs “obeyed”, “sojourned”, and “offered” are all action verbs.  In fact, the virtue of faith is not faith until it moves into action.  St. James insists on this even more bluntly than St. Paul.  In the Letter of James he rhetorically asks:  “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works?  Can his faith save him?”  “[F]aith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”[2]

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As we in the 21st century listen to the Second Reading, we ought to recognize how blessed we are.  We are blessed because we have more “siblings in the Faith” than the author of the Second Reading did.  We can reflect upon our elder siblings in the Faith from the twenty centuries of the Church’s history:  from our Blessed Mother and St. John the Beloved Disciple to St. John Paul II and the soon to be canonized saints:  Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis.  All of the saints—all who make up the “cloud of witnesses”—show what it means to put faith into action.

Last Sunday—August 10th—was the feast day of an older sibling who shed his blood for Christ.  Saint Lawrence was a deacon of the Church of Rome.  He personally served Pope Sixtus II, as well as the poor of Rome.  Because he refused to violate his faith when the pagan empire demanded, he was burned to death in the year 258.

In the Breviary on St. Lawrence’s feast day, the Church prays from a sermon that St. Augustine preached about St. Lawrence.  St. Augustine lived not too long after St. Lawrence, but after Christianity had become the official religion of the empire.  St. Augustine’s congregation were the younger siblings, while St. Lawrence was the older brother in the faith who had won the crown of martyrdom during pagan rule.  Listen to what St. Augustine preached about being an “ordinary Christian”:

“I tell you again and again, my brethren, that in the Lord’s garden are to be found not only the roses of his martyrs.  In [the Lord’s garden] there are also the lilies of the virgins, the ivy of wedded couples, and the violets of widows.  On no account may any class of people despair, thinking that God has not called them.

“Let us understand, then, how a Christian must follow Christ even though he does not shed his blood for Him, and his faith is not called upon to undergo the great test of the martyr’s sufferings.  The apostle Paul says of Christ our Lord:  ‘Though he was in the form of God He did not consider equality with God a prize to be clung to. … But He emptied Himself, taking on the form of a slave, made in the likeness of men’.

“Christ humbled Himself.  Christian, that is what you must make your own.  ‘Christ became obedient.’  How is it that you are proud?  When this humbling experience was completed and death itself lay conquered, Christ ascended into Heaven.  Let us follow Him there”.[3]

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“Christ humbled Himself.”  Those words of St. Augustine point us in the right direction.  Those words—“Christ humbled Himself”—show us how to root the divine virtue of faith more deeply into our lives.

The virtue of humility helps us realize that it’s not possible to be too small for God to worry about.  In fact, God wants us to be small:  like little children.  Jesus actually warned that  “unless you become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”[4]  God wants us, in all our littleness, to run the good race of faith, and to put our faith into action.  It doesn’t matter if we are not great.  God only needs our faith to be great, so that He accomplish through us whatever He wills.

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[1] Hebrews 11:8,9,17.  There is a strange discrepancy in English translations of Hebrews 11:11.  The NAB (which the Roman Missal in the USA currently follows) reads:  “By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age—and Sarah herself was sterile—for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.”  Yet the RSV, Second Catholic Edition reads:  “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”

[2] James 2:14,17.

[3] St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 304§1-4, quoted in the Ordinary Form Breviary, Office of Readings for the feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon & Martyr (August 10).

[4] Matthew 18:3.

On September 7, 2025, Blessed Carlo Acutis and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati will be canonized.
Read more HERE.

The Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
Wisdom 18:6-9 + Hebrews 11:1-2,8-19 + Luke 12:32-48
August 10, 2025

Faith comes in many shapes and sizes.  One type of faith is what we call trust.  Even agnostics and atheists have this type of faith.  They have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that the national banking system will not collapse.  They have faith that their business partners and spouses will be true to their word.

So trust is one type of faith.  But biblical faith—the faith that’s at the heart of the Catholic spiritual life—involves something more.

To appreciate biblical faith, we have to look at it in context.  That is to say, we first have to understand that biblical faith is a virtue.  Then, we have to understand that biblical faith is a divine virtue.

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The word “virtue” comes from the Latin word “virtus”, which means “strength”.  Another translation of the word “virtus” (not a literal translation, but a helpful one) might be “muscle” .  A virtue is a spiritual muscle.  A virtue is one of the soul’s muscles.

Reflect on some parallels between the soul and the body, since both the soul and the body have muscles.  I’m guessing that if conditioning has not already started for fall sports, that it will soon.  So imagine a high school athlete who plays three sports each school year.  This athlete is in the exercise room every month of the school year, if not more.

But now imagine something strange about this athlete.  Imagine that during this athlete’s freshman, sophomore, and junior years, the athlete only ever exercised their upper body, never exercising the muscles of the lower body.  What kind of athlete would that person be after three years of that exercise regimen?  They would have very strong biceps, pecs, and abs, but scrawny little thighs and calves (what my sister used to call “chicken legs”).  They’d be at a real disadvantage on the field or the court.

We can apply this analogy to the life of the soul.  The virtues are the muscles of the soul.  These spiritual muscles are not interchangeable, any more than you could have surgery and swap the biceps and the calf muscles.  Each muscle is unique.  Each muscle has its own shape, size, and purpose.

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With all of that as background, what do we need to know about the divine virtue of faith?  What is the shape, and size, and purpose of the spiritual muscle of faith?

The first thing to know about the spiritual muscle of faith is that it’s one of the three most important muscles of the soul.  St. Paul speaks about these three in a bible passage often read at weddings.  It’s from the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, where the Apostle writes:  “Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. …. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” [1 Cor 13:8,13].

Faith, hope, and love are the three most important virtues of the spiritual life.  Faith, hope, and love are the three most important spiritual muscles of the Christian’s soul.  But the flip side of this is:  if these three muscles are neglected, the lesser muscles—the lesser virtues—are not enough to live on, spiritually.  The divine virtues of faith, hope, and love are essential to the health of the Christian soul.

These three are called “divine virtues” because all three of these have a direct connection to God.  Lesser virtues, such as prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, can be exercised even by people who do not believe in God.  But the three divine virtues directly connect the Christian to God, and each in a unique way.

How is each unique?  The divine virtue of faith connects us to God in the past.  Hope connects us to God in the future.  Love connects us to God in the present moment.  All three of these are vital to our Christian life, but since our First and Second Readings today draw our attention to the virtue of faith, that’s the one we need to focus on here and now.

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How does the divine virtue of faith connect us to God in the past?  How does the divine virtue of faith differ from the similar practice called trust, by which I trust that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that my bank will still be solvent tomorrow?

The divine virtue of faith connects us to God in the past, because in the past, God made a promise to us.  He established a covenant with us.  He gave us His Word, and we believe that God is always faithful to that Word which He promised us.

God’s promise to you was made on the day of your baptism.  What He promised you is summed up in the Creed.  God promised us that He is the Creator of Heaven and earth.  He promised us that His only-begotten Son was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified for our sins, and rose on the third day.  He promised us the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and Giver of Life, and who—starting on the day of Pentecost and through to today—forms Jesus’ disciples into One Mystical Body, which is the Body of Christ, the Church.

The beliefs that we profess in the Creed we believe because God promised these truths to us, and we believe in the fidelity of the God who revealed them to us.  In other words, the divine virtue of faith is profoundly personal.  It’s not so much that we believe in the truths of the Creed themselves; instead, we believe in the personal God who promised us that the truths of the Creed are true.

We can understand this point—that divine faith is belief in what some person has promised us—by considering a more earthly example.  This example is lived out every day by countless Christians in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

I mentioned that someone might trust that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that the national banking system will not collapse, and that their business partners and spouses will be true to their word.  But the last of these is unique, because the fidelity that each spouse expects from the other spouse is rooted in the past:  it’s rooted in the promise made by that person when he or she professed the vows of marriage.  Those vows are challenging, of course, especially in the culture that surrounds us today.  The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage are especially demanding in this regard, not only for Christian spouses, but for all Christians, to whom Jesus says:  “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”

Those words of Jesus might fill us with fear or anxiety, if not for the divine virtue of faith.  No matter how great the demands of our Christian life—the demands that follow from the promises we made to God and others—even greater are God’s promises to us.  These promises include His promise to offer us the grace that can make us strong enough to live our Christian lives faithfully.

God never fails to be faithful to His promises.  Each of us sometimes does fail to be faithful to what we’ve promised God and our loved ones.  But God’s Divine Mercy is always greater than our human sins.  Jesus’ Self-sacrifice on the Cross is the fountain of Divine Mercy, and nowhere on earth are we closer to that fountain of mercy, grace, and strength than in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, where the Word that God gave us becomes Flesh.  In the Holy Sacrifice, we are not only present as Jesus offers Himself for us.  We also are invited to share in—to enter into communion with—this faithful God—this Word made Flesh—so that the strength of God’s divine life will help us be faithful in our simple, earthly, human lives.

The Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Sirach 15:15-20  +  1 Corinthians 2:6-10  +  Matthew 5:17-37

“Rather, we speak God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden….”

In the stories of the Old Testament, wisdom often seems a rare commodity.  Although we hear about wisdom in today’s First Reading, it’s spoken of in terms of the Lord Himself, not human beings.  Sirach proclaims, “Immense is the wisdom of the Lord; He is mighty in power, and all-seeing.”  Most of us, I think, grow up thinking about God like that, but we’d hardly attribute those qualities to ourselves.  Likewise, in our First Reading there’s not much about ordinary folks possessing wisdom.

When today’s First Reading does speak about ordinary people like you and me, it’s in terms of making simple moral choices.  Sirach explains plainly, “If you choose, you can keep the commandments”.  He then uses analogies to show how black and white such choices are.  He declares that God “has set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.  Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”  Sirach portrays moral choices as being so simple, that wisdom hardly seems needed.

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But Saint Paul in our Second Reading bridges the gap between the simple choices of ordinary folks, and the immense wisdom of the All-Powerful Lord.  Through the Power of the Holy Spirit, the Christian is granted a share in the Wisdom of God, and this for a reason.

St. Paul explains that the Wisdom of God isn’t just God’s prerogative.  He chooses to bestow His Wisdom upon His children through the preaching of His apostles.  In this light, St. Paul explains to the Corinthians:  “We speak a wisdom to those who are mature, not a wisdom of this age”.  St. Paul wants the Corinthians to be among this group of “mature” disciples, just as God wants you among this group.  God wants to pour His Wisdom into your heart and mind.

By contrast, St. Paul makes clear that there’s a very different type of wisdom making the rounds in the first century.  St. Paul warns the Corinthians about a worldly, false wisdom:  the “wisdom of this age”.  He contrasts the two when he explains that “we speak God’s wisdom[:]  mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, and which none of the rulers of this age knew; for, if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”  St. Paul makes clear that it’s the crucified Lord of glory who leads us into glory through His mysterious, hidden Wisdom:  that is, the Wisdom of the Cross.  In other words, there’s a great wisdom in self-sacrifice, although to call it merely “great” is an understatement.  There’s an infinite wisdom in self-sacrifice.

When you and I make choices that are wise—not only smart or intelligent, but wise—we follow after Jesus.  Living your life by sacrificing your life for others, as Jesus did, leads us into the Father’s Presence.  By contrast, following the “wisdom of this age” leads to eternal death.  So either way, there is death.  Your choice is whether to embrace death in this world in the form of self-sacrifice, or to allow death to embrace you for eternity, once you’ve breathed your last. 

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Making such a basic choice—between self-sacrifice in this world or eternal death in the next—might seem like a no-brainer.  But for most of us, it’s not, and this is for at least two reasons.

The world camouflages itself in its own false form of glory.  This is what St. Paul in the Second Reading is driving at, in preaching against what he calls the “wisdom of this age”.  The excitement, glamor, glitz, and notoriety that come with spending money and pleasing the senses are a form of glory in the eyes of the world.  So you have to ask:  is it smart to pursue this type of glory?  Is it intelligent?  Is it wise?  It really all depends upon where you’re headed.

The second reason that it’s so difficult to choose the path of self-sacrifice is because even for baptized followers of Jesus, our souls are tainted by what the Church calls “concupiscence”.  Concupiscence is a tendency towards sin that remains within us every day of our life on earth.  There’s no shaking it.  It’s not washed away at our baptism like Original Sin.  Just as gravity constantly pulls you towards the earth, and it takes effort and strength to move your body up against gravity, so it is in the moral life.  Concupiscence is a sort of “moral gravity” that constantly pulls us down towards sin.  To resist requires wisdom, to recognize that we’re being pulled down.  But divine love gives the strength needed to strive against its pull.

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Against all the forces that pull you towards the false glory of “this age”, you have to choose to follow Christ Jesus.  His divine Wisdom shows us the path that leads to Our Father.  But Wisdom doesn’t confer the strength to walk that path.  That strength comes through God’s grace.  The greatest source of grace that Jesus gifted you with was the Gift of Himself at the Last Supper, which becomes present before your very eyes in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Isaiah 58:7-10  +  1 Corinthians 2:1-5  +  Matthew 5:13-16

“… your light shall break forth like the dawn….”

In 2015, I crossed off one of the items on my life’s “bucket list”.  I travelled during the week that Summer starts up to Alaska:  far enough north to spend 24 hours without it getting pitch black.

There’s something about light that’s literally divine.  Painters and poets alike know this, and reveal this through their artistry.  If you were to put, side-by-side, two Renaissance paintings—one of them of the three Persons of the Trinity in Heaven, and the other of satan and other fallen angels in hell—you could be sure that the painting of Heaven would be filled with brilliant hues of white and gold, and maybe just the lightest shade possible of blue, while the one of hell would feature lots of black and dark shades of red and brown.  Likewise, when the Italian poet Dante describes the Inferno that is Hell, he verbally paints a dark portrait of the blindness that comes from the absence of God.  On the other hand, Dante illuminates our understanding of the Beatific Vision of God in Heaven by illustrating in verse those words that we profess in the Creed:  that God the Son is “light from light, true God from true God”.

“God is light.”[1]  Those words come from God Himself in His Sacred Scripture.  But today in our Gospel passage, Jesus declares that “You are the light of the world.”  Jesus speaks these words to His disciples.  So then, in order to help you live out this calling faithfully, and to live out the “good deeds” that are the bread and butter of this calling, the Church offers today’s First and Second Readings to give you a running jump into today’s Gospel passage.

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Today’s First Reading, from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, is very practical.  It’s down to earth.  In Catholic terms, the prophet Isaiah is calling God’s People to carry out what are called “the corporal works of mercy”.  You learned these growing up.  God calls us to care for the physical needs of our neighbors.  These corporal works of mercy are seven ways of expressing our love for our neighbors.  You remember the seven corporal works of mercy:  to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead.

Each of you has opportunities every month to carry these out:  not just among your family and friends, but also among those you don’t even know, who—as Jesus makes plain in the Parable of the Good Samaritan—are also your “neighbor”.  With other parishioners you can travel to the Lord’s Diner to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty.  You can volunteer to serve those at the St. Anthony Family Shelter, and so clothe the naked and shelter the homeless.  Through your parish, you can volunteer to visit the sick at the Catholic hospitals in Wichita, and to visit the imprisoned at jails throughout south-central Kansas.  And within our parish, you can offer your time and talent in offering meals after funerals, in addition to joining in the rosaries and funeral Masses that are offered for the deceased of our parish family, whether you knew them personally or not.

All seven of these corporal works of mercy—as well as the seven spiritual works of mercy—are very practical ways in which you can live out your Catholic Faith.  We do these works of mercy because God commands us to do so.  We do these works of mercy because we love our God and our neighbor.  But the prophet Isaiah gives yet another motive for carrying out these works of mercy.  He prophesies to those who carry them out:  “if you bestow your bread on the hungry… then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.”

The Old Testament promise was that God, who is light, would shine on those who carry out good deeds.  But the Gospel of Jesus promises something more.  The Gospel promises that those who live the Gospel become light, and that God shines through them.  We hear this especially in today’s Gospel passage.

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Today’s Gospel passage comes from the Sermon on the Mount.  In St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel, Jesus saves the best for first.  In other words, He puts His cards on the table from the start.  The Sermon on the Mount is the first great sermon of Jesus recorded by Matthew in his Gospel account.  Immediately after the Beatitudes comes today’s Gospel passage, in which Jesus calls His followers “salt” and “light”.  This includes you.  Jesus is calling you to be “the light of the world.”  But what does this mean in practical terms?

The very last sentence that Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel passage sheds light on what He means (if you’ll pardon the pun).  This final sentence of Jesus is basically a command, but it has three parts.  Jesus commands you this morning when He declares:  “your light must shine before others, / [so] that they may see your good deeds / and [so that they may] glorify your heavenly Father.”

The first two phrases of this sentence seem to make perfect sense, especially given the background of the First Reading.  Jesus a few sentences before had said that “you are the light of the world”, and here He’s saying that “your light must shine before others, [so] that [others] may see your good deeds”.  It would make perfect sense to figure that “your light” consists of “your good deeds”.  At least, it would make sense if not for the last phrase of Jesus’ last sentence today.  Jesus declares that “your light must shine before others, / [so] that [others] may see your good deeds / and [so that others may] glorify your heavenly Father.”  Why would others glorify your Father if it’s your good deeds that they see?

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St. Paul in our Second Reading points us towards the answer.  In preaching to the Corinthians, he offers us the skeleton key that unlocks the meaning of Jesus’ words.  St. Paul says, “I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling … so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom, but on the power of God.”  And what is this “power of God”?  St. Paul answers this question for us, also.  This power is “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified”.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself, destroyed the power of death by His own suffering and death.  So if this is true of Jesus, won’t it be all the more true for us here today?

Often, when God asks us to do something for Him, our reflex is to give God all the reasons why we cannot help Him with His request.  Generally at the top of the list is our explanation to God that we just “can’t do that”.  It’s not within our power, we tell ourselves and God.  But maybe that’s God’s point.  Maybe God wants to use a weak instrument such as yourself, so that His power shines more clearly.  Maybe when you imitate Jesus Christ crucified, by allowing your weakness to be the vessel of God’s power, people will see your good deeds and glorify the Father who loves you enough to ask you to serve Him through your weakness.

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The saints tell us that God asks us often to serve Him this way.  The service God asks may be a small deed, a large deed, or somewhere in between.  It doesn’t matter how big the job is that God asks of you, because if God asks you to accomplish something for Him, He’s also going to give you the means by which to accomplish it:  that means being “the power of God”, which is personal conformity of your life to the life of Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified.

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[1] 1 John 1:5.

The Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Zephaniah 2:3;3:12-13  +  1 Corinthians 1:26-31  +  Matthew 5:1-12

“He began to teach them, saying:  ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit….’”

Today’s Gospel passage is the first twelve verses of Matthew Chapter 5:  the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.  In our own day, preachers often begin a sermon with a story or a joke.  Jesus decided to begin His Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes.

However, before he starts giving us Jesus’ sermon, St. Matthew the Evangelist mentions a few interesting details about Jesus.  The evangelist relates to us that when “Jesus saw the crowds, He went up the mountain, and after He had sat down, His disciples came to Him.”  Consider just two points in what St. Matthew explains:  that Jesus went up the mountain, and that He sat down there.

Why did Jesus have to go up a mountain in order to preach a sermon?  Obviously, He didn’t have to.  Jesus preached many other sermons during the three years of His public ministry, and most of them were preached in other sorts of settings.  But in St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ first sermon, so Jesus is teaching us here not only by His words, but also by the setting that He chose, and by choosing to sit down.

Why did Jesus choose a mountain to be the site of His first sermon?  St. Matthew clarifies this throughout the course of his Gospel account.  Through his own observations, through the words and works of Jesus that he chooses to include, and through the way he structures his Gospel account, St. Matthew portrays Jesus as a “New Moses”.  One reason for doing this is that unlike many other New Testament writings, Matthew’s Gospel account was written for converts from Judaism.  This is why Matthew “refers to Jewish customs and institutions without explanation [of their backgrounds], and why he works nearly two hundred references to the Jewish Scriptures into his narrative”.[1]

Moses was, for the Jewish people, the Prophet without peer.  In the last chapter of the last book of the Jewish Law—Deuteronomy Chapter 34—following the description of Moses’ death, the Bible says that “there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, … and for all the mighty power and all the great and terrible deeds which Moses wrought in the sight of all Israel.”[2]

Yet even more important than all the signs and wonders and all the great and terrible deeds which Moses worked was the fact that the Lord chose him—Moses—to bear the Ten Commandments to His People.  During the course of their Exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land, God’s People stopped at Mount Sinai.  There, while the rest of God’s People remained below, Moses alone ascended Sinai to receive from God His Ten Commandments.  Moses then had to descend the mountain to give to God’s People this Law, the means by which His People could—we might say today—“keep right” with God.

But here in St. Matthew’s account of the Gospel, it’s not only Jesus who ascends the mountain.  Jesus draws His disciples up with Him, and it’s not a voice from the heavens that speaks there to a prophet.  Instead, the New Moses, God in the Flesh, speaks to His people face to face.  Jesus gives to us, His people, not ten commandments, but nine beatitudes.

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Saint Augustine, in a sermon on Jesus’ promises of blessedness to those who follow Him, points out that “you couldn’t find anyone who doesn’t want to be… blessed.  But oh, if only people were as willing to do the work as they are eager to get the reward!  They all run up eagerly when they are told, ‘You will be [blessed]’; let them listen willingly when they are also told, ‘if you do this.’  Don’t decline the contest if you have set your heart on the prize….  What we want, what we desire, what we are aiming at, will come afterward; but what we are told to do[—]for the sake of what is coming afterward[—]must come now.”[3]

Meditate nonetheless on the first beatitude:  first to fall from Our Lord’s lips because He wants it first to shape our hearts.  “‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’”  St. Augustine preaches on the first beatitude by asking what “poor in spirit” means.  He answers that it means “[b]eing poor in wishes, not in means.  One who is poor in spirit, you see, is humble; and God hears the groans of the humble, and doesn’t despise their prayers.  That’s why the Lord begins His sermon with humility, that is to say with poverty.  You can find someone who’s religious, with plenty of this world’s goods, and not [because of that] puffed up and proud.  And you can find someone in need, who has nothing, and won’t settle for anything. … the [former] is poor in spirit, because humble, while [the latter] is indeed poor, but not in spirit.”[4]

It could be fearful for you to imagine dying and hearing the Lord say to you, “Why did you not become the person I created you to be?”  This question could be fearful because the Lord has given us everything we need to reach Heaven.  The Lord has given us life.  The Lord has given us grace to strengthen us for the journey.  And the Lord has given us the roadmap in these nine beatitudes.  The first, upon which all the others rest, is humility:  poverty of spirit.  The Lord has even helped us to acquire humility, by gazing upon the humility He shows in His compassion, Divine Mercy, and self-sacrifice on the Cross.

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[1] “Introduction to the Gospel according to Saint Matthew”, in The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 4.

[2] Deuteronomy 34:10-12 [RSV-CE].

[3] St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 53, in The Works of Saint Augustine, Part III, Vol. III (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991), 66.

[4] St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 53A, in The Works of Saint Augustine, Part III, Vol. III, 78.