23RD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

3/9/2016

If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. This is a very difficult thing for us to take in.
Who can understand the mind of God? No one thought that God would come as a human and then give His own life—and worse yet, ask that of us! Who can conceive what the Lord intends?
The Churches newest Saint – St Teresa of Calcutta says this - Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
You and I must choose God first in our lives. God is more important than any human relationship! Today the modern culture no longer believes this. Instead God is conceived by modern culture as simply accepting what the majority want us to believe. Yet the Word of God, the Sacred Scriptures, are not realities that can be voted out of existence, nor are they teachings that we can change to fit what we want!
We are asked to make God more important than any human relationship and then also be willing to give up our lives for Him. We must daily accept and even embrace the sufferings that come upon us because we try to follow Jesus.
Too often we bemoan the fact that there are fewer priests, fewer monks and nuns, but how often do we pray for them? How often do we encourage our young people to explore what God wants in their lives.
If we want our church to grow we need to pray that it does. I say it over and over, and I will keep saying it. We need to build lives of prayer, just coming to church on Sunday isn’t enough, one Sunday a month isn’t enough. We need to make time each day to build our relationship with God. We can make time for the things we want to do – lets make a conscious effort to put God into our everyday lives.
One last quote from St Teresa

“The Simple Path, Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith, Faith is Love
Love is Service,. The Fruit of Service is Peace”