Maybe this is why the more Catholics are persecuted the more the Church grows…….God wastes nothing…Maybe this is what America needs?…..Time will tell

Today at Holy Mass we hear in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles that the first followers of Christ were scattered after St Stephen was martyred…The persecution was on!…..But as we know - That only added to the numbers of the people of God…..”Those who had been scattered by the persecution that arose because of Stephen went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but Jews”….For those who have a keen eye for history…You will find it interesting that the more Catholics are persecuted - The more the Church grows…Historically speaking, this is reality and no objective person can refute this fact…..I believe one of the reasons why our Catholic faith has grown “lukewarm” in America is, we are far too comfortable…..Now I am not prescribing Americans to live the life of poverty…But I am saying that too much comfort takes our “eye off the ball” - As a result, we focus on “things” and not on God - Its simply human nature…..As we all know, God’s ways are not our ways…And we are reminded today at Mass that God used the persecutions of his early followers to “spread the people of faith out” all across the known world at the time….This should teach us something about how God works…Nothing is wasted…Not even our suffering…God uses everything to form his Church and form his people….When we look at the current state of Western Civilization, its very clear that the standard of living that the people enjoyed in years past is evaporating, even in America its declining…...That fact can not be debated…The middle class in the interior of our nation has been decimated and soon that same trend will also take place on both coasts…It already has in California...While that is very sad…Maybe that is what America needs to “get its head screwed on straight again”…We have forgotten God…And as a result…Our quality of life has declined….But as we know…God wastes nothing…Maybe this is what America needs.....Time will tell

“My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me”

We as God’s people must learn to trust him….Everything that happens in our life and everything that will happen is to serve a purpose and that purpose is to sanctify us…Prepare us to stand before the Lord….When we get right down to it, only God knows who we really are and as life progresses, he “peals the onion” revealing to us the Truth not only about ourself but about him….Its for us to recognize this reality and respond……I have shared this in past reflections……When I came home from college after four years, my life was a mess…It was because of that “mess” that I found my Catholic faith…At the time I could not really appreciate what was going on in my life…But God the “master builder” understood what he was doing….A priest told me a story once….He served for a time in the Middle East and he knew a man who worked as a shepherd…Yes - people really are shepherds in his world!….One of the sheep he cared for would always run away…No matter what he did, that one sheep did not respond….The shepherd feared for that sheep because it did not fully realize the danger of not being close to the shepherd - There were many wolves lurking on the edges of the pasture…So what did the shepherd do?….He took one of the sheep legs into his hands and snapped his leg in two!…The sheep cried and cried!….The shepherd then bound up the sheep’s broken leg and carried it on his shoulders for months until the sheep could walk again….After that time period, the sheep understood that the shepherd really cared for him….And once the sheep could walk again…He never ran away from the shepherd anymore…This is the story of my life and the story of how I found God…This may be your story too…..If it is not - Maybe it could be?

“I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand”

Today we hear from the first reading in Mass how God used the early Christian persecutions to spread the faith throughout the known world….We must learn to view things from a “different prospective”…Our vision is very myopic….God plays the “long game” and we must learn to think and see life through his lens and not our own….However, if we do not view life as a journey towards self-sanctification…We will never grow and life will become stagnant….The goal of every human life is to “be prepared” to stand before God…Even if we do not realize that…God is using everything in our life to prepare us for that moment….However, if we resist what God is TRYING to teach us….Instead of getting better, we grow bitter…..Life is a journey, not a destination…God is the “master builder” and we are all a work in progress…To not view life through that lens only leads to frustration….Only Jesus Christ can give us this prospective…He gave meaning to suffering and death, something that has and will impact each and every person, no matter who we are…..Maybe this is why the more Catholics are persecuted the more the Church grows…….God wastes nothing…Maybe this is what America needs?…..Time will tell