Fr Scott Reilly LC

Prayer in the name of Jesus is especially powerful against the Devil. “In my name,” Jesus said of His followers, “they shall cast out devils” (Mk 16:17).

Elisabeth Leseur († 1914) was a French laywoman whose atheist husband, upon reading her spiritual journal after her death, experienced a profound conversion and later became a Dominican priest.

The more God is cast off and forgotten, the more those who still live their faith will receive a gaze of tender love from God.

By your yes today to God’s will, you make Jesus present to our world that finds it so difficult to believe that God is love.

“What some people think is freedom is nothing more than license that leads to bondage.” Victory Over the Darkness: Realize the Power of Your Identity in Christ (Anderson, Neil T.)

It isn’t difficult for God to make something good and blessed out of human errors. Such confidence gives an enormous freedom. You do the best you can and leave the rest to God. And he does manage!

Popular trust in Saint Joseph is seen in the expression “Go to Joseph ”, which evokes the famine in Egypt, when the Egyptians begged Pharaoh for bread.

As important as faithfulness is, discharging duty and maintaining a commitment do not satisfy God as much as we may think. There is a deeper interior dimension in a personal love for Our Lord that awaits our soul and that we do not realize initially.

Much of the first mistake can be traced to one basic error: we make an attribution about another person’s intentions based on the impact of their actions on us

The core of the Good News is that it is not by our own strength we act as true Christians—it has to be Jesus acting in and through us.

Jonah points toward the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

The universal call to holiness

Jesus himself questioned out loud when talking about his second coming: “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk 18:8).

He saw what his grace would do in his life if he were to accept his invitation.

When our hearts are stuffed with worldly desires, worries, anxiety, anger…keep going, God will impose a fast on them.

Freedom is our superpower.

Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation.

The first reading puts a premium on attitude: Be joyful in your giving and GENEROUS! The Lord loves the cheerful and generous give.

Being a child means accepting ourselves as we are. We know we have plenty of limitations and imperfections, but we don’t make a production of it and we don’t turn it into a major problem

“A person decides himself if his past is a heavy burden that he drags along with him and makes him act in a stereotypical and compulsive way or if it is an asset. What happened in our earlier life is not made of granite. It is more like dough that we can knead and to which we can constantly give new form. It is an extremely exciting work to let what seemed to be deprived of all meaning become mean...

The Gospel conveys that God is not indifferent to our hearts and actions. “Anyone who gives a cup of water to drink because he belongs to Christ…”

You have a superpower; it’s called love.

o Pride is the most corrosive force in our lives. To conqueror it, Jesus’ efforts would be more than Herculean.

God has chosen to work through the flaws; he is Creator at heart.

Front and center of the Cross is Christ’s redemptive love.