Last week, when Dcn. Stephen invited me to preach today, I said, “Yes.” Not realizing today is September 2. Four years ago this morning, my wife, JoAnn, died and I held her hand until the undertakers came and took her away.

I know that I am not the only one here who has suffered the loss of a spouse or someone we hold close to our hearts nor is death the only type of suffering that we experience. For each of us, I offer these words from Sr. Joyce Rupp’s book, Praying Our Goodbyes.

“We may be harshly bruised by life’s farewells, but it is possible to be healed. We can become whole again. I believe that if we are willing to move inside the heart of the experience, to live patiently through the process even as we acknowledge the difficult, painful emotions, that we can experience the wonder of spiritual growth and the marvel of new depths of faith in our relationship with God and others.

“it is possible to be healed. We can become whole again.”

The key point is whose voice do we listen to? Do we listen to a voice that will increase or decrease our suffering? Do we listen to a culture that says to ease our suffering we must avoid or deny it, over-medicate or over-work it, seek as much diversion in pleasure and entertainment and, avoid suffering at all costs? Those voices will only increase our suffering.

Our suffering will increase or decrease depending on the voice we listen to. In our second reading today from Paul’s letter to the Romans we heard:

“Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect”.

For our minds to be transformed, we have to close them to the negative influences of the world and open our hearts and minds to God.

St. Ignatius of Loyola helps to to greater clarity by defining the sources of the voices we listen to as the enemy or the good Spirit.

Do we listen to the enemy – Satan, his demons and evil spirits, the fallen world, or the flesh – our concupiscence, our tendency to sin that remains after our baptism.

Or do we listen to the good Spirit – God, Jesus, Mary, the angels, the apostles, and the saints?Who we listen to will make a big difference.

Jeremiah, from our first reading today, is experiencing a moment of desolation and letting God know about his frustration. The voices he has been listening to has been a constant drum beat for years: “All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.” He feels duped or tricked by God. He no longer wants to go on, no longer wants to speak, he has had enough, yet God’s word “becomes like a fire burning” in his heart. “Imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.” It is in this surrender to God that Jeremiah will find his consolation. Not from his friends and family, not from his enemies, not from his nation, or the temple, but from God who he allowed himself to be duped by so many years before.

We see an even drastic distinction in Peter at breakneck speed. Last week Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am” and Peter responded, “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus affirmed Peter by stating that, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”

And then only a few verses later, this week, Jesus rebukes Peter:

“Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

In the first instance, Peter is listening to the good Spirit and in the second the enemy. Peter cannot conceive that Jesus who he just acknowledged as the Christ could suffer and die.

Who do we listen to? The voice of the enemy or the good Spirit?

The enemy whispers to us with the intent to lead us into isolation and separation from God and each other, especially in our times of suffering so that our suffering leads us to experience more desolation and even slip into despair. The enemy tempts us with apparent goods and then condemns us when we fall.

The good spirit never tempts us, but invites us to experience unity, connection, expansion, freedom, consolation, peace, joy, and love. God always gently leads us. Even when he convicts us of our sin, and when we are willing to repent, forgives us. In our times of suffering, God is our hope that in our trusting in him, he will bring about a greater good.

To better discern between these two voices and experience more consolation, peace, joy, and love in the midst of and through your times of suffering, I invite you to schedule a daily time to stop, breathe slowly, rest and let go, trust in Jesus, receive and abide in his love. If this is something new to you, I would recommend beginning with 5-10 minutes.

It is in this place of quiet that we can begin to better discern. The enemy wants to keep us going at a frantic pace so we can just react and keep going. The good Spirit invites us to slow down, discern and invites us to let go of the voices of the enemy, better resist reacting and being swayed by them. Their power and influence will subside, and we can then experience and abide in more of God’s love.

Our suffering increases or decreases to the level in which our hearts and minds are open and receptive to the love of God that he wants to share with us. Committing ourselves to a time of meditation and contemplation every day will help us to then carry that pattern throughout the day, so when we recognize the voice of the enemy, we can stop, breathe, rest, receive, and abide in the love of God. Just the act of stopping and breathing will help us tremendously.

This morning, I was praying in this way over the Mass readings for today. About twenty minutes in, I thought of JoAnn and missed holding her hand. I then saw her standing with Mary in my imagination, and she reached out her hand to me. I felt the touch of her hand and held it as I continued to pray for the next twenty minutes.

“It is possible to be healed. We can become whole again.”

I invite you to begin by making time daily to pray and sit with Jesus and show up. You may not feel like anything is happening, but as Mary shared with me, “When you show up, God happens.”

The enemy will give and may have already started giving you some reasons not to stop and be still, resist and renounce those lies. Turn to the words of Mother Teresa instead, “God speaks in the silence of the heart.”

God loves you.

Any lie the comes up to counter what I just said, reject it in the name of Jesus. He has sent his Son to be with you, walk with, and accompany you. Jesus will be made present again on this altar in a few minutes, we will not only witness this miracle during the consecration but receive him in person here or spiritually as you watch online. Once you have received him, spend some quiet time with and listen to him. Right now.

Open your minds and hearts to breathe, rest, receive, and abide in his love and keep doing so each day going forward and you will recognize the voice that will guide you through your suffering into healing and wholeness and you will be able to help others do the same.

Photo: I can experience sadness if I listen to the voices that say you are no longer here or I can let you go, and remember the blessing of our time together and experience you as you are now.

This is the written version of my homily delivered today.

Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, September 3, 2023

Often when we forget the meaning of words they lose their power. I think that goodbye is one of those words for many of us. In the opening of her book, Praying Goodbyes, Joyce Rupp gives us back the meaning:

“God-be-with-ye or Go-with-God – was a a recognition that God was a significant part of the going. When you dreaded or feared the journey there was strength in remembering that the one who gave and cherished life would be there to protect and to console. Goodbye was a blessing of love, professing the belief that if God went with you, you would never be alone, that comfort strength, and all other blessings of a loving presence would accompany you.”

At 7:48 California time, four years ago today, I said goodbye to JoAnn. I held her hand until her body was taken away because one of my greatest joys was holding her hand and I knew it would be for the last time. Since that morning I have come to experience, again from Joyce Rupp:

“We may be harshly bruised by life’s farewells, but it is possible to be healed. We can become whole again. I believe that if we are willing to move inside the heart of the experience, to live patiently through the process even as we acknowledge the difficult, painful emotions, that we can experience the wonder of spiritual growth and the marvel of new depths of faith in our relationship with God and others.”

Healing and wholeness is possible, even while at the same time life is never the same. JoAnn has gone with God and so have I and that has made all the difference. It has been in turning to Jesus and Mary, trusting them with my pain, wounds, fears, insecurities, and weaknesses, that I have grieved and begun to heal. Jesus can only heal our wounds when we are willing to enter into them, talk about them, experience them, for it is there that Jesus, on the cross, has his arms wide open to embrace us, to hear us, and to heal us.

I say goodbye to my love and my heart again today, thankful JoAnn for the time we had in this life and grateful for being able to let go and surrender more into the love of God you are experiencing more fully now. In learning and choosing to make time to breathe in, rest, receive, and abide in our Father’s love I now feel his accompaniment, his closeness, and yours and it is there, in his love, I seek to now live each day.

Photo: I loved holding JoAnn’s hand as much as I enjoyed seeing her smile!

I shared yesterday, that God loves us with an unimaginable love. We are loved by him freely, and that we are to receive, rest, and abide in his love. That his love just stays with us is not the end result though. As Paul writes in his letter to the Thessalonians from our first reading today, “may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all…” ( I Thessalonians 3:12).

When we trust in God and receive his love, we will begin to heal, to become aware of those areas in our lives where we need to confess and be forgiven, to begin to get out of our head, experience less mental anguish, and begin to experience his consolations as we develop a more consistent practice of prayer. This process does not happen in a vacuum.

We interact with others: family, friends, colleagues, as well as acquaintances and random encounters in our everyday activities. One of the most powerful ways we grow in experiencing the love of God is sharing his love with others. Love is not a mere sentiment or emotion. The love of God is as St. Thomas Aquinas calls it an act of the will in which we choose to will the good of the other. We seek and genuinely hope for their best.

This may not always be easy. Often people press our buttons, there are misunderstandings, and points of unresolved wounds are triggered in our interactions. In these situations, love results in our willingness to resist reacting and instead returning to the rhythm of breathing, resting, receiving, and abiding in God’s love and then choosing to share the love we have received with another.

This is harder if we attempt to do so on our own strength and will power alone. We need to turn to God to resist turning in upon ourselves and being self-centered and instead invite God into the situation and allow him to love another through us. The gift of God’s love is that it is infinite and will not run out. It remains like a flowing stream as long as we don’t damn up the flow.

We stop the flow of God’s love when we believe the lies the evil spirit or another tells us, hold a grudge, gossip, are unwilling to forgive, unwilling to give someone the benefit of the doubt, wish them ill, seek their harm, or delight in their mishaps. This is not who God is calling us to be. To love is to forgive, to be willing to guide and help, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to respect other’s boundaries, and respect their dignity as human beings.

As we receive, rest, and abide in God’s love and then share as God moves us to do so each day with each encounter, our love grows and God’s love spreads.

Each of us are not perfect. We often fall short. A good practice is to examine our conscience each day to see those ways in which we may have slipped, held back from reaching out to another, allowed some part of us that is in need of healing to affect how we have not treated someone as well as how we could have through any impatience, selfishness, judgment, or prejudice. We need to resist getting down on ourselves and confess to God directly or through the sacrament of Reconciliation. When we humbly do so, the few logs we let build up will gently flow away and we will continue our journey to increase and abound in love for one another and for all!

Photo: Deanery Holy Hour, August 10, 2023 with Viviana, Adm. Assistant for Vocations, Freddy, Fr. Duvan, and Jude!

Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, August 31, 2023

“… the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

God has known each of us before the beginning of time, he helped to form us in our mother’s womb, he has been with us since the moment we began to crawl, walk, and run, through each bump and bruise, challenge and victory, and continues to be with us now.

God invites us to continue to walk with him. As we continue to open our hearts and minds to him he continues to work in and through us, to transform, forgive, heal, and empower us. His love is so amazing and is the most transformative power ever or ever will be known or experienced not only in this life but ongoing into the next. His breath can bring those places we thought dead in ourselves to life, his care and tenderness can melt our sorrow and pain, the Holy Spirit can pierce our darkness with his light, and Jesus makes his love known to us in concrete and simple ways.

We can see how God is indeed at work within us when we make time each day to be grateful. Looking back over the past twenty-four hours, reviewing where he has been with us, helped us, and make the effort thank him for each moment. As we call to mind each the wonderful ways God is with us, we will feel more of his peace, joy, and love.

Also, during times of desolation, when we all may feel a bit down, does not mean God has left us and it does not necessarily mean we have done anything wrong. As we open our heart and mind to God, the enemy is not happy and will attempt to pick at our weaknesses and insecurities and twist them against us. In these times, we just need to stand our ground and place our hope and trust and Jesus, continue to turn to him no matter what we are facing, no matter how strong the winds and waves are in our life, stay firm in our practices of prayer, turning to his word, and not only will God bring about a greater good, we will grow and mature in our trust, we will be lifted above all of the lies that the father of lies throws at us, and we will be stronger and grow in our ability to discern distinction between the voice of evil, our voice, and God’s voice.

Today is the day that the Lord has made for each and every one of us. We are invited to breathe, rest, receive and abide in the assurance of his love! His word is working in us, loving us, transforming, and leading us to experience the fullness of who he has created us to be. No power is strong enough to pull and separate us from his infinite and loving embrace. No matter what arises, God is stronger than the forces of nature and any trial or tribulation we are going or will ever go through.

Let us keep the people in the Gulf Coast from Tampa to Tallahassee, Florida in our prayers as they recover from Hurricane Idalia.

God’s word continues to work in and through us as we grow in our trust, faith, and belief. What God has begun in us he will bring to completion!

Photo: After Mass at St. Mark Catholic Church in Venice Beach, CA with my daughter, Christy, on August 13, 2023. God has been doing a lot in both of our lives over this past year!

Link for the Mass readings for today, Wednesday, August 29, 2023

Jesus first asked the Apostles, “Who do people say that I am?” And then he asked more pointedly, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

“Who do you say that I am?” Is an important question for each one of us to answer. That answer has changed for me over the years and where I am now comes from a gift that Jesus gave me during the first few days of my 30-Day silent, directed retreat practicing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola that I completed August 4.

During one of my early holy hours, I was sitting on a simple bench about 30 miles north of Chicago, on the grounds of St. Joseph and Mary Retreat Center, Mundelein, Illinois, and listening to the song of the wind playing in the leaves. As I was reading from the letter to the Ephesians, Jesus touched my heart with these words from St. Paul:

“To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).

I stopped there and kept reading the words over and over. Something about them held my attention. Then I felt as if Jesus was sitting next to me on the bench. I resisted listening to the voice saying this was just my imagination and trusted that somehow Jesus was making himself present to me.

I then asked, “How can I know your love?”

Jesus said, “Trust me.”

I continued to let go and speak from what arose in my heart next and then asked, “Can you take care of a friend for me?”

Jesus said, “Yes.”

“How is JoAnn, (my wife who passed away, September 2, 2019) doing?”

“Good, better than good.”

I stumbled a bit here because those were the words that I had given earlier to Fr. Horn, my spiritual director, about myself after a few days of settling into the retreat having come in feeling wiped out. I continued to trust and asked Jesus, “Am I making this up or is this really you?”

“Trust me.”

What Jesus and his mother Mary continued to share in some form or fashion within each of my holy hours that followed for the rest of the retreat was to guide me through a practice of breathing slowly and consciously, letting go of any thoughts, fears, doubts, expectations, of needing to do, and instead to just be, and to rest. To rest in his word, his love, his presence, and then with each breath to come to abide in his love and so experience his peace. As I did so, I would also experience moments of joy that welled up from within.

My answer to Jesus when he asks me, “Who do you say that I am?” is:

Jesus, you are Love, a Love that comforts, forgives, and heals me. A Love that has shined now in the darkest places of my life and freed me from those unrevealed shackles that I was afraid to allow to see the light of day.

Jesus, you are Peace, a peace that surpasses all knowledge and understanding, that has now replaced the background noise of insecurity, fear, inadequacy, and the like. I now also feel your peace and confidence that is not grounded in me or my abilities but my firm foundation in your love for me. A deeper knowing that you have always, are now, and always will be with me.

Jesus, you are Joy, that is not dependent on external circumstances like happiness that is fleeting. Your joy wells up within me as I choose to breathe, rest, receive, and abide in your love. A joy that arises when I trust your guidance and follow it.

One of my goals going forward is to continue to breathe, rest, receive, and abide in Jesus, in his Love, Peace, and Joy as often as possible within times of intentional prayer, meditation, contemplation, daily Mass, as well as in my daily activities. My hope is to steadily grow in my awareness of where Jesus is present in each moment as well as when I turn away, so that I can catch myself as quick as possible and return to him.

May you who are making the time to read these words now, give yourself some quiet time to answer the question he poses to you. “Who do you say that I am?”

Trust him, rest, receive, and abide in his love, take his hand and walk with him where he will lead you.

Photo: Sunset view from on the locations I often sat at during my holy hours and was the one I referred to in the reflection.

Link for the readings from this past Mass, Sunday, August 26, 2023

“Blessed is the Virgin Mary who kept the word of God and pondered it in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

Mary has given us many gifts. One is her fiat, or yes. Even though Mary did not fully understand what Gabriel was telling her regarding conceiving and giving birth to the Son of God, she trusted God and was willing to follow his will.

In today’s account of Mary and Joseph finding Jesus in the temple, Mary offers us a second gift in how to respond when we don’t know or understand. She was understandably anxious about the whereabouts of Jesus. His response to her request of, “Why have you done this to us?” was “Why didn’t you know I was here in my Father’s house?” Not exactly a helpful response. Mary chose not to follow through on the anxiety she was feeling and react to but instead pondered Jesus’ words in her heart, and I believe she added a few long, slow, deep breaths as well. 

For us today, when we find ourselves in places where we may not understand what is going on in our lives, when we don’t know what is going on with ourselves or others that we may deeply care for; when anxiety, worry, and fears begin to rise, let us follow the lead of Mary by trusting in God and making the time to ponder.

Our emotions are healthy and human. For Mary to be anxious is natural and shows the depth of her care and love for her missing Son. Yet, we need to remember that our emotions do not define us, and we are not to define ourselves by them.

As emotions arise, it is good to be aware of them, breath into them, and first and foremost, trust that God is with us to help us to interpret them and work our way through them in a healthy way. What usually knocks us off the rails is our past negative experiences. The wounds we have received by someone’s words, actions, and even negative thoughts that have been belittling, demeaning, and not respectful of our dignity. 

When these emotions arise, we have a choice. We can feed them and allow them to grow and define us or we can stop and breathe. We can listen to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, and align our heartbeat with hers, whose heartbeat is aligned with her Son’s. The intensity of them will decrease. We are then better able to step back a bit to ponder why we reacted the way we did, explore why certain emotions arise, and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal their root causes. 

Healing takes time, and as long as we continue to trust in God, are patient, and continue to turn to him as soon as emotions rumble and thoughts begin to swirl, as well as allow for quieter times when they don’t, we will find healing and experience in the process of God’s continual and unconditional love. As we become less reactive, we will experience more peace and patience, and so our interactions with each other will improve and our relationships will heal as well.

The important thing to remember is who we are. Our emotions do not define us. God’s love does. We are his beloved daughter or son, and he is so pleased that each and everyone of us exists. Each one of us has dignity, value, and worth right from the get-go, as we are in this very moment. Any should have’s, thoughts of I am not good enough, or I can’t, or worse… renounce them in Jesus’ name. 

You who are reading this at this moment are a wonderful gift to this worn and weary world. Continue to trust in God, Jesus, and Mary, receive and ponder the gift of their love for you, acknowledge and affirm for yourself often that you are loved and that you are valuable and a gift.

Photo: Icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa

Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, June 17, 2023

“It was because the LORD loved you and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn your fathers, that he brought you out with his strong hand from the place of slavery, from the hand of pharaoh, King of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 7:8).

God hears the cry of the poor. He sends Moses to free his chosen people. Not because they are the best and brightest, the strongest or having the most potential. He is doing so because of his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs. He is doing so because he loves his children, those enslaved, but also all of humanity and creation. The chosen people are chosen not so they can keep God all to themselves but so that they can reveal him to all peoples.

All that has been created has come to be out of the outpouring of his love. We and everything that is, exists because God willed and loved us into reality, to be loved and to love him and each other in return. 

God still comes close today, he still hears the cry of the poor. The poor are each of us in the depths of our souls crying out to him. We who are thirsting and starving for his love and communion. The pharaohs today are not just those who overtly oppress others but the fallen aspects of each one of our egos that enslave our authentic and true selves. 

God has sent another Moses to free us: “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him” (I John 4:9).

Jesus comes close, he shines the light of love into our darkness, our sins, our traumas, our fears. He gently invites us to come into the light of his love, to be embraced, forgiven, and restored as the beloved children that we already are, but have forgotten.

Each day and moments during the day, remember that you are the beloved daughter or son of the creator of all that exists. He made you and formed you as an expression of his love. There has never nor will there ever be again someone like you. You are loved as you are right now as you are and you need do nothing but receive the love God offers to you. 

Listen quietly for the beating of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and allow your heart to align in rhythm with his heart, such that Heart speaks to heart. Receiving the love of the Father through Jesus is the key to our freedom. No self-help program or three-point strategic plan needed (counseling does have its place and time). Just a simple, “Yes” to your loving God and Father, as Mary said, “May it be done to me according to your word.” As Jesus said, “Not my will but yours.” A simple slowing down and returning throughout the day and each day to an opening of your heart to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a good start. The Holy Spirit will take care of the rest so that you may experience life to the full! 

Photo: On retreat at Marywood Retreat Center this past January

Link for the Mass readings for Friday, June 16, 2023

“Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

Freedom for what?

Freedom to receive and give love, to be loved, receive and experience, savor it and love in return. This is what all of us seek, deep down. The only one that can fill and satisfy this deep hunger and thirst is God. The interesting thing is that even though he is infinite, completely self-sufficient, and does not need us at all, he hungers and thirsts for us as well. He reaches out for us, invites us into his eternal embrace to be one with him so that he can be one with us. 

Love is a free giving and receiving exchange. Authentic love is not coerced or manipulated. This is true for us and for God. We are to receive his love in his time and on his terms and not our own. For God sees the fullness of who we are as well as our sins, wounds, and weaknesses. He knows what and how much we can receive at any given time. He does not want us to merely exist or survive. God’s greatest joy is to see us fully alive and free to live and experience the life he has given us. But he begins small, where we are, and invites us as a father invites in infant to walk. Encouraging us and there to catch us when we fall.

What wounds this free exchange is when we put ourselves first before God. We make the mistake of Adam and Eve whenever we grasp at what God is willing and seeking to give us freely. We can become impatient, seek control, buy into lies and temptations that appear to be good but in fact are not coming from the love God wants to share with us. When we experience anxieties, fear, pain, and suffering it is a barometer revealing something is off kilter, off center in our lives. In their proper place, these emotions are protective and instructive to help us to avoid that which is not in our best interest or for our highest hope and good and protect us from harm. Even our suffering can be a time of healing in the experience of loss, which is also an expression of love. 

The problem arises when we allow our minds to run away with misperceptions and this comes more readily when we place ourselves first instead of trusting in God. When we place our security in the finite and material instead of trusting in God’s eternal care. From seeking stability, in the material and in ourselves and our choices alone, we then want to be in control, we want what we want when we want it, we want to know what’s going on and right now. 

These self-centered practices increase our suffering, and since we run from suffering, we seek to be more in control rather than being willing to surrender all to God. “What really hurts is not so much suffering itself as the fear of suffering. If welcomed trustingly and peacefully, suffering makes us grow. It matures and trains us, purifies us, teaches us to love unselfishly, makes us poor in heart, humble, gentle, and compassionates toward our neighbor” (Jacques Philippe). 

Jesus is inviting us to let go and loosen our clenched fists and tendencies to grasp. He himself, the Son of God “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped” (See – Philippians 2:6).  Instead, he is inviting us to do as he has always done, which is to trust in and receive from God our Father what we most need, his love.

Photo: Evening rosary walk back in December at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary.

Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, June 15, 2023.

But the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment (2 Corinthians 1:22-23).

We seek security in so many ways, things, and others. We have insurance policies for our health, car, home, retirement, we may place our trust in family and friends, we may feel if we have enough in our savings, all will be well. None of these, in and of themselves are untrue. We are willing to invest our time and treasure in relationships, insurance policies and savings, but are we willing to invest the time in building a relationship with our ultimate reality and security – God? 

Life is fragile, fluid, and ever changing. What seems stable and a firm foundation at one moment reveals itself to be sand in the next. This is true with anything in the material realm, anything on earth, the solar system, or galaxies far, far, away.

God seeks the best for us, and we may have even felt a desire to get closer to him, yet can buy into the lie that he will ask something of us or ask us to do something that we really don’t want to. The reality is that he knows better than we do what we desire and seek in the depth of our souls. He knows us better than we know ourselves because he sees us as we truly are. He sees the fullness of who we are and who he calls us to be. He sees under, over, and through our doubts, anxieties, fears, selfishness, and human foibles of our fallen nature. He also sees the deep wounds, traumas, and hurts and wants to heal us and lead us to wholeness.

We can only see so far. We are limited by any, all, or different limitations than the above. We see only an aspect or glimmer of who we truly are. Many of us get confused early on and may feel better at times because we have accumulated what we may believe to be apparent goods, and we in deed may experience some actual and true goods. Good family, friends, meaningful work, and all seems to be going well. But then something can happen, and quickly, a job loss, an illness, an argument or major conflict, a death. If there is no ground beyond the human relationships and material comfort, where do we turn?

Also, even when all goes well, it can be perfected. Life can be better, because none of us are and life is far from perfect in this fallen world. Slowly, steadily moving in the direction of putting God first, acknowledging that he is God and we are not, and receiving the gift of him and his love as our foundation and true security does not mean life will be perfect, but it does mean that when the unpredictable events and storms of life arrive, we are not alone. God will accompany us through because we are his beloved children and he loves us. And that is a good place to start no matter where we are on the journey.

Photo: Going away party at St. John Fisher Catholic Church back in April where I was blessed to serve this past year.

Mass readings for Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Jesus said to the Jewish crowds: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51).

Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven. He is to be our nourishment, source of refreshment, and very life. Like a tree that is planted near the streams of living water (see Psalm 1:3) we are refreshed in all seasons, when all is tranquil as well as when we are immersed in our challenges and struggles, as long as our roots remain tapped into the well spring of the life of Jesus.

We are to look to the things of heaven for our foundation, not the things of this earth. For the things of this earth are passing away as many of us know all too well. This does not mean we aren’t to enjoy the blessings that God has given us. All that God has created is good and to be enjoyed as a gift of his grace. It is more a matter of perspective. 

We are not to be attached to the things of this world, even to those closest to us, because we are finite and imperfect and so we will never be fully satisfied because we seek the eternal. With God as our center and our refuge, we have a stability that is not only unshakable but eternal so cannot be exhausted. We know that no matter what, we are accepted, we belong, and we are loved. We renew, heal, and grow in wholeness as we receive him especially and most concretely in the Eucharist, the bread from heaven, but also in resting in him, his creation, spending time with good friends and family as well as those he calls us to serve.

And we can do this more authentically and purely when nothing or no one else, including ourselves, but Jesus is the center of our lives. Letting go of our attachments takes time and effort but is well worth it because when we ask Jesus to reveal to us that which we place before the Father he will do so.

When we are willing to collaborate with him to let go, this practice leads to a freedom and peace that we would otherwise not experience. We will still encounter the pain of loss but it will not be as debilitating. In putting God first and deepening our relationship with him, we receive his love, we start to see ourselves as he sees us, and grow in his wholeness which overflows into our relationships because we are better able to be ourselves. 

As we experience God’s love, we will slowly and surely come to identify ourselves not by what we do, who we think we are, who we think others think we are supposed to be, and/or others tell us to be, but rest instead in the truth and identity of being his beloved daughter or son. Our anxieties and fears will have less power over us, we will become less insecure and more confident, pride will weaken because we no longer place ourselves first. As we heal and grow, we also begin to experience the maturing of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We become more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle and able to practice more self-control. 

During this Corpus Christi Sunday then, may we recommit to the truth and reality that Jesus is with us in a special and unique way. He is the “bread of life” that will nourish and lead us more intimately into a deeper relationship with his Father through the love of the Holy Spirit so that our healing and those in our realm of influence can go deeper and continue through this life and into the next.

Photo: Tabernacle in the chapel at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary, where I spent a lot of time in prayer, meditation, contemplation, and worship this past year and getting to know Jesus a lot better!

Link for the Mass readings for Sunday, June 11, 2023