What is the cornerstone of your life?…..That is the question…..Is it love?…Is this what drives you?...And if it is love….Who do you love?

Today at Holy Mass we hear from the gospel of Luke…Jesus addresses the leaders and teachers of the people….”“Woe to you who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed. Consequently, you bear witness and give consent to the deeds of your ancestors, for they killed them and you do the building”…….Have we ever stopped to think about what it must have been like for Christ to speak truth to power knowing full well he was going to be tortured and brutally murdered?…..Can you ever imagine the thoughts that ran through his head as he sweat blood in the garden of gethsemane the night before he was killed?…..What drives a person to go to such extremes?…The answer is simple…Love!….Only a person who loves can do what Jesus did….No one is willing to die for a lie…..But for love a person will do almost anything and endure the worst the world can throw at them…..We can study and read about Jesus, the lives of the saints and the teachings of the Catholic Church all we want…But if we are not driven by love…We will not stand firm when the “rubber meets the road”…..However, if we encounter love itself….God who loves us…We can endure…We will persevere…And we will conquer in the name of the Carpenter from Nazareth…Only love can do that and we must find this love because it is there!

“Whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber”

St Peter was a flawed man as we all know…Peter as they say “shot from the hip”…He put his “foot in his mouth” often…Peter was a regular man and when the “rubber met the road”…He denied Jesus in his moment of need to save his own skin…….”He began to curse and to swear, “I do not know this man about whom you are talking.”…….However, Peter was humble enough to repent and reconcile with Jesus after the fact…..”He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep”……As we all know, Peter redeemed himself and did in fact “feed Jesus's sheep”…He went on to be the first pope, lead the early church and he was crucified himself…..How did he do all that?….When one meditates upon the life of St Peter, we may come to see that he was very human and maybe he needed to fail for him to eventually succeed….Isn’t that the way it is for all of us too?….Many times we fail in trying to follow Jesus…In trying to do the right thing…We fail…Only to get back up and try again…That is what St Peter did…And in the end Peter succeeded…..God uses our failures to fuel our successes…..If you allow your failures to motivate you forward….Learn from your mistakes…Reconcile yourself to God…You will be given the needed grace as St Peter was to “complete the race”.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”

Getting back to the gospel today from Mass…The teachers of the law did not want to hear what Jesus was saying because they liked their status within society more than they valued the Truth itself…We too must ask ourself this question…What do we value more then the Truth?…Is it comfort?…Is it status?…..All those things are temporary and in the end will be meaningless when we face death in our final hour…..…What will give you real comfort and peace in the moments before you die?…You must answer that question for yourself…..We will all die one day…..What is the cornerstone of your life?…..That is the question…..Is it love?…Is this what drives you?...And if it is love….Who do you love?