God takes the humble and exults them…God can do anything!!! - If only we trusted him

Today at Holy Mass the Universal Catholic Church honors St Charbel Makhluf…..There is an old saying….The saints we rely upon find us….And for me St Charbel’s life speaks to me…He is one of my “go to saints”….In St Patrick’s Cathedral (New York) in a remote corner behind the altar there is a relic of St Charbel…Whenever I am in that Cathedral, I always pay a visit to the relic and ask for Charbel’s intercession…So what made Charnel special?…He grew up poor in a remote village in Lebanon…He lived a life of hard work and penance…He prayed…Commentators said that he only ate one meal a day and when he prayed tears would well up in his eyes…..And when he died miracles began to happen for decades in Lebanon and around the world due to his intercession…How can the world know of such a man who lived an “invisible life” in some far corner of Lebanon?……Because saints change the world - And God finds them - And because God finds them - We find them!…God will “find” you too if you give him permission!…But back to Charbel……One of the things about Charbel’s life that grabbed my attention was an old foreign film I saw about him….In the film, he was in the confessional and a woman he knew from his youth before he became a priest came into the confessional….She had lived a bad life….After she confessed her sins, Charbel said to her….”I give you no penance for your sins - I will do your penance for you”…..This statement really moved me - It came from his heart - Charbel loved his people….And because he was given a great gift of faith - Something others did not have - He used his gift, putting it at the service of others……Today in the Gospel Jesus addresses his friends who had a herculean task ahead of them - To bring the Gospel to the far corners of the world…..These men too were given a great gift and with all things given - Much is expected.....…”Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it”……..Like the first twelve, St Charbel was given a great gift and if you are reading this and God has given you the gift of faith the question that needs to be asked today is - What are you doing with it?

“Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth; you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom”

This morning since it was the Feast Day of St Charbel, I read a commentary about his life by a Lebanese professor (Fr El Khoury)….In the commentary, he spoke about the people Jesus chose to bring the Gospel to the world…This is what Fr El Khoury wrote…..”Jesus chose not saints but sinners to join him and accompany him for three years, living the life of disciples, suffering weariness, failure, pain, doubt and betrayal. Transforming them to become worthy of their task demanded a great deal of time and attention…….The group chosen by Jesus doesn’t appear in any way blessed with leadership skills required to proclaim the Good News to others. Among them are a tax collector, a skeptic, a traitor, and a thief, one who is stubborn, one who is jealous, another rebellious and a persecutor of Christians, one “unnaturally born”, as Paul always considered himself……And little by little, these men understood who Jesus was and what their vocation was. There is an enormous difference between Simon Peter the disciple and Peter the shepherd, between Matthew the tax collector and Matthew the Evangelist, between doubting Thomas and Thomas the believer, between Saul the persecutor and Paul the preacher…..It was the work of love that transformed them…Little by little, the disciples became mirrors reflecting the light of Christ”…….How does this apply to us?…. Do we UNDERSTAND, that within our soul there is something so GREAT and so POWERFUL?!?…It was given to us at our Baptism…It is the “mustard seed” of faith - The Holy Spirit itself!…And if we allow it to grow, like the first twelve disciples and like St Charbel, God will use us….This however requires are full attention….If only we understood who we could become!…But in the meantime, if you do understand and many Catholics in the world do - What are you doing with your gift of faith?…Are we like Charbel, who at out of love for his old friend who just confessed her sins, he did penance for her…….Jesus tells us in Scripture about the mustard seed……”The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches”….You are that seed - Allow it to grow!

“To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away”

Today the Universal Church brings to our attention St Charbel, a holy man who lived a hidden life in a remote corner of the world…And God found this man and now the world knows who he is….Do you somehow think God can not find YOU!?!….If you think that you can not be found by God, I ask you today to say a small prayer in your own words to St Charbel and ask him for his intercession to help you…As I said above in my reflection today…Whenever I find myself in St Patricks’s Cathedral, I go to a hidden corner of the Church where St Charbel’s relic is kept and I say a prayer asking for his intercession…It seems very appropriate that Charbel’s relic is placed in a far corner of the Cathedral in New York City, like Charbel himself who lived a hidden life in a remote corner of Lebanon….God takes the humble and exults them…God can do anything!!! - If only we trusted him