Let's Be Saints!

What are you waiting for?! Stop stalking the mailman and let your blood pressure drop during this blessed season.

Black Friday is the day for consumers! What am I consuming? What do I let consume me? “Here, God lives among his people.”

It is our duty and salvation to give Him thanks! This is what the wedding feast of the Lamb—the Mass—is.

Heaven costs everything. Do I want it?

As the world is passing away, our friends in the gospel are focused on the externals! “Do not let yourselves be deceived.”

What do today’s Saint and the woman of the gospel today know that often I forget? “His name and His Father’s name were written on their foreheads.”

Jesus IS King. Do I say this on my own, or do I think and live like Pontius Pilate?

Jesus is BOTH a sacrificial lamb who has made us into a kingdom of priests, and the lion of the tribe of Judah Who has fought for us and set us free.

Fear and disobedience go hand in hand. We do not fear God’s thrice holiness; but we do acknowledge, trust in, and receive its power.

Today, salvation has come to our house, because we too are children of Abraham, and our God has come to seek and to save what has been lost.

Our saint today could be seen as the patroness of epic failure! Her identity was not found in what she did, but in who she lived in friendship with. The natives whom she evangelized remember her as “She who prays always.”

PAY HEED. It is all passing away…but He is not.

“Many deceivers have gone out into the world…anyone who is so ‘progressive’ as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God. Whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.”

Sometimes Jesus takes on the persona of a situationally unaware 7 year old! “The Kingdom of God is among you.”

St. Frances Cabrini knew that identity flows from relationship; not from mission. She let her mission flow from her friendship with the living God. Do I?

Christ calls us to work for unity in His Body on earth, as St. Josaphat did. “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.”

“Appoint presbyters in every town as I directed you.” St. Martin reminds us that there is more to this life than meets the eye. Martin was motivated by a love for souls.

Closing retreat Mass at SHRH for the Carmelites of the Sacred Heart. The women in scripture today know what we often forget. We are children and everything flows from relationship with our Father!

Sts. John the Baptist and John the Apostle point the Church individually and collectively to her fundamental identity and mission: to live in relationship with the FR. Our home is in Him; NOT in the world!

The goal is not safety. It’s freedom. I can’t be set free by Jesus if Jesus isn’t first.

“I will praise you, LORD, in the assembly of your people”…why?!

The goal is communion! But communion with Jesus flows from loving Him, and loving like Him. This always brings true renewal to the family of God.

The commands of today’s gospel are so powerful, that when they are lived well, they convert empires. We would do well to learn what converted Rome!

We can only serve one person first. Who/what do I worship?

Today we celebrate the true influencers of the world! They do not influence on their own power. They heard today’s gospel, and received God into their lives. Thus, they are blessed.