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.

+     +     +

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.

+     +     +

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.

The Third Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Isaiah 8:23—9:3  +  1 Corinthians 1:10-13,17  +  Matthew 4:12-23 [or 4:12-17]

… so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning.

The Word of God became Flesh and dwelt among us.  Yet He dwelt among us so that He could die for us.  On Calvary on Good Friday, the Word sacrificed Himself—Flesh and Blood, soul and divinity—to God the Father.  The meaning of this singular act of self-sacrifice is two-fold:  that sinners might be reconciled to God, so that God might make them His children.

The Word of God is a Person.  This truth is often obscured in regard to preaching.  Preaching, of course, is essential to the Word of God’s ministry.  Nonetheless, the preaching of the Word of God is a means to a far greater end, just as the divine Son in all things leads us to the divine Father.

The ultimate end of all preaching is communion with God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Holy Spirit.  Yet in His divine Providence, God chose to accomplish this communion through the cross of Christ.  All of Jesus’ words and works on earth lead to Calvary.  The cross of Christ is the earthly end—the proximate end—of our discipleship.

This Sunday’s Scripture passages focus our attention upon the Word of God.  The Gospel Reading is from only the fourth of the 28 chapters of Matthew’s Gospel account.  The first two chapters, of course, focus on the advent and infancy of Jesus.  So today’s Gospel Reading takes place early in Jesus’ public ministry, and focuses on the basics.

That’s fitting for this Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The beginning of the Church year, of course, focused on the advent and infancy of Jesus.  So today’s Gospel Reading during the early part of Ordinary Time focuses on the basics of following Jesus.

After Jesus calls two sets of brothers to become “fishers of men”, He labors at three works of public ministry amidst “all of Galilee”.  Jesus teaches, preaches and cures the sick.  Yet the fact that the short form of today’s Gospel Reading ends by focusing upon Jesus’ preaching suggests how central preaching is to His public ministry.

In fact, the only words that we hear Jesus preaching in today’s Gospel Reading are:  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Repentance is the first word of Jesus’ preaching the Word of God.  From the perspective of those who hear the Word of God, repentance is the first word of following Jesus.

The Christian repents not just once in his life, because this side of Heaven, he remains a sinner.  When Jesus later commands His disciples to take up their crosses each day[Lk 9:23], this command includes the embrace of daily repentance.

This side of death, it’s only through the cross of Christ that we can enter into union with the Word of God.  That’s not to say that we can’t while on earth also enjoy a foretaste of Jesus’ victory over death.  But entering into the cross of Christ is the door to this victory.  On earth we can only dimly glimpse the resurrection; its fullness can only be known in Heaven.  On earth we can, however, fully experience the cross of Christ.  In fact, we must in order to be His disciples.

Saint Paul in today’s Second Reading draws our attention to the link between preaching and the cross of Christ.  It’s telling that the larger point of this passage is divisions among the Corinthians.  Paul’s remedy for divisions within the Church is the cross of Christ.  He even speaks to one of the pitfalls that he, as a preacher, has to work to avoid.  This pitfall is the “human eloquence” that captivates in the short term but can bear no lasting fruit, and in fact does lasting harm by creating an expectation and desire within Christians for what is shallow.

The depth of the Word of God is only found finally in the cross of Christ.  Every word of the Old Testament is fulfilled in the cross of Christ on Calvary on Good Friday, just as each word and work during Jesus’ public ministry was so fulfilled.  Every word and work of Jesus after His Resurrection, as every word in the New Testament books that follow the four Gospel accounts, as every work of the Church in her holy sacraments, flows from the power of the cross of Christ.  Of no sacrament is this more true than the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, where the Word made Flesh offers Himself in sacrifice, so that we can join sacramentally in His singular act of salvation.

By embracing Jesus’ cross, we can come to communion with the divine Person of Jesus Christ Himself.  Only through this Cross can the Christian enter the life of the Son, and through the Son the embrace of the Father.  In the order of salvation, this is the providential role of the Word of God.

The Second Sunday in Ordinary Time [A]
Isaiah 49:3,5-6  +  1 Corinthians 1:1-3  +  John 1:29-34

Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.

Our Scriptures this Sunday help us set our own lives within the grander scheme of things.  That grander scheme is called “Divine Providence”.  One way to describe Divine Providence is to say that it’s what God chooses to do, when He does it, and why He does it.

Divine Providence is at the heart of the Scriptures of Holy Mass during the first several weeks in Ordinary Time.  Following the Season of Christmas, which ended last week with the Baptism of Jesus, we turn to consider our own baptism.

When you were baptized, the promises that were made started a relationship where God is your Lord, and you are His servant.  Or at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be like.  We hear several different examples of this servant-Lord relationship in today’s Scriptures.  Each is a model for us, and the last is also something more.

First, Isaiah was called to serve the Lord as His prophet.  “The Lord said to [Isaiah]:  ‘You are my servant.  …  I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’”  Among all the Old Testament prophets who proclaimed the coming of God’s justice, Isaiah had a unique place.  His calling was to prepare for the coming of a Messiah who offers loving mercy that knows no bounds and that would “reach to the ends of the earth.”  Although none of us has been called to be a prophet like Isaiah, there is something in his vocation that ought to be mirrored in our own vocations:  namely, loving mercy that knows no bounds.

Second, Paul was called to serve the Lord as His apostle.  Today’s Second Reading is simply the first three verses of a letter written by Saint Paul:  it’s not the longest of his letters, but it’s one of the more profound.  His self-introduction focuses upon his calling as an “apostle”, which literally means “one who is sent”.  He describes himself this way:  “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”.

Paul was sent “by the will of God” to spread the Messiah’s Gospel to the Gentiles, the very people that Isaiah had served by preparing them for the Messiah.  Although none of us has been called to be an apostle like Paul, there is something in his vocation that ought to be mirrored in our own vocations:  namely, serving as “one who is sent”.

That Messiah whose coming Isaiah proclaimed, and whom Paul was sent forth to preach about, is of course Jesus.  Jesus, like Isaiah and Paul, was called by God to serve.  Yet Jesus is not only an example for us, as are Isaiah and Paul.

Jesus was called by God the Father to serve as the Savior of mankind.  We hear about this call within today’s Gospel Reading.  This call connects to today’s Responsorial Psalm, and especially its refrain.  The refrain can help you rest in God’s Divine Providence, instead of wrestling against it.

“Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.”  Although the word “I” appears twice in this single verse, it’s not the focus of the verse.  The focus is God’s Providential Will and one’s submission to it:  that is, one’s willingness to be His servant.  Most of us, when we pray, actually speak to God as if He’s our servant:  in effect saying, “Here I am, Lord; now come and do my will.”

One of the chief ways that Christians experience God’s Providential Will is unanswered prayers.  In fact, these are often God’s gifts to us, whether we acknowledge them as such or not.  Tragically, some Christians stop following Jesus because their prayers aren’t answered as they want.  But silence on God’s part can be His way of demanding patience and perseverance.  This silence clarifies what’s important to God for the unfolding of His Providential Will.

Yet whether in accepting God’s silence or in moving forward to carry out His Will, we need to recognize a distinction.  Not only are we to imitate Jesus in His example of doing His Father’s Will in all things.  As Christians, we are meant to live in Christ.

We are not meant to live “in Isaiah” or “in Paul”, as much as we ought to follow their respective examples.  But each of us is meant to live “in Christ”.  This is not something that the Christian can accomplish through human effort or good works.  Only God can accomplish this.  His chief means for doing so are the Sacraments and grace given within personal prayer.  For our part, we need to work at disposing ourselves for reception of these divine gifts.  God’s gifts allow Christ to live in us, and allow Christ to say through us:  “Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.”

The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time [C]
II Samuel 12:7-10,13  +  Galatians 2:16, 19-21  +  Luke 7:36—8:3

Summer is a time for activity and travel.  In the midst of so much of nature—the great outdoors—that we get to enjoy during these months, it’s easy to overlook the great “indoors”:  not the inside of our homes and campers, but rather, the inside of our souls.  In the midst of so much natural beauty, we need to spend time admiring and cultivating the supernatural beauty of the Christian spiritual life.  A large part of this beauty emerges through Christian prayer.

What is prayer?  St. Thérèse the Little Flower simply said this:  “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.”[1]  Despite her simplicity, the Little Flower packed a lot of truth into that single description.  But consider just one part of her description of prayer:  that part in which she says, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart”.

Prayer is not something abstract, but something personal.  It’s not something that the Little Flower has heard about, like an exotic animal that lives only in some far-away country in Asia.  This is something she’s experienced—not only first-hand—but within her.  That’s why she uses the metaphor of the “heart” in describing prayer.

June is the month especially dedicated by the Church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Throughout this month the Church encourages devotions to the Sacred Heart.  The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart almost always falls within June, unless Easter occurs very early in the year.[2]  The human heart—whether your own, or Jesus’—is one of the chief metaphors that the Church uses in describing prayer.  Perhaps very few of us have ever seen a human heart in person (as opposed to on TV).  And unless you work in the medical field, you’ve probably never seen a beating human heart in person.  Nonetheless, the living, beating human heart is something that everyone of us can understand because everyone of us has such a thing!  We can even feel it at work if we quiet our self, and hold our hand against our heart.

The human heart is central to our natural lives.  Similarly, our heart—spiritually speaking—is central to our supernatural lives.  Regarding that supernatural life, it’s true that Scripture “speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit” as its center, “but most often [Scripture speaks] of the heart (more than a thousand times).  According to Scripture, it is the heart that prays.  If our heart is far from God, the words of prayer are in vain.”[3]  The question that sometimes leads us to fall away from prayer, or even at times to despair of prayer, is how—if our hearts are far from God—can that gap be bridged?

+     +     +

In our Christian understanding of God, man, and man’s search for God, one of the most important truths is that “God calls man first.  Man may forget his Creator[,] or hide far from His face; he may run after idols or accuse [God] of having abandoned him; [nonetheless,] the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer.[4]

“In prayer, … God’s initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response.”[5]  Seeing this fact helps us return to the Little Flower’s description of prayer as “a surge of the heart.”  That surge begins with God.  God speaks within our heart, and moves our heart from within, because He created our heart along with all the rest of us.

God always takes the initiative.  One of the most beautiful verses in Scripture highlights this primacy of God.  St. John, the evangelist and Beloved Disciple, wrote in his first epistle about the God who “is love”.[6]  St. John said that “In this is love:  not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us, and sent His Son as an expiation for our sins.”[7]  God’s primacy—His initiative—colors every aspect of our spiritual life as Christians, and certainly the part of the spiritual life that we call prayer.  Unfortunately, even though God always takes the first step, we often fail to take the second.  Our readings today show us a major reason for this.

+     +     +

In today’s First Reading we hear of a confrontation.  At one end is King David.  He’s one of the most dramatic figures in the Old Testament, and he’s one of the figures with whom we find it easiest to relate because he’s such a bundle of contradictions.  He’s a person of strength, and he’s called by God to greatness, but he’s also a great sinner, and the consequences of his sins constantly run roughshod over his vocation.

The confrontation in today’s First Reading is between David and God, although Nathan is God’s prophet and it’s Nathan who confronts David on God’s behalf.  Nathan doesn’t pull any punches.  To illustrate just how sinfully David has acted, Nathan contrasts—on the one hand—the lofty vocation to which God had called David, with—on the other hand—David’s sinful response to God’s grace.  God basically says through Nathan, “Look, David, I called you to the office of King of Israel.  I gave you great power so that you could shepherd my flock.  And what did you do with that power?  Because you lusted after Bathsheba, you sent your military officer Uriah the Hittite to the front lines of battle, and then ordered that the rest of your troops quickly pull back, so that Uriah would be surrounded by enemy forces and killed, so that you could take his wife as your own.”

Now, the biblical author’s record of King David’s response is meager.  The author of Second Kings only records David as replying with six very plain words:  “I have sinned against the Lord.”  Nonetheless, the context of this passage, much of which comes in the verses following our First Reading, make clear the depth of David’s contrition, sorrow, and remorse.  Another book of the Old Testament also gives us some context for David’s very plain response.

King David is traditionally considered the composer of the Book of Psalms.  He’s referred to as the book’s “composer” instead of as its “author” because, of course, the Psalms are songs, and were so from the beginning.  David composed not just the words of the psalms, but their music, also (although his original music has been lost to history).  Regardless, the point is that we can listen to any one of the 150 psalms and hear David speak his mind.

Today’s Responsorial Psalm fleshes out that very plain response of David to Nathan in the First Reading.  Today’s Responsorial Psalm is selected verses from Psalm 32.  The refrain:  “Lord, forgive the wrong I have done.”  As we hear the verses of this psalm, we can begin t0 see what was in David’s heart as he said before Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”  When Nathan confronted David with his sins of murder and adultery, David recognized that he had wounded his own soul by his sins, and needed the Lord to forgive the wrong he had done.

+     +     +

Your sins weaken the powers of your soul, just as surely as a disease of the lungs affects your power to breath, which in turn affects the power of all the parts of your body to be nourished by the air around you.  One of the powers of your soul that’s weakened by your sins is your ability to pray, with all the consequences that that entails in your spiritual life.  Although it’s true that God always takes the initiative in our spiritual lives, including in our prayer, we often cannot perceive God at work in our hearts, because our sins weaken and even harden the human heart.  Sin doesn’t weaken our ability to jabber away at God, but it does weaken our ability to hear Him, and if prayer on our end is supposed to be a response to God, we can be sure that if we’re not hearing Him to begin with, then whatever we may be saying, “the words of prayer are in vain.”[8]

This is where you’re challenged to choose sides in the midst of another confrontation:  the confrontation in today’s Gospel passage.  While in the First Reading the conflict is among David, Nathan, and the Lord, in the Gospel Reading the conflict is among the “sinful woman”, Simon the Pharisee, and the Lord Jesus.  However, there’s a profound difference between the two conflicts.  In the Old Testament, the Lord uses the prophet to bring the sinner to Him.  In the New Testament, the Lord uses the sinner to try to bring the Pharisee to Him.  For your own spiritual life, to draw from this Gospel passage, you have to put yourself in the sandals of this sinful woman.

Until we look seriously at our sins, at their effects on our souls, and at their consequences (for ourselves and for others, both in this world and in the next), our experience of prayer will be diminished, and so therefore will the benefits of our prayer.  Too often in our prayer we’re like Simon the Pharisee instead of being like the sinful woman.  The Pharisee says to himself, “If [Jesus] were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.”  By contrast, the sinful woman says nothing, but she acts with great love.  The Pharisee speaks to himself with doubt about whether Jesus is even a prophet.  But the woman acts with love towards Jesus, because she knows through faith that He is the Messiah who wants to wash away her sins.

If we wanted to sum up today’s Gospel passage, we could take away from church this weekend just those two sentences that Jesus proclaims to Simon:  “her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love.  But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”  In those words Jesus teaches us about the virtue of humility, which is the beginning of a fruitful prayer life, and through that prayer the beginning of the contentment and peace of mind that remain elusive until we remain in God.

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[1] St. Thérèse of Lisieux, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) #2558.

[2] The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell during May in A.D. 2008.

[3] CCC #2562.

[4] CCC #2567.

[5] Ibid.

[6] 1 John 4:8.

[7] 1 John 4:10.

[8] CCC #2562.