We do not have to “understand” everything…All things will be revealed in time

Today at Holy Mass in the gospel of St Luke Jesus continues his conversation with his 12 friends about who he really is and what his fundamental purpose was…To die for the sins of the world….“Pay attention to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men”…The apostles either did not want to believe what Jesus said or simply did not understand what he was talking about…..”But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they should not understand it”……..Faith is not about having “all the answers”…Its believing in what is beyond our capacity to understand…Who can understand fully how a man can die and rise from the dead?…..This is beyond the greatest of minds to ever have existed…Yet billions upon billions of people both living and who have died believe this……We must stop trying to “understand” everything…..Faith is a gift and God in many ways is a mystery….We are reminded of this in the fifth decade of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary…In that decade Jesus is at the Temple as a young boy…He left his parents and sat with the teachers of the law and was missing for three days…..When Mary his Mother found him…This was the conversation….”When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them”……If Our Lady “did not understand” why Jesus did what he did…How are we to understand everything!…But that is ok…Mary teaches us again how to approach events and aspects of our faith that are a mystery to us……”He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart”…..Mary accepted the fact that she did not understand…And “kept everything in her heart”….And so must we…We must trust…We do not have to have all the answers but rest assured…God does have the answers and in God’s time…All things will be revealed

“Our Savior Christ Jesus destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel”

Looking back at our lives I am sure there were many events that when they took place in real time they may have been devastating….When these type of events took place…We felt lost…Did not understand…Were deeply disappointed…May have even been angry…But as the years go by and as the saying goes…Hindsight is 20-20…We come to understand in a deeper and different way how the outcome of tragedies come to impact us in a way that we never thought possible…I have met women in my life through the Church who have had abortions…One I know had two abortions…And because of the impact of their abortions on their life these women are now great defenders of life and devout Catholics….I have met drug addicts who because of the harm that they caused changed their life and now do amazing things in service of others who suffer from the same addictions they once suffered from themselves…I have met men who at one time were womanizers, focused on making money and chasing after all the "things of the world" only to fall into despair and from the depths of despair turn their life around and became Catholic Priests…..God works in mysterious ways!…And we will NEVER understand everything…So we should stop trying too…We need to learn to trust…..When Mother Teresa was a young girl she entered the convent at eighteen years old…At the age of nine Mother Teresa's father was murdered…Their family went from being very rich to very poor…When Mother Teresa left her home at eighteen, never to return again…Her mother told her something….”Put your hand into the hand of God and never let it go”…..This is what we must do to!…Like a blind man who has his hand upon the shoulder of a man who can see everything and is guiding us”…We need to trust in the one who sees and stop thinking we see and know everything - Because we do not and never will!…..God will guide us along the road, through good times and bad times…..We do not have to “understand”…We simply need to trust!…We need to pray and do!

“You make an end of them in their sleep; the next morning they are like the changing grass, Which at dawn springs up anew, but by evening wilts and fades”

The first reading from Mass today is from the Book of Ecclesiastes…The reading talks about the various stages of ones life….”Rejoice, O young man, while you are young and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart”…..Life is not a sprint but a marathon…..And the “road” takes many twists and turns….There will be times we simply “do not understand”…But that is ok…Our Lady, as perfect as she was did not fully understand when she found her young son speaking to the teachers of the law after he disappeared for three days leaving her and Joseph her husband terrified…But Our Lady trusted….She put her hand into the hand of the Lord and never let it go….This is what we must do….Never let it go!…We do not have to “understand” everything…All things will be revealed in time