In today’s (1/13) Gospel, we read about Jesus calling Simon, Andrew, James, and John.  As I read the passage, one thing I reflected on is that there were no conditions attached to Jesus’ invitation to them to follow Him.  He called and they answered by leaving  behind what they were doing and following Him.  We too are all invited to follow Jesus, in all circumstances.

In this Gospel passage, when Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, James, and John, their choosing to follow Him is not conditional.  They don’t say to Jesus, “I’ll follow you as long as it is easy, when it is convenient, when life is good and comfortable, as long as I’m not suffering.”  When Jesus calls them, Simon and Andrew “left their nets and followed him” (Mark 1:18) and James and John “left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him” (Mark 1:20).  They simply go, no matter what lies ahead.  Jesus calls, they follow.  And Jesus calls all of us too.  Do we follow?

Following Jesus can be easier at some times than others at different points in our lives.  It is easy when we are surrounded by others who share our faith, maybe when we’re on a retreat or in some other faith experience where we immerse ourselves in a bubble of Catholics who have the same beliefs as us.  It is easy when life is good and all is going well for us.  It is easy when we feel close to Jesus and when we have more times of consolation and mountaintop experiences than times of spiritual dryness and feeling far from Jesus.  What about when life seems confusing, when we experience suffering of any kind, or when the crosses in our lives feel extra heavy?

One line I was struck by is towards the end of the passage, when Jesus walks on and sees James and John, it says, “Then he called them…” (John 1:20).  This seemingly simple line should remind us that He calls each of us too.  Not just once, but continually as we walk the journey.  And He doesn’t just call us in certain circumstances, when this or that happens, or when it feels easy.  He simply calls us, at all times and always.  In the ups and downs, highs and lows, mountains and valleys, good times and difficult times, we must respond.  If we really trust Jesus, we will follow Him.

This gospel passage can help us all to reflect on Jesus’ call to us.  Today and everyday, may we take time to listen to how Jesus is calling us and may we respond by following Him no matter what.

Whenever I leave mass, I typically don’t remember any of the petitions that were prayed during the mass.  However, at mass on Christmas day, there was one that I have not only remembered, but that I’ve been thinking about regularly for the past two weeks.  During the mass, one of the petitions was that we would be inspired to “bear more courageous witness to Christ.”  As I’ve been reflecting on this, I’ve realized that maybe the Lord has placed this petition on my heart because He knows that I need this reminder often and how much more work I need to do on this.

The word courageous is a powerful word that conjures up images of people who are bold, unafraid, and confident in their faith, even when it’s uncomfortable.  How often do I find myself living in a way that is the exact opposite?  

There are countless examples that we can be inspired by.  We hear so many stories of Saints who lived courageously, living out their faith and bearing witness to Christ so well.  And there are also people we know in our own lives who have been great examples and inspirations to us.  I want to be more like those people.

We are all called to live out our faith daily, so that it’s a way of life for us, not just part of our lives.  We are called to share Jesus with others in our words and actions and defend our faith always.  This can be uncomfortable.  But if we rely on His strength and grace and find support in the communities we are part of, it is possible.

We must all strive to live for Jesus each day of our lives.  Today and everyday, may we all bear more courageous witness to Christ and inspire each other in doing so.

In one of the documents of Vatican II, there is a line that says, “When God is forgotten, however, the creature itself grows unintelligible” (Gaudium et Spes 36).  This is something that we can see so clearly in our world.  We live in a society that has largely forgotten God, a society that has overwhelmingly rejected God.  And we can see the effects of this on a daily basis.

The difference between right and wrong and good and evil seemed to have vanished.  In our world, the things that we as Catholics believe and know to be good, true, and beautiful, are seen as hateful, intolerant, and bigoted.  The things that we believe to be common sense have been flipped upside down and twisted.

We see this reality all around us.  Ending the lives of babies in the womb is viewed as  “reproductive healthcare” and “women’s rights.”  The sacrament of marriage, a union between a man and a woman, is attacked, with the belief that two men or two women can be married because “love is love.”  With surgery and different clothing, men can be women and women can be men.  IVF and contraception are seen as totally fine and children become treated like commodities rather than gifts from God.  There is no absolute truth and people do whatever makes them happy, whether it’s right or wrong.  These are just a few of the many areas where we see an unintelligible society due to forgetting God.

What are we as Catholics to do in a world that seems so far from God?  We must cling to the truth and remain close to God, staying strong and standing firm in our convictions.  We must not be swayed by the lies of the devil that are pushed so strongly around us.  We must be willing to stand up for the truth and follow the path towards God, even when it seems like most people are going in the opposite direction.

God is truth and as Catholics, we have that truth on our side.  May we always strive to walk in His knowledge and wisdom and never fall so far as to forget Him.

In college on a spring break trip with the Catholic campus ministry group, there was a prayer from Thomas Merton that we prayed every day of the trip.  It had been my first time hearing this prayer before and there was one line that stood out.  The line “the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so” had kind of scared me at the time and even now, it still does a little bit.  We are all called to do the will of God, but how do we know what that actually is?

How do we know what the will of God is?  Of course we recognize that it is through prayer that we come to know His will, but that doesn’t mean it is easy.  There are so many voices and so much noise around us that knowing what God’s will is can be really hard.  We often show up in prayer distracted, unmotivated, and feeling spiritually dry.  But, in order to know what God is asking of us, we must come to know Him and continue to deepen our relationship with Him.  So this means we must keep showing up, spending time with Him.

At times, I’ve had a fear of failing to do what God asks of me.  What if I don’t hear Him speaking to me?  What if I conflate my own will with His?  What if I interpret something incorrectly?  What if I am thinking about it too deeply or not deep enough?  Maybe you’ve had these same questions and thoughts too at one point or another.  In the prayer from Thomas Merton, there is a line that follows that gives some consolation as it says, “But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.”  I believe that half the battle is showing up with an open heart and willing spirit.  I think God recognizes our efforts and sees when we desire to love and follow Him wholeheartedly.

Doing the will of God is not a one time choice or decision.  When talking about doing the will of God, it is about each day and every moment.  Bishop Ricken has a great prayer, called “The Wyoming Prayer”, that we can pray to ask God to help us:

“Lord, help me to do your will.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Lord, help me to do your will.  Not a moment sooner.  Not a moment later.  Than you will it.”- Bishop David Ricken

Doing the will of God is about having the desire to love and serve God and about being willing to conform our own will to His.  May we ask the Lord to help us and continue to show up with a heart willing and ready to do what He asks of us!

A few weeks ago, when I went to confession, as I approached the priest sitting in the back of the church, he said, “it is good to see you again.”  In that moment, it was as if Jesus Himself was saying this.  Anytime we approach Jesus in the sacrament of reconciliation, it is a good thing and Jesus desires to pour out His love and mercy upon us.

Whether it’s been two weeks, two years, twenty years, or somewhere in between since you’ve last been to confession, Jesus welcomes you with open arms to receive His forgiveness, love and mercy and He is always glad to see you.  Whether you receive the sacrament regularly or whether it’s been years, He never tires of seeing you show up.  Your sins are not a burden to Jesus, even the sin that you keep confessing every time.

When we show up with a sorrowful heart, truly sorry and with the intention not to commit the sins again, Jesus forgives us.  In fact, He wants to forgive us, if we want to receive it.  The graces of the sacrament are so powerful and help us stay close to Jesus.

There is never a bad time to go to confession.  But, now that it is Advent, it is a particularly good time to seek out the sacrament.  If we want to truly be able to prepare our hearts to fully receive Christ and rejoice in His coming at Christmas, we must have hearts that are cleansed and pure.  We must have hearts that are not weighed down and full of sin, but rather open, with space for His love and His light.

Jesus deeply desires to be close to each and every one of us.  Do we desire to be close to Him?  If so, we will seek out His forgiveness and mercy so that we can be drawn closer.  In this season of anticipation and preparation, may we all take the time to go to confession and to properly prepare our hearts.  When we do, Jesus will surely say to us, “it is good to see you again.” 

There’s a saying out there along the lines of, “what if you woke up only with the things you thanked God for yesterday?”  If this were the case, I think a lot of us would wake up without a lot of what we currently have.  We are blessed, but how often do we forget this or how often are we blind to all that we have?

Social media and the world around us can easily convince people that they don’t have enough.  They don’t make enough money, have a big enough house or an updated enough house, or have enough friends or a good enough family.  This comparison mindset leads to people wanting more to try to be satisfied, because they feel as if what they have is not enough.  They look at their lives and think, I need more, bigger, better.  A few days ago, a few people at work were talking about a house that they saw for sale and mentioned that “the inside must be really outdated by like 12-15 years.”  My first thought was if they think 12-15 years is outdated, they should see the original, untouched kitchen cabinets in my mom’s house that was built in the 60s or 70s.  Instead of obsessing about keeping up with the latest trends of all white kitchen cabinets and counters, people should be grateful that they have a kitchen.  Instead of wanting what the world says you should have, we should be thanking God that we have all we need.  God has given us so much, yet how often do we think that it’s just not enough?  We should be living in a state of gratitude, always grateful and thankful for the many blessings in our lives.  We are blessed.

I am thankful that we have a God who loves us and wants a personal relationship with us, and who gives Himself to us in the Eucharist.  I am thankful to have a great family as well as friends and a community of people who care.  I am thankful for my Catholic faith and living in the truth, and being able to practice it freely.  I am thankful for the people who have inspired me and the people who walk the journey with me.  I am thankful for everything I own, my job, and the opportunities I have.  This list doesn’t cover everything, but it sums it up and your list likely looks similar.  What are you thankful for?

May we live in a spirit of gratitude, not just one day of the year, but every day.  My hope is that we realize that with Jesus, we truly lack nothing.  And may we always remember we are blessed.

In today’s (11/18) Gospel, we read the story of Jesus healing the blind man in Jericho.  Though it is a familiar story, reading it this morning, I was struck by this line, “He immediately received his sight and followed him, giving glory to God.  When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God” (Luke 18:43).  The blind man can now see and the first thing he does is give glory to God.  The blind man serves as an example for how we are to give glory to God in our lives too.

The blind man receives a miracle from Jesus, as his sight is restored.  In this moment, He recognizes the healing as a gift and He chooses to give God praise, honor, and recognition of His power and goodness.  And this then leads to other people praising God.  What if other people were led to praise God because of the glory we gave to Him in our lives?

We are all called to give God glory.  At the end of mass, we are often sent off with the message to “go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”  Our thoughts, words, and actions should point to God.  Our very lives should be a witness to God, allowing His light, love and goodness to be shared with the world around us.

There are many ways we can glorify God.  We must live lives of gratitude, always thanking God, not only in the good times but also when we experience challenges and suffering, recognizing that He can bring good out of everything.  We should strive to use our gifts and talents to honor and point to Him.  We need to go to mass weekly or more if we have the opportunity and pray daily.  We can share our faith with others, letting them know the reason for our joy and hope.

Our number one goal and priority in life should be to glorify God.  As with most things, we will fail often.  Through our sin, weaknesses, and shortcomings, there are many times where we don’t give God the proper honor and praise that He deserves.  But we must keep trying and allow the graces of the sacraments to help us.

A question we can all take time to reflect on often is, am I giving glory to God by my words, actions, and the way I live?  And when we need to refocus, we can pray, “God, I want everything I say and do to point to you.”  May we all glorify the Lord by our lives, today and always. 

A while back, I had a thought that I should create a separate Facebook page to share my blog posts to.  I thought that I would just invite the people who regularly read my blog to “like” the page so that the posts wouldn’t be shared on the newsfeed to people who don’t read them.  I thought that maybe people might be annoyed with seeing these posts pop up each week.  Thankfully, I decided against that, because I realized that there are people reading the posts who just don’t engage with the posts and then there may be people who decide to click on a certain post one week, without me even knowing.  If I created a separate page, it would be limited to just certain people.  And we cannot limit or hide our faith.  We cannot put our faith in a box.

If we have faith, it should impact who we are and guide how we live our lives.  Faith is not something that is a part of our lives, but rather, it must be a way of life and impact every aspect of our lives.  This includes the words we speak, the thoughts we think, and the choices that we make every day.

Sometimes, it’s easy for our faith to become a checklist, with boxes that we mentally mark off or something that is reserved just for Sundays.  People can easily fall into the mindset that once they’ve gone to mass and said a few prayers, they are good until the next weekend to do whatever it is they want to do, leaving their faith behind until the following week.  Maybe we have fallen into this trap at some point in our lives, doing certain things and moving onto the next task, setting aside our faith.  But our faith must be intrinsic to who we are.

Jesus is not reserved for certain people that we pick and choose.  He is for everyone, whether they know it or not.  And our job as Catholics and followers of Him is to try to make Him known by the way we live our lives, not just at certain times and in certain places, but always and everywhere.
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If we love Jesus, we will share Him by the way we live.  We will not contain our faith to a certain group of people or to just one part of our lives.  But we will strive to let Him guide us in each moment of our days, every day.  My prayer today is that each one of us would let our faith and love for Jesus not be just part of our lives and something we conceal at certain times, but that it would be deeply embedded in us and something that can’t be separated from who we are!

In the Catholic Church, November is dedicated to the Souls in Purgatory.  Besides taking extra time to pray for those who have died, it is a good time to reflect on and think about death in general.  When it comes to people dying, many people tend to share things that are just not true.  Several weeks ago, a nearby Catholic parish shared the obituary of one of their parishioners who had died.  The caption of the post said, “a smiling face that greeted everyone has earned her angel wings.”  That is simply bad theology that was shared and the fact that a church posted this goes to show it is not surprising when countless people express the same thoughts and words when someone dies.

When people die, there are countless family members and friends of that person who share words that are not only wrong, but also hurtful to the person who has died.  How many times do we see and hear people saying things like, “this person is now in a better place”, “he is up there enjoying a cold one”, “you now have an angel watching over you”, “happy birthday in heaven”, and the list goes on.  I know these words come from a well-intentioned place.  People in an attempt to comfort the family and friends of a loved one who died, or to make themselves feel better, say these kinds of words because they often don’t know what to say in the midst of deep grief and sadness, and these kinds of words make death less painful.  However, we cannot assume people into heaven.  If we love and care for a person, we will pray for them.

When I die, whether that’s five years from now, 10 years from now, or 60 years from now,  I do not want a eulogy shared during my funeral mass, talking about the good things I did or what I accomplished in my life.  I don’t want people sitting around saying I’m in a better place or that I’m enjoying my time with others in heaven.  I want people praying for my soul and offering masses for me because I know at the hour of my death I will be in great need of God’s mercy.  And my hope is that this is what every single person would want not only for themselves, but also for their family members and friends who pass before them.

It’s important to trust and hope in God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness.  He alone knows our hearts and knows where we will go.  But to think that we all go to heaven when we die as long as we are good people and believe in God is a harmful and wrong mindset to have.  We are called to be more than good and even Satan believes in God.  Acting like everyone goes to heaven when they die leads people to believe that being a decent person and believing in God’s existence is enough, and that we don’t have to try to live our lives for God.
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This month, take extra dedicated time to pray for your family members and friends who have died and have masses said for them.  And when this month ends, keep praying for them as well as for those you don’t know.  Prayer is the best thing we can do for those we love while they are alive on this earth and  also when they die.

This past weekend I worked a TEC retreat.  Going into the weekend, it felt like a scramble to finish preparing in the days leading up to Thursday and to take care of things that I wanted to get done before being gone for the weekend.  I also knew it would be a long weekend with little sleep and I was feeling a little distracted, thinking about the many other things I could be doing.  However, it didn’t take long to be drawn out of this selfish mindset and back into reality.  Thursday night, all of the team members arrived for the weekend and we had the team mass.  When I heard the first line of the Gospel reading, it was a reminder of why I was there and what the purpose of the weekend was.  This line that I was struck by in the moment was, “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!’” (Luke 12:49).  Being part of the team and serving was not about me or any of the team members, it was about helping to set the world on fire!

One of our jobs as Catholics is to help set the world on fire.  This means to share our faith, to bring our fire to those around us so that they too would be filled with the love of Jesus and be filled with that same fire.  Most of us probably want to see a world like this and so we must all play our part in helping to create this kind of world.

What if we lived in a world where each and every single person was transformed by Christ’s love?  The only way we can see this happen is if we live our faith.  This means not keeping it hidden and not staying in our comfort zone, doing nothing.  And to do this, we must be willing to show up, to serve and do whatever God has called us to do in the moment.  Whether that means working on a retreat, teaching a faith formation class, or just taking time to sit down with someone and listen, we often need to put aside our own self-serving desires and interests and do whatever it takes to commit to helping others on the journey.

Thursday night at that team mass, the scramble and hustle leading up to that evening all came to a standstill.  As the gospel was being read and the rest of the mass went on, I was reminded not only why I was there but also that I truly did want to be there because I want to see a world that is on fire.
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To see the whole world on fire  probably seems like an impossible reality.  But we can start with the people around us.  Jesus deeply desires for each and every person to be filled with the fire of His love and we probably have this desire too.  So, we must ask ourselves, what am I doing to help the people around me, in my family, parish, and community to come to know Jesus and to deepen their relationship with Him?  My prayer for all of us today is that we would do everything we can to help set the earth ablaze, just as Jesus wants!