Prepare our hearts and minds to receive the seed of Jesus.
Each of the elements of the Parable of the Sower are worthy of meditation and reflection. A very good practice would be to take some time to reflect on each aspect and ask what limits the germination and growth of the seeds God has sown in our lives, and also what helps us to bring about successful growth and a successful yield. When did we experience God’s word but have it almost immediately snatched away; when did we gain an insight, experience joy from his word and guidance, but did not in any way put the learning into practice; how many times have trials, hardship, and lack of courage or outright persecution, robbed us of stretching out of our comfort zone, and we withdrew, not wanting to risk growth?
Many of us can relate to: “Those sown among thorns are another sort. They are the people who hear the word, but worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word, and it bears no fruit” (Mk 4:18-19). Distractions pull at us from within and without, from one second to the next. So much seeks to undo us, tear us down, and drive us into states of anxiety, despondency, cynicism, and depression. So many apparent goods and false truths entice us to feed our desires for power, wealth, fame, and pleasure. Material temptations offer promises of fulfillment but shortly after purchase leave us feeling empty. All the while, there is also so much good that needs to be done, so much work to do, even if we are willing to look beyond ourselves to be of help, we aren’t even sure how to serve or where to begin.
A lesson that Jesus offers us in the Parable of the Sower is that the outcome of a seed sown is that it will grow to be a mature plant that bears fruit. To bear fruit we need to create rich soil. This means breaking into hard ground, the hardness of our heart, prejudgments, and pride, by spending time with people who we determine as other and keep at arm’s length. We also need to be willing to face our fear of rejection or misunderstanding. In engaging a person with understanding and respect instead of an idea of who someone is, we can begin to diffuse false judgments, prejudices, and fears.
When experiencing an insight it is helpful to embrace it, resist the distractions and mind noise that arise that attempt to steal it away, and encourage us to rush on to the next project or event. Meditate on the inspiration, let it take root, and put it into practice. God may be giving us a message through these encounters. When conflict, tribulations, temptations, and anxieties arise, may we prune and uproot these weeds of distraction and distortion.
We often react from a defensive posture, or give in to our immediate impulses, when instead we need to inhale deeply, discern each thought, situation, purchase, and action, pray and seek God’s guidance, rely on trusted family, friends, colleagues, and classmates for guidance. Recall how similar past experiences turned out and resist making any rash or reactive decisions. Ultimately, trust that Jesus is present. Regarding service, start small, apply the same points just mentioned and engage in reaching out in your own small way, but with, confidence, focus and intention.
These are just a few ideas to start to uproot weeds and thorns, begin to remove some rocks and soften the earth, and enjoy the process of preparing some rich soil – our heart, mind, and soul to receive the seed of the love of God that he sows, which is Jesus his Son. In time, as we surrender more to his will, continue to be nourished by his word, accept and put into practice his word, and trust in him and not the temptations that entice, distract, and disrupt our growth, we will see sprouts begin to grow, and soon mature plants that will “bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold” (Mk 4:20).
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Photo: Class of 2017 models of creating rich soil!
Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, January 30, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/013019.cfm
We are family, unified in Christ!
Even a surface reading of the Gospels will offer a glimmer of Jesus making things new. We can read and imagine the scene today. Many are gathered around him in a circle. The crowd is large, but focused intently on Jesus as he taught. His family, presumably the relatives that only a few verses earlier came to seize him because he was out of his mind (cf. Mk 3:21), had arrived, were standing outside, and sent word. The message passed among the people was: “Your mother and your brothers [and your sisters] are outside asking for you” (Mk 3:32).
Jesus seized on the opportunity for a teachable moment. Jesus looked not beyond and past the crowd that encircled him to his family who had sent word, but to those who were nearest to him and said: “Here are my mother and my brothers. [For] whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mk 3:35).
The true measure of family in the kingdom of God is not bloodline but faith in and following the will of God. Only those who still experience the gift of a close, tight knit, experience of extended family can come close to the dramatic moment of silence that must have followed after this statement. For anyone living in the ancient Near East, familial, clan, and tribal relations were paramount to survival. To say that family bonds were strong is an understatement. Yet, Jesus challenged this societal norm by bringing it to a higher form.
The relatives of Jesus were not present in this inner circle, they were on the outside. Imagine who might have been sitting in that circle; sinners, the unclean, tax collectors, and maybe even Gentiles – non Jews, and Jesus said that they were his brother and sister and mother! If his relatives thought he had lost his mind before, I cannot imagine what kind of mental conniption they entered into after these words.
Jesus was not devaluing or delegitimizing family, he was restoring family to its proper place and extending it out beyond what anyone of his time could conceive of. As Bishop Robert Barron writes, “when we give the family a disproportionate importance in short it becomes dysfunctional” (Barron 2011, 17). We as the baptized are united in a deeper way into the Mystical Body of Christ, which is even a more powerful call to unity here than the blood line of family, clan, or tribe.
The end goal is that as each person draws closer in their encounter and relationship with God, they also draw closer together. As we are conformed more and more to the life of Christ we begin to bear his fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control (cf. Galatians 5:22).
In sharing the fruit of the spirit, in giving this gift away to one another, our relationships will grow and our bonds will become stronger. Our love grows as we give it away, person to person, out beyond our comfort zones, to the peripheries, where there are those who feel set apart, and/or are on the outside looking in. We are even to share with our enemies. Not possible? True, if we enclose ourselves within our own bubble and focus on protecting our ego. Possible, when we deepen our relationship with Jesus.
Too many in our country are choosing to encase themselves in their own protective bubble wrap. Instead of embracing diversity we are going backwards, we are regressing. By choosing to close ourselves off to other viewpoints, talking over each other and at each other, if we are talking at all, and embracing fear instead of love, we are distancing ourselves from God and each other. Our strength as a people and as a nation and as a world increases when we embrace the human dignity of each person, and the rich diversity bestowed upon us through the unconditional love of God. May we embrace the teaching of Jesus who in his emphasis on following God’s will “was insisting that the in-gathering of the tribes into God’s family is of paramount importance” (Barron 2011, 17).
In today’s Gospel account from Mark 3:31-35, Jesus did not define those gathered around him by race, ethnicity, gender, or any other label. He defined then, and still defines his family today as those who are willing to follow the will of God his Father.
Jesus, help us to open our hearts and minds to receive the Love of the Holy Spirit so to will the good of our family and friends, our colleagues, classmates, and neighbors, as well as those we may consider other, and even our enemies. Help us to resist asking who does or does not belong in your inner circle, but instead be willing to surrender to God, follow his will, and sit at your feet, not only to learn from you, but also to be empowered by you, so to care for one another as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.
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Photo: Sisters and brothers in Christ!
Barron, Robert. Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of Faith. NY: Image, 2011.
Link for the Mass reading for Tuesday, January 28, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012919.cfm
Seeking division or unity?
The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons” (Mark 3:22).
The scribes experience for themselves Jesus exorcising demons, and do not understand how he is able to cast them out to heal those possessed. They judge that he does so, not by the power of God but, by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Could their purpose be to delegitimize, or literally demonize, Jesus in such a way that those beginning to follow him will begin to doubt or outright turn away from him? If Jesus is who he says he is, then the scribes are actually the ones serving Satan in aligning with him to sow discord and disunity.
Jesus provides an invitation to build bridges of reconciliation and healing to restore the unity that has been lost by those choosing to sin, to put self first over God. He also meets those on the peripheries, those who have been kept at arms length, healing those conditions which have been used to justify their separation. Yet Jesus does not impose, he proposes. Even so, Jesus demands a choice.
Jesus shows over and over again by word and deed not only how he is creating bridges of connection between the human and the divine, he is in actuality the bridge, the kingdom of God in our midst, and yet, he is not going to drag anyone over it against their will. Jesus calls all who encounter him to make a choice, there is no middle ground, we are either for him or against him.
We have witnessed in the Gospel accounts how some of the scribes, Pharisees, and even some of his relatives reject Jesus. He is able to perform only a few miracles in his own hometown. Those who say no to the invitation cut themselves off, separate themselves from the very source of their life, the very core and sustaining force of their being. Those who say yes and repent, like those that receive his healing, will be transformed, and are freed from their enslavement to sin.
They align themselves with the very source and communion they have been created for, God the Father, when they continue to say yes, day by day, decision by decision. This is no one revelatory moment but a daily commitment of saying yes to Jesus. Even in messing up or falling down, we refuse to stay down but arise, repent, and begin again and again. We must always and everywhere reject the lie that echoes in our minds that we cannot be forgiven. Jesus loves us more than we can ever mess up, he loves us more than our worst choice or mistake.
If this is true, then what does Jesus mean when he says that “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an ever lasting sin” (Mk 3:29)? Jesus refers here to our free will to accept or reject the free gift of his grace. We can observe this played out in the choices of Peter and Judas. Peter repented, was forgiven, and transformed. Judas withdrew within himself, cut himself off from Jesus, did not believe that Jesus would forgive him, and took his own life.
We have a choice to make each day. We can walk the path of darkness which consists of living defensively, keeping those who we deem as different at arms length, or worse, demean, belittle, and degrade. We can live in the shadows of indifference and cynicism. Or we can surrender our will to Jesus and repent from our pride, prejudice, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, and wrath. We can believe that Jesus is who he said he is, refuse to build walls of separation but instead align ourselves with him and join in the task of building bridges of unification and communion.
We will take steps forward and steps back, and we will fall, but through each experience, the hand of Jesus is still there to help us back up and we can begin again and again. We are not alone. Mary the Mother of God and all the saints said yes to Jesus’ invitation, they understand what we are going through, they are also cheering us on, guiding us, empowering us, so that one day we too will be where they are, seeing God the Father face to face.
Jesus offers his hand to us and invites us to be unified in his love. May we place our hand in his, follow him, and live our life with others committed to his mission. By doing so we will radiate his light, each in our own unique way, expressing the gift of glory that God has given us, diversity in unity, so to radiate his light like a rainbow.
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Photo: Rainbow, sometime in August 2018
Link for the Mass readings for Monday, January 27, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012819.cfm
Our mission: be open to be loved and to love in return
Having been led by the Spirit into the desert, Jesus fasted for forty days and was tempted by the devil. Jesus resisted these temptations and then, in Luke’s account, began his public ministry by preaching in the synagogues of Galilee. After some time, Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth and on the Sabbath, Jesus “went according to his custom into the synagogue” (Lk 4:16).
This time his presence was different. Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah and as Jesus sat, all were silent. Jesus broke the silence with the words, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:18). This was no ordinary reading, this was the inaugural address for Jesus. Jesus was sent on mission by his Father through the love of the Holy Spirit to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives and return sight to the blind, to free those from oppression and proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Jesus came to restore us to wholeness, to be present to us so that we can experience his closeness, and to lead us to reconciliation with his Father. Jesus calls us, just as he called his disciples to share in this same mission of drawing close. We are to be present to one another, to love one another and lead each other from our imprisonment to sin, turning in on ourselves, and instead opening ourselves to embrace God and one another.
USC professor, Dr. Leo Buscaglia, was devastated when he heard the news that one of his students had committed suicide. He was crushed by the loss of such a young life full of potential and promise, but more so by the fact that none of her classmates were even aware that she was missing or struggling with such pain. Dr. Buscaglia then began his non credit course called Love 1A in 1969. He wanted not so much to teach but to facilitate ways in which his students could be free from the barriers that keep us at arm’s length, that keep us from looking at our fellow human beings as other, instead of brother and sister.
Dr. Buscaglia allowed God to work through him to bring about a greater good from the devastating loss of one of his students. His class grew beyond the campus of USC through his books and public speaking where he continued to facilitate for his listeners the vital importance of allowing ourselves to be loved and to love in return. To continue the mission of Jesus we too need to have ears to hear and eyes to see the ways in which we can say yes to our unique invitation to spread the Gospel by being willing to come close, to be aware of each other and be present through our caring, understanding, support, and empowering of one another.
Photo: Dr. Leo Buscaglia, 1924-1988. “Perhaps if we listened to another person, truly listened, we could hear his joy or his cry. Love listens. Love hears.” – from his book Love, p. 180.
Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, January 27, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012719.cfm
Risk we must, to reflect the light and love of Jesus.
Jesus arrives “with his disciples” at the house, also translated as home. As with his first arrival home (cf. Mk 2:1-12), the crowds gather again in overwhelming numbers. In addition to the disciples, specifically being mentioned this time, we can also read that the relatives of Jesus are near. “When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him,
for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mk 3:21). This reaction is certainly an interesting way to welcome Jesus back.
What is it that his relatives have heard about him that has gotten them so riled up? Was the vast number that had gathered causing damage, trampling over items, breaking pottery, or acting in an unruly and boisterous fashion? We just read a few days ago how Jesus was concerned that he might be crushed by the crowds. Were undesirables, those on the peripheries, sinners, those on the other side of the tracks, coming into town? We know his disciples were quite the motley crew.
From a more spiritual take, the number would not have been lost on anyone gathered. The Messiah was to usher in the gathering of the nations. Jesus choosing and commissioning twelve Apostles, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, thus continuing and extending his healing, preaching on his own authority, is a big change from the carpenter next door who they all grew up with.
We don’t know, but the fact that they were ready to “seize him” because they thought that, “He [was] out of his mind” says that something about Jesus was really pressing their buttons. Jesus very early on in his public ministry is already receiving a growing chorus of resistance from the Scribes and Pharisees, demons and unclean spirits, and now his own relatives. Jesus though does not water down his message or adjust his ministry. If anything he doubles down, as is recorded not in Mark but Matthew 10:37: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;” and even stronger in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
Jesus calls us to live a life that is dedicated to him and the will of his Father and as we begin to step out in a public way to live our faith, there will be push back from all quarters. Especially, those who we have known us all our lives. We place others in and are placed in boxes by others. Expectations and prejudgments abound. It is hard enough for us to stretch out of our comfort zone, to go beyond prior established boundaries, but as we do so, those in our realm of influence, those who observe us making a move in that direction, consciously, or more often unconsciously, may feel threatened.
Living a life of faith, of loving and willing the good of others, especially those outside of our societal or accepted boundaries, those that are “different”, those that are other, though we have been created to and find fulfillment in doing so, means we are taking a risk. We risk being misunderstood, labeled, rejected, and thought of as losing our minds. Yet, risk we must, if we are to follow the will of Jesus, if we are to grow in holiness, and become saints. As we risk, remain faithful, and are true to who God is calling us to be, as well as resist the temptation to strike back negatively when challenged, we will begin to radiate his light, which will continue to repel some who still prefer the darkness, but draw others out from the shadows.
In coming to encounter and know Jesus we are going to be transformed, we cannot stay the same. Yet we fear change, the plateau, the valley is comfortable, but that is not the path Jesus would have us walk. As Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman said: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
Let us pray for courage this day that we may have hearts and minds open to hear the direction and guidance of our God, to ponder it, and then begin to act upon it. Even in the face of adversity and opposition, may we stand up for the truth, the dignity of ourselves and others, even those who might resist our efforts, and be willing to love as we have been loved. May we remember that we are not alone, Jesus loves us more than we can ever mess up. Let us be strengthened by his Word, by his Body and Blood, may we embrace the transformation to holiness we are invited to undergo through the Love of the Holy Spirit, let us encourage and empower one another through word and deed, and may we boldly proclaim the Gospel of the Lord this day and each day!
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Photo: With Fr. Jean before my first Christmas Mass serving as a deacon.
Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, January 26, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012619.cfm
Called, shaped, and sent on mission
In today’s gospel account, chosen because of the feast of St Paul’s conversion, we read:
Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature” (Mk 16:15).
The Eleven, and Paul who would encounter Jesus after his Resurrection (cf. Acts 9:1-9), are commissioned with carrying the Gospel, to the whole world. What did they preach? How are we do follow in their footsteps?
The earliest kerygmas, Greek for to preach, and in this case to preach the Gospel, were very simple but effective mnemonic devices. Each disciple was taught what was needed to be covered in sharing the Good News. One such “blueprint” was the symbol of the fish. In Greek, fish is written as ichthus. Each of the characters of ichthus represented the key words that needed to be covered as follows:
Iesous – Jesus
Christos – Messiah or Anointed One
Theos – God
Hyios – Son
Soter – Savior.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God our Savior.
The dynamic truth of these five words are profoundly transformative if we truly believe them. What we need to ask ourselves is, do we believe this statement to be true? If we do, how can we stop ourselves from smiling, from dancing, from sharing that Jesus is truly who he said he is!
Jesus is fully God and fully man and he became one of us so we can become one with him. Through the Son of God’s Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension, we are called, as were the first disciples, to share in the divinity of Jesus. We become deified, divinized, we become God through our participation in the life of Jesus. The foundation of our faith has to do with our encounter with the person, Jesus the Christ.
This encounter is personal for each of us. No one can save another, we can only propose, invite, and present the Good News that Jesus Christ is the Son of God our Savior, and share our own experiences of this reality. Our encounter with Jesus does not need to be as brilliant as happened with Paul. More often, Jesus invites us in more quiet and subtle ways. We are to share the Gospel with joy and accompany each other on our journey by providing support, encouragement, and guidance, and let God be who he is.
The Apostles and Paul, Mary the Mother of God, Mary Magdalene and the many who have continued to answer yes to his invitation through the ages up until this day were willing to be shaped, conformed and sent on mission. Each of us, have a part to play in salvation history, and so are called to have our own unique experience of encountering Jesus. As we say yes to his call, as Bishop Robert Barron says often, “Our faith will grow as we give it away.” We too are called, when we say yes, we too will be shaped, conformed, and sent on mission to proclaim the Gospel, to give our faith away!
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Picture: The mosaic of Jesus Christ the Pantocrator, Ruler of the Universe at Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, Turkey.
Link for the Mass Readings for Friday, January 25, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012519.cfm
Jesus satisfies our deepest hunger.
Mark details in his account that many from all over the region came to Jesus to be healed. Among the crowd, unclean spirits threw those they possessed down before Jesus. This did not slow the gathering of people who pressed in on Jesus, just to touch him. The crowd grew to a point that it was getting out of control so Jesus “told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him” (Mk 3:9).
People wanted to be healed, to be cured, to be exorcised, and brought others to experience the same. Yet they were missing the deeper point of who Jesus is. He was not just a miracle worker, not just someone that brought about physical healing. Healing accounts were heard and known about in the ancient world. The unclean spirits got it, they recognized Jesus before the people did, “for, whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him and shout, ‘You are the Son of God'” (Mk 3:11).
Throughout the Gospel of Mark we will read about how the crowds, disciples, and even the apostles, all struggle to understand who Jesus is. The people closed in on Jesus seeking to be healed, but missing the deeper hunger within their souls that St Augustine, the fourth century bishop of Hippo, so eloquently described on the first page of his autobiography: “[Y]ou have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find peace in you” (Augustine 1963, 17). Jesus is the Son of God, not just a miracle worker, but God Incarnate.
The only way we will be fully satisfied, find fulfillment, and be at peace within our own skin, is by developing an ongoing, deepening relationship and communion with our Creator. God is infinite and cannot be exhausted. We as finite beings, are left wanting with even the best of material things. We always hunger and want for more, because in the depths of our very being, whether we recognize it or not, we want God.
We need to make time each day to discern which experiences leave us feeling flat, let down, or deflated. Then look at what experiences open us up to joy, ways in which we feel inspired, empowered, where we encounter a foretaste of heaven, the divine in our midst. When we slow down and make the time to see where we do not, and do, experience God in our everyday experience, we can better choose actions that will support a deeper relationship, a deeper intimacy and union that we all hunger and thirst for.
Jesus offers us today his good news: Christianity is not just a philosophy or even a theology, we are not just a people of the Book. Christianity is an encounter with the living God who has opened up heaven for us in the humanity he has assumed. Jesus conquered death and freed us to abide in an authentic love expressed at a deeper, more intimate level than we can ever imagine. Jesus satisfies our deepest hunger as he invites us to be drawn into his grace filled embrace so to be healed, renewed, shaped, and conformed to his heart, mind and will. When we come to this place of encounter, reconciliation, and relationship, we come to know our mission and in serving through that mission we come to know who we are.
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Drawing by: Jesus and the Lamb by Katherine F. Brown
St Augustine. The Confessions of St Augustine. Translated by Rex Warner. New York: New American Library, 1963.
Link for the Mass reading for Thursday, January 24, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012419.cfm
Let us reject evil and do good.
In today’s Gospel scene, Jesus enters the synagogue and sees a man with a withered hand. The eyes of the Pharisees are on him to see if, yet again, Jesus will heal on the Sabbath. Jesus is clear in his mind what he is going to do, though before doing so, he calls the man up and asks the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it” (Mk 3:4)?
Jesus here is giving them a no brainer of a question. Of course, one is to do good rather than evil on the Sabbath, to save life rather than destroy it! Yet, the Pharisees remain silent. Jesus expresses anger and grief “at their hardness of heart”. Imagine yourself present in the synagogue and witnessing Jesus looking at the Pharisees and the Pharisees looking back at him. I am sure you can recall a time when being present in a similar scene and there was dead silence. Can you imagine what was going through the mind of the guy standing in between them with the withered hand?
The anger rising in Jesus may have to do with the unwillingness of the Pharisees to show any compassion, their outright refusal to acknowledge the need of this man. That they would hold so tightly to their self righteous stance to refuse to even have a discussion about the matter. Not even to say in effect, “Yes, Jesus of course, it is lawful to do good, to save life, but what you are doing is unorthodox.” No. They refuse to dialogue. Their faces are set like flint, they are digging in their heels, and even though Jesus is inviting them to move toward compassion, they instead harden their hearts. In their silence, they are choosing evil over good, destroying life rather than saving it. Pride has reared its grotesque head yet again.
Jesus breaks the silence as he says to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”
The man is healed, but instead of rejoicing, and sharing the good news as Andrew did with his brother Simon, the Pharisees leave immediately to find the Herodians and begin to plot to not only undo Jesus, but how “to put him to death.”
We have witnessed in this scene evil incarnate. We have witnessed the mercy of God presented and rejected. As is stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit” (1864). That is what Jesus is angry about. Not only do the Pharisees resist any move in the slightest direction toward compassion, or their own repentance, they further separate themselves from the love of God. They start with a principle of defending the law, and walk out seething with the intent to kill Jesus, and on the Sabbath! Their hypocrisy is on full display.
With each choice of putting self over another, pride grows. Its appetite is insatiable. Pride is known as the mother of all sins because of its disordered focus on self at the expense of all others and all else. The attention sought is to be directed solely to one self. The height of which is in direct opposition to God. We have witnessed its effects in today’s Gospel.
Let us pray these words together. Jesus, I surrender my will to you this day. Reveal the darkness that dwells within me and grant me the humility to call it out for what it is. Grant me the courage to repent and willingness to receive the healing touch of the Holy Spirit such that I might be transformed in your image and likeness, so to know you and your Father more. May I reject evil and choose good, reject pride and choose love, reject death and choose life. With each person I encounter today, may I reject the temptation to withdraw or scowl and instead offer a smile and a hand of welcome.
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Photo: Crucifix hanging in our chapel last year at Cardinal Newman High School. May the light of Christ dispel any darkness from our midst.
Catholic Church. “Article 8: Sin,” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012.
Link for today’s Mass readings for Wednesday, January 23, 2019: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012319.cfm
