Bread of Life

• The Catechism
• Patron Saints
• Papal History
• Stations of the Cross
• Catholic Prayers
• Wkly Word Archives
• Return to St. Joe's

He Gave His Only Son

"Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

John 21:29

• There should be less talk. A preaching point is not a meeting point.


• The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.


• In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta. (Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997)


• It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.


• The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.


• I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?


• I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.


• Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.


• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

~Mother Teresa~

Our lives are like packages that are wrapped up all neat and tidy or perhaps wrapped in a hurry to hide what's beneath all the wrap. Either way, we wrap our lives up so that others can't see what's truly in our little box of a life. But that's not all of whom we wrap our lives up to avoid....we also try to keep ourselves wrapped up in our own little box or own little kingdom hiding within that box from the one far more important than anyone else....Jesus.

Funny thing is, why is it that we think we can package ourselves up and present such a pretty picture with all the sparkling wrap and pretty little bows? And keep it hidden from Christ and the Father? Nothing is hidden. God knows everything about us, He knows all that we do, think and feel. After all, how can we think that we can hide anything from the one who created us to begin with?

Some of us have ourselves so tightly wrapped that we fail to understand that the outward beauty of what we are trying to project is not at all what Christ or our God the Father wants to see from us. Lost in our own little kingdom, our own little boxed in life, hurrying on our way to try and make this little kingdom of ours work in our favor, we don't even realize that we're missing out on what Jesus Christ came down to earth to give to us. He didn't come to earth to give us pretty little packages with strings and bows , and false promises, no, he came to earth to give us what our souls most long for and that's love and eternal life with His Father in heaven.

He also came to remind us that we don't have to die to begin experiencing His love and His kingdom. Not our little kingdom that's filled with so much false hope and false promises, but the kingdom of God that waits for all of us, right here, right now. We can begin to experience God's holy kingdom before we move onto the next phase of our existence. We don't have to die to experience His love and His Father's kingdom because, He's already done that for us. He's already done the hard part by sacrificing himself so that all of us can be freed from our little wrapped up, boxed in lives.

What could be so important in our lives that would keep us boxed up from Christ? What are we hiding in that wrapped up box? Is it so important or so shameful that we feel that not even Christ can overcome whatever it is that's keeping us from getting to know His love? Let's not forget that Christ Himself overcame death. Nothing in our little boxed up kingdom can turn Christ away, nothing that we have hidden going on in our little boxed up kingdom can withstand the love that He has to offer us.