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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~

If you’ve seen anything that I’ve written before you probably know that this is my favorite liturgical season of the year. It’s a designated time to reflect on our Spiritual lives. Yes, we should all be doing this throughout the year, but as is all too common a practice, time can slip away. Our prayer life can be taken for granted; we can justify away our lack of commitment and become lackadaisical towards the one aspect that should be the most important. The Church, in all its great wisdom, knows this, and plans for just such a problem. It gives us a season, a time to slow down, to deeply ponder our lives with Jesus. We must only create the space in our schedules to do that. To see what aspects we need improvement on, what things we should decide are not important, or what things should be more important in our daily routines and tackle the changes that are needed.

Do we start the day with Jesus, do we include Him throughout the day, and do we end the day with Jesus? Do we reflect on how the day went and analyze what parts were truly devoted to Jesus' commands and what parts needed more work? Did we converse with Jesus, listen to Jesus, read Jesus' Word, serve Him with our daily chores? We can still live a life within this human world and have it be focused on God. We can choose to see Christ in each other. Have you found the ways to do this? Have you made the changes necessary to improve your spiritual holiness? Spending time in prayer this Lent can help you focus on ways to achieve a closer union with our Father.

I've so often heard how time gets away from us, and we just simply forget to include Jesus in the day. That it's impossible to go to daily Mass, that the rosary just takes too long to pray, that I just forgot to pray today, I've been there myself. It's work to have a relationship with anyone. We usually find time to do that though, with our families, with our friends, with our loved ones. If they are healthy happy relationships, it's a sure bet, you’ve worked at it to get them that way. And that's all part of our being human, but have we made Jesus the number one person to work with? If we choose Him first, all other things will fall into place much more comfortably. I know this from experience. I'm not saying you won't have problems or difficulties but you'll be able to handle those crises a lot better when you're leaning on Jesus, the ultimate Healer, and our ultimate Strength.

This Lent, as always, I want to work harder on becoming closer to Jesus. I want my whole life to be about Him. I know it will take my whole life working on this to try and get it right. I have total Faith it will be worth it. I don't want to be standing at that judgment gate and have it said that I wasn't trying to live for Him.

Please pray for me, and all of us, that we can strive for that perfect union with the One that counts. I will pray for all of you during this Lenten season that we all work for that goal. Then we can party for eternity in the best place of all!

You are loved!

URLVD

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