Do you know your next door neighbor?"

"It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start." - Mother Teresa: (1910 – 1997: Founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India)

Gospel Text: (MT 7:7-12)

Jesus said to his disciples:

"Ask and it will be given to you;

seek and you will find;

knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;

and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which one of you would hand his son a stone

when he asked for a loaf of bread,

or a snake when he asked for a fish?

If you then, who are wicked,

know how to give good gifts to your children,

how much more will your heavenly Father give good things

to those who ask him.

"Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.

This is the law and the prophets."

Today Jesus gives us the “Golden Rule”. He gives a new focus for our moral choices, asking us to see ourselves in others. If we saw another person as “our self”, we wouldn’t make many of the choices that we do.

Unfortunately, we often don’t look on others as “our self”, and so Jesus, knowing how greatly we need help, offers a further perspective to help us in making moral decisions. Jesus asks us to think as a father thinks. More specifically, He is asking us to think as God the Father thinks.

How and why does God the Father give you gifts? He does not give you gifts in order for you to become popular. He does not give you gifts in order to make you more attractive. He does not give you gifts in order to make your life smooth. These things are not bad, but they are beside the point. Beside the point of life, that is.

God the Father gives you the gifts you need to accomplish your vocation: your reason for being in this world. If we believe this, then we will accept what God the Father gives us as gifts that are means to that end. It’s really no more complicated than what the Catechism taught us as children. “God made us to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this world, so as to be happy with Him in the next.”