Because the process of “giving yourself away” is just that, a process….. And its the only process that leads to heaven…Don’t be fooled nor be deceived

Today at Holy Mass we hear from St Paul in the first reading…..”But, even if I am poured out as a libation upon the sacrificial service of your faith”…..Paul gave everything he had to serve the Lord…And so must we!…..The goal of a Catholic must be to give yourself away…This is the exact opposite message of the world, which takes…Jesus asks us to give…..And I am not taking about money…I am talking about your very self…....This is the path to heaven…Don’t let anyone fool you or tell you anything different…..Jesus was God and he willing laid down his life for the world…Most of us do this for our familles and it is a struggle…....God knows this…So he helps us….As we grow older the “things” of this world grow tiresome and stale…....The only “thing” that can and will give us true and deep fulfillment is the will of God……..That “desire” to do God’s will is within each of us, written on our very hearts….But to “unpack it” is a process…The sooner we do that the more at peace we will be

“One thing I ask of the LORD; this I seek: To dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD and contemplate his temple.”

There is famous book that parents read to their children called the Giving Tree…My Dad read it to me and I still have the very book he read to me on my book shelf…The book tells a story about a tree and a little boy…The tree loved the boy and gave him everything he had until there was nothing left…A rational person could read this book and say why would anyone do such a thing?…To give their life for someone else?…Because that is what love is all about, that is why……..The word “love” is thrown around a lot these days but do we really know what it means?….Love is far from a feeling…It is a choice made each and everyday….Does a mother like to get up and nurse her child in the middle of the night when she is dead tired?…NO - But she does it!…….Does a father tolerate difficult people at work because he likes too?…..No - But he does it!…....Why?…Because they love their children that is why!…Love gives until there is nothing left…Just like the story of the Giving Tree…..Our world does not tell “that story” and sadly far too many people have “bought-in” to the “story” that our current world is telling us….”Get yours” at “all costs”!…This mindset leaves one miserable in the end, in the here and now!…For love to be real it must cost us…..This is the love that Jesus demonstrated to the world on the cross and in order to live “that kind of love”….We need divine assistance…Why?…Because that kind of love cuts to the root of who we are - It can cost us to give up “what we like” - And what “we want”…..However, to truly “find ourself” we must “lose ourself”…True love demands this…This is the path to heaven…The only path to heaven!

“I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD”

Today in the Gospel from Mass Jesus echoes this message….”Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple”…..There is no such thing as a Christian who does “carry their cross”…And the cross Jesus is telling us about is the “cost” of what it means to truly love……..True love costs us deeply and when we fully invest ourself in “that kind of love” we not only find out who we are and who we were born to be…But we find Jesus in the process…..The sooner we discover this reality, which I just described the better…Because the process of “giving yourself away” is just that, a process and its the only process that leads to heaven…Don’t be fooled nor be deceived

“The lowly shall eat their fill; they who seek the LORD shall praise him: “May your hearts be ever merry!”

Today at Holy Mass we hear from the Gospel of St Luke……..”One of those at table with Jesus said to him, “Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.” He replied to him, “A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves. The first said to him, ‘I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them; I ask you, consider me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come.’ The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ The servant reported, ‘Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.’ The master then ordered the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest, says the Lord.

Excuses…Excuses….Excuses…Jesus prepares a “great dinner” and everyone invited has an excuse not to go…..Here is the question…Do we make excuses as well?……..While we are on the earth Jesus “invites” us all to the altar of the Lord to eat of his very body and drink of his blood…And countless upon countless people “make excuses” why they do not need to eat of this “feast”….”I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”…Sounds pretty clear to me!….Yet all we hear is excuse, after excuse, after excuse…Stop with the excuses…..Time is limited

“The lowly shall eat their fill; they who seek the LORD shall praise him: “May your hearts be ever merry!”

“Sharing your bread with the hungry……….Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!”

Today at Holy Mass we hear in the Gospel of Luke something that is very interesting…A contradiction to say the least…But that is exactly what the message of Jesus Christ is all about…A contradiction…Jesus “turned the world on its head”…..That should tell us something about how we should view the world and also how we as Catholics should live in it…We are not here to “go along to get along”…We are a people set apart!….But I digress…Let’s get to the words of Christ today in the gospel…."When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”……..Its November, Thanksgiving Day is coming……No better way to “give thanks” then to give to those who are unable to return the favor

“If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, says the Lord.”

Over the years I have served along side Mother Teresa’s sisters many times at food give outs and at the various soup kitchens they run around the world…I will share with you a story about one of the times……I was in San Francisco for work and it was Sunday. I have been to the city many times so all the things tourists do did not interest me. With that being said, I paid a visit to Mother Teresa’s sisters who run a soup kitchen every Sunday night on the east side of the city in an old firehouse………That evening I arrived before the sisters did and the line of hungry men was already forming…Most of the men there were rather rough looking and before the sisters arrived three Mexican migrants were about to get into a fist fight with this one man who picked the fight and was about to learn the “hard way” why we should never pick fights. Right before the fight broke out, this one very rough looking poor man stepped in and said…..”We don’t do this here”…Implying there was something holy about to take place and he was going to honor it and if these guys about to fight did not honor it too, there would be “trouble”…This guy looked like he could “take care of himself” so the four guys about to brawl settled down….Shortly there after the sisters arrived…We prepared the meal and by now the line at the front door was huge with again, some very “rough customers”…..Inside serving the food was me and one other volunteer and three nuns…..On the line was probably well over 150 men, many of whom I am sure were no strangers to county jail.....….Before the sister who was in charge opened the door, the five of us said the St Michael’s Prayer before a crucifix and a statue of Our Lady……”Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen”…....Then we opened the door and the men poured in!…As I watched this I thought to myself for a moment…This is completely crazy….If chaos breaks out and it just may…We are finished!…Stepping back from this now and trying to view this scene as a “third party” looking in after many years I still think it was completely crazy!....This soup kitchen run by Mother Teresa's sisters was and is a total contradiction to every rational shred of common sense any adult should have…..At the risk of their own safety the sisters fed and feed the poor.....But as the narrative of that particular day wore on and the meal was served, nothing bad happened…The men were respectful, ate and went on their way....Thanks be To God!

“Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also everyone for those of others”

Jesus tells us in the gospel today from Mass that we are to help those who are in need and he goes on to say if you do….”You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”…To live as a disciple of Christ, to this very day means to live a contradiction, nothing has changed in 2000 years….The world tells us “one thing”…But Jesus tells us something else…He tells us in Matthew’s gospel point blank…”What you do for the least of these, you do to me”….That is not a suggestion either…Read the passage for your self.....And what Jesus said in Matthew’s gospel will be on “the final exam”….So take note!

“Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!”

When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as our self…There it is…You got the “secret”

Today at Holy Mass we hear in the Gospel of St Mark a scribe asks Jesus a question…."Which is the first of all the commandments?" ….Jesus being the straight forward man that he is boils the entire law down to two sentences….”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these”….BOOM - There it is!……But here is the question?…How can we do this being that we are just mere humans all born with a fallen nature?…The answer is we can not do this to the degree that Jesus asks of us without divine assistance…I can hear all the “go-getters” saying right now…”Maybe you cannot do it but I can”….My answer to “that guy” is….”Time will prove me right and our shared fallen human nature bets against it!”….Jesus established a Church for a reason. In the Catholic Church we have the Sacraments and they give us the needed divine assistance to do exactly what Jesus asked of us…..When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as we would want to be treated…There it is…You got the “secret”!….But how you may ask do we learn to see Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament?….The answer…We must remove all the “impediments” that impair our “vision”…We do that by going to a Priest frequently in the Sacramental of Reconciliation…Then when we receive the source of all grace, which is Jesus fully present in the Blessed Sacrament…Our “vision” will be “20/20” and in turn, we will “see” our neighbor differently and as a result, we will treat him differently.

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord; and my father will love him and we will come to him.”

Mother Teresa used to tell a story…She would say, “You can not give what you do not have.”….Mother Teresa was a very practical woman and that statement is simply common sense…When Mother Teresa would tell her sisters this, she would relate it to the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary…Allow me to do the same for purposes of this reflection……The first Joyful Mystery is the Annunciation of our Lord. This is where an angel came to Mary and asked her to be the Mother of God…And as we all know, Mary said yes….Upon her confirmation of this request, she was filled with grace….So what does Mary do next?….In the second Joyful Mystery, which is the Visitation by Mary to her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant, Mary goes forth to assist Elizabeth……Now lets break this story down that Mother Teresa used to tell her sisters….First Mary says, yes to God and is filled with grace…And then see goes forth to her neighbor to give that grace away…..That is how we must respond and in that order…We can not give what we do not have….First we must “be filled” by the Holy Spirit…How do we do that? - Daily prayer, Fasting and living a Sacramental life…Then once we are “filled” with the grace of God…We “go out” to our neighbor, to give that grace away…If we try to “love our neighbor” first, without God filling us with his Holy Spirit, we will not “love our neighbor” in the way God asks of us, due to our limitations as human beings…First we must be “filled”…Then we must “go forth”…In that order…Why?…Because we can not give what we do not have

"Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today."

Today in St Mark’s gospel from Mass, a scribe asks Jesus a simple question and Jesus answers the question. If the same question was asked of you…"Which is the first of all the commandments?”…What would you say?…My bet is you too would say the same thing that the scribe did - I have faith in you!….. That we must love God first and then love our neighbor as our self…..Just as Jesus asked of us…However, the “trick” here is not knowing the answer to the question…The “trick” is how do we execute what we know to be true….Mother Teresa breaks it down for us…Because we can not give what we do not have…And Mother Teresa learned this from Our Lady in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary…….Remember, Mary first said YES to God, was filled with the Holy Spirit and then went forth to serve her neighbor who was in need of assistance….Mom knows best!….May we all learn from her example

When we can see Jesus who is fully present in the Blessed Sacrament, we will see God in our neighbor…And when we see God in our neighbor, we will treat our neighbor as our self…There it is…You got the “secret”

The Process of Purification starts now!…Let us begin

Today the Universal Catholic Church remembers all those who departed from us in the state of grace….This day is known as All Souls Day….Americanized Christianity does not believe in Purgatory…Sadly, many Catholics no longer concern themselves with the reality of Purgatory either…..Nothing enters heaven and stands before God until it is made pure….We must remember this reality because it is reality!….Therefore “all who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven”…Do we pray for the dead?…This is a great mercy and our responsibility……Do we have Masses said for our loved ones?…….For those who are in Purgatory have their “ticket” for heaven in their hand…God is just “cleaning them up”…This is a great mercy……However, we should start the process of ‘cleaning ourself up” now

Though I walk in the valley of darkness, I fear no evil, for you are with me.

"To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the 'eternal punishment' of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the 'temporal punishment' of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.”

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul”

Some many read what I just noted, which is a perennial teaching of the Catholic Church and think this is not fair…..God is perfectly merciful and perfectly just - Remember that!……While he forgives us of our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we still may “cling” or have an attachment to certain sins…Purgatory frees us from those “bonds of slavery”, this is why we must “work on” our sanctification in the here and now….You don’t believe me?…Let’s see what St Paul has to say about it in Scripture….”So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work. Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world”..........There are two purposes for going to Confession with a Priest frequently…The first is obvious, to obtain mercy and forgiveness from God, which is granted free of charge!…The second purpose of going to Confession frequently is not discussed much and this is why I will note it now…When we go to confession, we are given grace to overcome our sins…Each of us are different and have different weaknesses….Our weakness result in us having certain “attachments” to certain sins….Your “attachments” may be different then mine but we all have them…When we go to Confession frequently (say once a month), not only are we forgiven but we are given grace to overcome our attachments to sin…And that results in us growing in virtue and being sanctified…..Another tool at our disposal is to fast to overcome our sins…Fasting is not just for Lent….The Church asks us to fast every Friday and if you want to go “old school”, fast Wednesday as well…Again, these are “tools” for us to overcome attachments to sin and by using these “tools” we open ourself up to God’s grace to free us from the “bondage” of sin, which is a process and takes time!

“He guides me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage”

As I noted in the first paragraph of this reflection today….We SHOULD - In fact, we MUST pray for the dead, especially for our loved ones who have died….Pretending Purgatory does not exist is not to believe in reality…We do not determine reality and as the great people of New Jersey like to put it…”It is what it is”….All this being said, let your hearts rest in the hope that….”The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself. In the time of their visitation they shall shine, and shall dart about as sparks through stubble”……..The Process of Purification starts now!…Let us begin

If you want to “make a difference”…Strive to become a saint….If you think God “can not work with someone like you”….Tell that to St Matthew…Who me?….Yes - YOU!

Today at Holy Mass we honor the saints…Who are the saints?…They simply are people who are in heaven…Some of these people are known to the world but most simply made it their life’s goal to do God’s will in whatever state of life God had chosen for them…..St John tells us this clearly from the second reading today from Mass. ”Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure”….Each of us have something to do and in order to do it, we must cooperate with God….At our Baptism, the life of Christ was placed in us….The mark of Baptism cannot be erased!….However, the process of sanctification is just that, a process…God who is “the potter and we the clay” are molded and formed by sanctifying grace…..Because of our human condition, we hold unto the “things of this world” as God gently “opens our hands”, which grasp too tightly to the many "things" that keep us from our true purpose……God does not call the qualified - He qualifies the called…And each of us have been called!…..Allow the “master potter” to work and mold his “clay”…..The final product will set the world on fire!

“I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus”

If you knew me at the age of 19, you would not recognized me now. When I was in college, a Catholic college I will add, there was a group of girls who would kid around with me, calling me “Father Joe”…....They did it as a joke because the way I comported myself was very far from being “Father Joe”…And we would all laugh…But I will share with you something I have never told anyone…When these girls would say that to me, behind all the laughter, there was something inside of me that knew that what was being said was more true than false…I can not put the feeling I had into words…But it was there, almost like a voice and it was very clear - And I still remember it!…..I am far from a saint…Just ask my wife, she is the saint for having to put up with me!…But I am trying!!!…The goal of my life is to grow closer to God…Why?…Because I know that the closer I grew to God, the better husband I will be, the better father I will be, the more I can do for humanity….This is something that the world misses….We prioritize so many things that in the end will “bear no fruit”……The closer we get to God, the more we will impact the world!…Don’t believe me?…Read the lives of the saints….They walked the earth, no different than we do, yet they radically followed the Gospel…And what God accomplished through them is simply amazing!…Why not us?….What is holding you back?

“After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb”

Caravaggio was an Italian painter in the 16th century. He famously painted a portrait entitled “The Calling of St Matthew”…Matthew before he encountered Christ was a tax collector and considered a public sinner……I love the painting for many reasons…In it Matthew is at a table surrounded by other public sinners and they are counting money….Jesus enters the room with St Peter and simply points to Matthew, who is shocked and basically responds to Christ like, “Who me?”…The interesting thing about Jesus in the portrait is, his feet are pointed away from Matthew…Almost communicating to the viewer of the painting a message something like this…”I am pointing at you (Matthew) and that is all I have to do….And now I am leaving the room because I know you will respond”….Jesus knew Matthew better than Matthew knew himself……The same goes for us today!

“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven”

Getting back to St John today from Mass…John was a gospel writer and a companion of Jesus…His gospel is not like the other three…Its more mystical…The other three gospels tell the story of Christ, St John takes it to another level…..He speaks of many things unseen….So why bring that up?…John tells us today that, “ What we shall be has not yet been revealed”…I believe he is speaking to us specifically…There is a “seed” within each of us that if we nurture it, will grow into a "mighty tree"…Ironically enough, St Matthew tells us about that "seed" in his gospel…”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”….To nurture “this seed” is the greatest thing a person can do while they walk the earth…If you want to “make a difference”…Strive to become a saint….If you think God “can not work with someone like you”….Tell that to St Matthew…Who me?….Yes - YOU!