“Before all this happens, however, they will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over…” (Lk 21:12).

The followers of Jesus have faced and continue to face persecution. There are estimates that there have been more Christian martyrs in the last century than in the whole history of the Church. Persecution was also true for the prophets before the time of Jesus. By entering Jerusalem, Jesus knew that his own persecution and death was imminent.

Why this animosity to those who spoke for God, Jesus, and his followers? The answer to that question is multifaceted, though one reason is that to live by the will of God is a challenge. When someone does commit their life to do so, they become a mirror to challenge others and that means dying to the false self of the ego.

The more entrenched our ego and the self-centered view is the greater the threat the Gospel is. The more we want to determine our own path and appropriate and rationalize for ourselves our own truth, to define our own morality, and determine who is with us or against us, the more we determine our life apart from the guidance of God, the more of a clash will ensue.

Living the Gospel in our daily lives often comforts the afflicted and afflicts the powerful. Many who promoted the recent Amazon synod of bishops, and those who work for the rights of indigenous peoples and environmental degradation in this region, know that in giving voice to the voiceless and standing up to large and powerful self-interests they are putting their life on the line each day. 

There have been over a thousand clergy, religious, leaders, and indigenous peoples killed over the last fifty years. Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego said that “The Church of the Amazon carries in its heart the martyrdom of today.” 

Those who have given and those willing to give their lives in the Amazon are just one example of many who are and have lived out the Gospel each and every day at great cost. Another is St. Oscar Romero from El Salvador, the picture of his statue that I posted yesterday, who was shot while celebrating Mass. Yesterday was also the 30th anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuits, Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Juan Ramón Moreno, Amando López, Segundo Montes, Joaquín López y Lópezalong with their housekeeper Elba Julia Ramos her daughter Celina Ramos.

How is God is calling us to speak out and stand up for the dignity of those people in our communities and his creation? May the martyrs give us the courage to hear the voice of Jesus, bear witness to the Gospel, and act on his lead, for:  “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 5:10).

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Photo: Sr. Dorothy Stang, living in Para, Brazil, who was murdered on February 12, 2005, most likely for speaking out against illegal logging. Sr. Dorothy, pray for us!

Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, November 17, 2019

Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary (Lk 18:1).

Persistence in prayer is not changing God. We are not wearing him down like the woman did with the judge. God does not need us. God is completely and totally self-sufficient. We are the ones who need him. Our persistence, our daily habit of prayer, changes us, helps us to develop our relationship by interacting with him more consistently. Things happening in our lives help us to see that we are fragile and vulnerable and in need of help. Our persistence in prayer, especially when we are in need, helps us to become more patient and to become more aware that, sometimes, what we believe is a crisis is not that much of one when some time passes. Also, when we are dealing with a crisis or very real trauma, our persistence and faithfulness in prayer will help us to experience the closeness of Jesus in our midst as he accompanies us through our suffering.

In fact, the practice of stopping everything and praying for five minutes when a crisis arises, often helps us to resist slipping into a fight or flight mode, helps us to resist reacting, and consciously breathing while praying helps us to act more prudently than impulsively. We may also come to see that what we thought was a crisis, was more of a problem to be solved rather than something catastrophic. Our instant reactions to perceived crises can often escalate an issue rather than de-escalate one.

In the greater scheme of things, God does answer all prayers of petition or intercession by saying yes, no, or not yet! Most seem to fall in the not yet or not the way we originally intended category. Remaining patient and faithful can help us to move away from seeking to conform God to our will and instead allowing him to expand our hearts and minds to his will. By being expanded, we can come to see the situation from a broader perspective. Our persistence in prayer also helps us to move away from seeking instant gratification to trusting more in God’s will and timing. Sometimes we become grateful for what appears to be unanswered prayers because with time, hindsight, and some distance, we find our original request was more an apparent than actual good.

Persistence in prayer is also a discipline that deepens the roots of our relationship with God. Ready access through our modern technology, higher internet speeds, one-click access, and overnight shipping, can offer plusses, but we have to be careful that this mindset does not shape our mental, psychological, and spiritual growth. Physical fitness, wisdom, or spiritual maturity does not happen in an instant. More importantly, development as human beings and our relationships take time, experience, discipline, prayer, and trust in God’s plan.

Patience, persistence in prayer, freeing ourselves from attachment, developing an authentic relationship with God and one another are all worth the effort. We need to take some time to breathe deeply, slow down our pace, discipline ourselves to resist even small acts of instant gratification each day. No matter how busy we are, we need to slow down, and the busier we are the more we need to slow down. Even if we stop to pray and feel like nothing has happened and it was a waste of time, something has happened. But to see the effects we must be persistent. God has our back, we can trust in that.

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Photo: I stopped to pray yesterday at the Monsignor Oscar Romero Memorial Plaza, Los Angeles, on my walk coming from meditating at the Zen Center of Los Angeles and before continuing on to the noon Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, November 16, 2019

In today’s Gospel account, Jesus continues to answer the Pharisees’ question about “when the kingdom of God would come” (Lk 17:20). Jesus reminds them about how during the time of Noah and during the time of Lot many were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, buying, selling, planting, building (cf. Lk 17:26-29). In effect, other than Noah and Lot, and those few listening to them, no one else had any clue about the impending calamity or wanted to know. They were so absorbed in their own pursuits and desires they did not heed the warnings of Noah and Lot.

Another focal point was on those who were attached to only material and finite things. When the final hour came, people on the rooftop or in the field were directed not to go back and get their possessions. Jesus pointed out succinctly, “Remember the wife of Lot” (Lk 17:32). Lot left Sodom with his wife, she did so physically, though she could not resist looking back, she was too tied to what she was leaving behind, and so she lost herself to her attachments.

Spending time speculating when the end will come is a pointless pursuit. What is important is to be aware of the kingdom of God in our midst, developing a relationship with God now. Matthew shared in his gospel account that Jesus stated only the Father knows the time or the hour as to when the end will come (cf. Mt 24:36). If we are only going to prepare at the final hour, we may be too late.

Asking, “When will the kingdom of God come?” also misses the point of what Jesus is teaching us. There is an intrinsic value in developing a relationship with God and one another, now, growing and maturing as a disciple, now, instead of fulfilling our own self-centered-interests. Jesus shared this truth in the first words of his public ministry, that the kingdom of God is at hand (cf. Mk 1:15). All we need to do is reach right out and grasp his extended hand of invitation and walk with him.

For the Pharisees, this meant letting go of their own power and prestige and participating instead in the living reality of God in their midst. So many of us are caught up in the day to day affairs of existing that we are barely living. We can be so distracted by false lures and attractions of security and gratification, wealth, power, pleasure, and honor, that we miss what is for our highest hope and good. Jesus is inviting us to wake up, to breathe deep, to slow down, and to be aware that he walks among us. Jesus calls us, as Lot called his wife, to keep our focus on God and the things of heaven.

Lord Jesus, help us to recognize when we are caught up in distractions and diversions, when we are choosing to put our self first, and where we are attached and bound up to empty pursuits. Guide us, such that we, in the words of Pope Francis, “understand what faith means when we open ourselves to the immense love of God that changes us inwardly and enables us to see our lives with new eyes” (Costello 2013, 12). Eyes that see the kingdom of God in our midst and the promise of which is our eternal home.

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Photo: JoAnn, Jack, and Christy hiking ahead of me during our California visit in December 2015. Little did any of us know then that we would be back in 2019 for JoAnn’s walk with Jesus going ahead of us into the Kingdom of God.

Costello, Gwen. Walking With Pope Francis: Thirty Days with the Encyclical The Light of Faith. New London, CT: Twenty Third Publications, 2013.

Link for the Mass readings for Friday, November 15, 2019

Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said in reply, “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you” (Lk 17:20-21).

Many of the Pharisees were scrutinizing Jesus’ every word and action, unfortunately, with a hard heart. They were closed to the reality present before them because they were looking for ways to accuse him, to catch him, to have cause to show him to be a fraud. They were closed to the actual events happening around Jesus that the blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame walked, lepers, were healed, the dead had arisen, and the poor had the good news proclaimed to them (cf. Matthew 11:5).

They missed the very reality that the Kingdom of God was in their midst. We see this very much today through the mental posturing of “scientism”, the belief that the only reality is that which can be measured empirically, through the five senses. Scientists have brought about many advances and innovations that we enjoy today, yet there is a reality beyond the physical. This is the spiritual, which transcends time and space, transcends the three-dimensional reality that we experience and are aware of through our senses. We understand the world around us better when we embrace both science and theology, the physical and the spiritual, as well as our reason and our faith.

If our mind is closed to an idea, a reality, and/or a belief we will not only resist believing, we will also seek rationalizations to explain it away as did some of the Pharisees. From a hypersensitivity to accept only the physical, we can brush off acts of synchronicity as mere coincidence. Yet, if we are open to the spiritual reality of interconnectedness beyond that which we can measure finitely, these incidences can be termed, God-incidences.

We cannot solve or prove God like a problem because God is not in the genus of being, he is not an animal, a human, an angelic, spiritual, or even a supreme being. There are no words to adequately describe him. We can say more about what he is not than what or who he is! The best attempts we have are that God is an Infinite Act of Existence or the phrasing of St Thomas Aquinas, Ipsum Esse Subsistens – The sheer act of ‘to be’ itself, or as God said to Moses, “I am, who am” (Exodus 3:14). God is completely transcendent, beyond categories, beyond the genus, beyond the grasp of our finite minds, yet we can experience him because God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

We will not encounter God by forcing him to come to us on our own terms, by attempting to force-fit him into our finite conceptions. God meets us where we are and as we are, on his terms. As we open ourselves to his presence, accept his invitation, he then helps us to expand, to experience more broadly, who we, others, and our world are. We experience this best when we truly love, when we go out from our own self-centered stance to will the good of another. We become more when we follow what truly brings us joy and fulfills us. We encounter God through embracing the wonders of his creation!

As Jesus said to Philip, “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). The Kingdom of God is among us because Jesus is who he said he is. Jesus is fully God and fully man in our midst. By his very presence, he shows us that there is no opposition or competition but a union between heaven and earth. We will never fully comprehend God, but we can come to know and understand him, ourselves, and the world around us better when we breathe with both lungs of faith and reason. We need to embrace our intellect as well as our spirit. As St. John Paul II stated, “Faith without reason is superstition” and as attributed to Albert Einstein, “Reason without faith is boring.”

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Photo: Georges Lemaître, priest and astrophysicist, father of the Big Bang theory with Albert Einstein in 1933. 

Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, November 14, 2019

Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” Then he said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” (Lk 17:17-19).

Bloodline doesn’t matter, gender doesn’t matter, nation doesn’t matter, ethnicity or race doesn’t matter. Ask Mary the mother of Jesus, ask Mary Magdalene, ask the woman who suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years, ask the Roman centurion whose slave was dying, ask the Samaritan leper what matters. Each of them will share with us that what matters is our faith in Jesus the Christ.

The lifeblood of Christianity is our belief, faith in, and developing our relationship with Jesus, the Son of God, who made his dwelling among us. St Irenaeus of Lyons (born in Smyrna about 135-140 AD and died about 202-203 AD) in his work Against the Heresies wrote: “The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did through His transcendent love, become what we are, that he might bring us to be even what He is himself.”

That Jesus became one with us in our humanity so that we could be one with him in his divinity is something to be thankful for! Many times when we are feeling down, maybe it is because we are focusing on what we do not have or who is not in our life instead of being thankful for who or what we do have. A way to turn our frown upside down is to think about three things we are grateful for.

The leper from today’s Gospel helps us to take the next step. Once we become aware of what we are thankful for, we are to reach out and thank the one who made what we have possible. Our time on earth is too short to allow the temptations of indifference and complacency to take hold. May we be more aware and take action to reach out to those who are important in our lives and tell them how thankful we are that they are in it, how much they mean to us, and how much we love them. Make some time to thank God today for his constant presence, the wonderful gift of the invitation of Jesus to share in his divinity, and the Holy Spirit who leads us to love one another as he loves us.

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Photo: I am thankful for the best day of my life, our wedding day. I am also grateful each day together got even better!!!

Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, November 13, 2019

“When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do'” (Lk 17:10).

This closing line from our Gospel reading today can be a hard verse to digest at first glance, especially with our track record of slavery in the U.S. We need to remember and recognize that this was a teaching that Jesus shared in a different time period, in a different culture, and in a place far removed from any clear modern context. The master/slave relationship is also a theme that Luke returns to often.

Another important point to touch upon when reading the Gospels is that when Jesus made the statement that, “we are unprofitable servants; we have done what we are obliged to do”, we are not to read this verse in isolation from the full context of Scripture. Jesus himself modeled service at the last supper when he washed his disciples’ feet (cf. Jn 13:1-17). This was the lowest of menial tasks. St Paul wrote to the Galatians informing them that in the Body of Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male nor female (cf. Galatians 3:28). The ultimate point is that God is God and we are not and we all have a part to play in participating in promoting the kingdom of God by following his lead.

As a disciple of Jesus, we are not to seek adulation and glory. We are to serve God and one another without hesitation. We are not to ask in the words of James and John, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left” (Mk 10:37). We serve God because he is the director and we are the directed. He is the master and we are the servant. In aligning ourselves in this way, we also experience the intrinsic joy of following his will.

When I oversee students in our cafeteria during retreats and other opportunities, as they finish eating, instead of telling them to pick up after themselves, I begin to pick up some of their plates and trash. I serve them. Some are quite happy to receive the service, some will say thank you, while others will join in to assist. It is my hope to model for them acts of service that they may respond in kind as well and experience the joy of serving themselves.

May we be open to serve God and one another today. No task is too menial or beneath us, nor do we need to be concerned about doing big and grandiose things. We just need to be obedient and act as God leads us. Each chance we have, to smile, to hold a door, to acknowledge a prejudice and be willing to interact with someone who we have considered as “other”, to be patient and present instead of losing our temper, and/or to listen with understanding, are all opportunities to say to someone that they have dignity and worth and that they matter.

Pope Francis said in a homily on June 11, that we are to: “Serve and give freely that which you have received freely. May our life of holiness be permeated by this openness of heart, so that the gratuitousness of God – the graces that He wishes to give us without cost – may enter our hearts.” As our hearts expand through small acts of kindness we are moved to serve and to love even more. As St Mother Teresa said, we are to be a pencil in God’s hand. In our willingness to be moved by God to serve, we and those in our realm of influence will be better for the effort. Our country and our world are in desperate need of some unconditional acts of kindness and service.

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Photo credit: Icon of service!

Link for the Mass readings for Tuesday, November 12, 2019

“If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him” (Lk 17:3-4).

Forgiveness is a cornerstone of our faith tradition as Christians. If we question or struggle with the degree of forgiveness we engage in, we are in good company with Peter, thinking he was being generous, Peter asked Jesus how many times should he forgive, seven times? Jesus responded, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times” (cf. Mt 18:21-22).

Luke records the exchange of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. He taught them the Our Father or Lord’s Prayer. While reciting this prayer often each day or multiple times each day, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” or “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (Mt 6:11-12).

One of the barometers of being a faithful disciple of Jesus is that we are people who practice the sacred act of forgiveness. To forgive does not mean in any way that we justify the offense or even necessarily forget. We are to hold people accountable and lead them to respect our dignity and the dignity of others.

Holding on to grudges, seeking revenge, being unwilling to forgive, can be incapacitating, debilitating, and can lead to a premature as well as eternal death. What can be of help is if we can choose to be more mindful of our thoughts and actions. At the moment we experience discomfort from what someone says or does, instead of giving in to the temptation to react or to let our mind run with the offense, we need to take some deep breaths and relax our shoulders. As the negative thoughts attempt to rise again, don’t fight or feed the thoughts, just return to being aware of our breath and ask Jesus to help us be more understanding and forgiving.

Often we project onto others our own stuff, but we also rarely know what another is going through or dealing with. This is not a justification for the harm done, but a way to see a different perspective than our own limited point of view, and possibly bring us a few steps closer to being more supportive and provide an opportunity of healing for the one who has inflicted us.

We may struggle with being forgiving because we have not sought forgiveness ourselves. Advent is coming. It is a season to prepare to celebrate the coming of Jesus into our lives. This season provides a wonderful opportunity to participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Forgiveness is a healing gift of God’s grace. Once we have felt the healing balm of forgiveness, we might be more willing to forgive others.

Find a place of quiet, ask God to help you to forgive, even if your prayer begins, “God, I cannot forgive, I hurt too much, but help me to let go, please help me to forgive, (insert name).” Return each day until you can bring yourself to say, “I forgive, (insert name).” Visualize yourself saying that you forgive the person face to face and imagine an act of reconciliation. If the opportunity presents itself you may want to say that you forgive the person directly, send an email, or write a letter – even if you do not press send or mail it.

With the intent to forgive and asking for the help of Jesus who has forgiven us, even if in the beginning we are unwilling, with time, reconciliation is possible. Let us remember: “Forgive and you will be forgiven”.

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Photo: One of my quiet places to pray at home and seek forgiveness.

Link for the Mass readings for Monday, November 11, 2019

The Sadducees taunt Jesus with their absurd proposition of seven brothers dying and each marrying the same woman to fulfill the law. They were ultimately challenging Jesus to defend the concept of the afterlife, which the Sadducees themselves did not believe in. This is why they were sad you see? (Could not resist 🙂

Jesus responded to their charge by stating that, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Lk 20:36).

Jesus gives us a glimpse into the life hereafter in our Gospel for today. Heaven is a different reality than we experience now in this present life. It may be helpful to think of heaven as not so much a place but instead as a spiritual reality of communion and relationship with God that transcends our three-dimensional experience. We were created by God to be one with and in union with him. The fullness of this gift will be consummated when we die with Christ and rise with him.

When we participate in the Mass, we get another glimpse of heaven. For, in this celebration, we participate on earth as it is in heaven. There is a divine unity of heaven and earth at the climax of the consecration of bread and wine. Jesus is able to be truly present on every altar throughout the world because of his Resurrection.

In this sacred act, Jesus not only conquered death and rose again, but he also now operates on a different dimensional level. This is how we are truly able to consume the Body and Blood of the risen Jesus who now transcends space and time. He becomes substantially present after the consecration though the appearance of bread and wine are unchanged. As we consume him, we become one with him in his divinity organically and spiritually.

I believe that the closer we come to know and experience Jesus, the closer we are to those experiencing his full communion in heaven. Jesus assures us in today’s Gospel that we will live on into the next life and experience an intimacy with his Father and each other deeper than any relationship we have ever or will ever experience in this lifetime.

When JoAnn and I picked out our wedding bands, we had the jeweler etch the word eternally on the inside of each of our rings. I believe in this promise we made to each other and that I will be with JoAnn again in a deeper and more wonderful way, far beyond my present imagination and understanding. A deeper intimacy than our marriage and the relationship we had ever experienced together in our time together in this life. “The God of Abraham… is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk 20:37-38). In these words, I place my trust and my hope, for JoAnn, for you, and for me.

This photo was taken a few weeks before JoAnn took the hand of Jesus and he lead her home to see God face to face.

Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, November 10, 2019

When I ask my students if Jesus ever sinned, inevitably, some reference the account from today’s Gospel. In these verses, we read how Jesus, “made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area” (Jn 2:15). Jesus is not sinning here, rather, he is acting in line with the prophetic tradition. Jesus is making a bold spectacle to drive home the point that the temple is not a marketplace but is to be a place of worship and right praise to his Father.

Greater still than the temple, is the people of God. Further down in the text, when those present ask for a sign as to the reason he commits this act, Jesus said: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19). Clearly, he was pointing to his body as the temple of God and referring to his Resurrection that would come.

The temple, the house of God, believed to be the very corporal presence, the very seat of God among his people, Israel, was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans. This left a tremendous spiritual vacuum. Two groups that were intimately tied to the sacrificial cult of the temple, the Sadducees and the Essenes, very soon after the destruction, ceased to exist as a sect within Judaism. The Pharisees, who already were moving to a practice of home worship that mirrored the worship in the temple, would survive and be the ancestral root of Judaism today. Another sect would also arise as the followers of the new way of Jesus which became the Church, the Body of Christ.

Each of us has a unique part to play in the Church. We are called to bear witness and practice, in our unique way, our faith in our everyday experiences. We may be the only Bible someone ever reads. This call to put our faith into action is not an invitation to be overwhelmed by nor an excuse to assume a posture of elitism. We are no better than anyone else.

Pope Francis wrote: “Believers should not be presumptuous; rather, truth leads to humility. We know it is not ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us” (Costello 2013, 14). We are to seek and follow Jesus, the Truth, and allow his truth to shape our lives. We need to resist being defensive and rigid. Instead, we are called to be flexible and open to dialogue, sharing our stories and experiences, and inviting others to do the same. When we are willing to encounter and walk together, we learn and grow from one another. We become less other and more human to one another.

We need to resist all that contributes in any way to the dehumanization, hate, and violence that is rampant in our country and the world by rooting ourselves in Jesus, the living Temple. We need to recognize that we all fall short of the glory of God and on our own, we are limited in how far we can go. We need to be willing to be conformed to the will of God through spending consistent time in silence, prayer, study, worship, and service to be empowered by the love of Christ to be instruments of peace, contemplatives in action, and advocates for healing and reconciliation in a wounded and weary church, politics, country, and world.

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Photo: Exiting Mass from Mission del Rey, Oceanside, CA. We are dismissed after Mass to “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by our life.”

Costello, Gwen. Walking With Pope Francis: Thirty Days with the Encyclical The Light of Faith. New London, CT: Twenty Third Publications, 2013.

Link to the Mass readings for Friday, November 9, 2019

In the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, the steward who is on the block to lose his job for squandering his lord’s property comes up with a plan to settle his lord’s accounts. He lessened the amount owed with the intent to gain some support from those who had debts to pay to his master. Most likely he was giving up his own profits in settling these debts, much like a real estate agent or car salesman today would forego their commission to make a sale. He loses in the short term but hoped to gain some understanding in the long term with those debtors who were receiving a favorable payment on their debts.

The prudence or cleverness of the steward is commended by the lord because the dishonest steward had utilized foresight, which was a better quality to develop than the original squandering that landed him in this predicament in the first place.

Jesus commenting on this parable also acknowledged those who were clever in worldly ways, thinking and acting with prudence – being shrewd and having the foresight to navigate potential conflicts to acquire the desired goal is admirable. Jesus then shared the insight that we as “children of the light” ought to act with prudence as well. The difference being, the application is not for personal gain but applying cleverness in evangelization. As we spread the Gospel, we do so, not in a one size fits all approach, but being present and adjusting to each person in their uniqueness.

Many in the Church have gone before us aware of the needs of those people in their midst and coming up with creative ways to minister to them. Often they too, utilized the model of the steward’s prudence in today’s Gospel, giving up their opportunity for immediate gain to provide for the needs of others.

St. Francis of Assisi, lived his youth, not as a faithful steward, but as a pampered troubadour, part of the social elite. Then as his transformation began to take hold, he began to sell off his father’s cloth and gave it to the poor. He would ultimately renounce his family name as well as all material possessions, and give all to follow Jesus.

St. Mother Teresa, left her home at eighteen, never to see her family again to become a missionary in India with the Loretto Sisters. She became a school teacher in Calcutta, by no means squandering what the Lord gave her, but she too was called to go deeper. She left the convent to serve the poorest of the poor in the streets, those in the most deplorable of conditions.

Jesus has a unique call for each of us. We too are called to be faithful stewards, to be holy, and to be saints. What needs do we see in our midst? In what ways can we be more prudent? Each of us is invited into a deeper embrace of the Gospel. “We experience faith and encounter God in our own particular time in history, and faith lights up our journey through time. Faith must be passed on in every age” (Pope Francis, 20). Jesus, please deepen our faith and help us to put it into practice in the unique way you call us to.

Photo: Statue of St. Francis in our rosary garden at St Peter Catholic Church in Jupiter, FL.

Walking With Pope Francis: Thirty Days with the Encyclical The Light of Faith. New London, CT., Twenty Third Publications, 2013.

Link for the Mass readings for Friday, November 8, 2019