“Before you make a decision, ask yourself this question: will it result in regret or joy in the future?”

“When was the last time you laughed for the sheer joy of your salvation? People are not attracted to somber doctrines. There is no persuasive power in a gloomy and morbid religion. Let the world see your joy and you won't be able to keep them away. To be filled with God is to be filled with joy.” - Anonymous

Scripture Text: (PS 9:2-3, 4 AND 6, 16 AND 19)

R. (see 16a) I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.

I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart;

I will declare all your wondrous deeds.

I will be glad and exult in you;

I will sing praise to your name, Most High.

R. I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.

Because my enemies are turned back,

overthrown and destroyed before you.

You rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked;

their name you blotted out forever and ever.

R. I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.

The nations are sunk in the pit they have made;

in the snare they set, their foot is caught.

For the needy shall not always be forgotten,

nor shall the hope of the afflicted forever perish.

R. I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.

The Psalmist is looking to a future when rejoicing is possible  -- I will rejoice; I will be glad.  Today, though, there is an ambivalence.  The Psalmist claims that enemies and obstacles are overcome, yet it is clear that the work of salvation is still unfinished.  Has God rescued the forgotten needy?  Are the afflicted finally saved? 

In our own days, we might feel a bit of the same.  Looking around, it often seems as though we are with those nations, “sunk in the pit”.  Can we ever get out of it?  And, if we are down in that pit, if our poor are forgotten, and our afflicted perishing, can we rejoice?

In our daily lives we might encounter the simple joys of a good meal with friends, a phone call from a faraway loved one, or just  the beauty of a crisp autumn day.  Today, we wait for the life to come.  Rather than simply dismissing it as an abstract nonsense, or using it as an excuse to avoid the difficult realities of our everyday experiences, we can see God’s amazing grace calling forth the new life in ourselves today.  It can be small or big.  The important thing is that God is here at work, calling us to be children of God, children of life.

And that is why we will rejoice in God’s salvation.  We can look around and see the problems of the day, we can see our poor and needy, our afflicted, our nation and the world stuck in a pit.  But we realize that God is the God of life.  Thus we who are made God’s children are, truly, the People of Life.  Our salvation is precisely in this, that God is the God of Life, not death, “for to Him, all are alive.”

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. ... If a man wants to be always in God's company, he must pray regularly and read regularly. When we pray, we talk to God; when we read, God talks to us. - St. Isidore of Seville

Gospel Text: (LK 19:45-48)
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out
those who were selling things, saying to them,
“It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer,
but you have made it a den of thieves.”
And every day he was teaching in the temple area.
The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people, meanwhile,
were seeking to put him to death,
but they could find no way to accomplish their purpose
because all the people were hanging on his words.

Is my home a house of prayer?

There certainly are “thieves” that we sometimes let in that take us down a very different road from one of prayer. We too often offer a litany of excuses instead of a litany of prayer.

We are too busy…

We are too tired…

We are too frustrated…

We are too angry…

We are too bored…

We are too everything to pray!

But all of those times are exactly when we should stop. Take a deep breath. And pray. We can say thanks for a life that is busy and fulfilled. We can ask for help when we become overwhelmed with work and commitments. We can ask God to help us deal with our frustration and to defuse any anger. We can take a minute to pray for someone else when we are feeling bored or restless. We can reach out to someone who needs an ear or a friendly hello.

When we let those “thieves” of frustration; anger and irritation into our house of prayer, we are actually stealing from ourselves.

Here is the alternative; we can drive the “thieves” out!

Today, I challenge you to “overturn the tables” of vice within your own heart. Drive sin out of your soul and restore the beauty of the Body of Christ by giving our Lord a true home in your heart. Make time for prayer. Make time for the Sacraments. Love one another as Christ has loved you.

“Love is not patronizing and charity isn't about pity, it is about love. “

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.” Abraham J. Heschel (Jewish theologian and philosopher, 1907-1972)

Gospel Text: (LK 19:41-44)
As Jesus drew near Jerusalem,
he saw the city and wept over it, saying,
“If this day you only knew what makes for peace–
but now it is hidden from your eyes.
For the days are coming upon you
when your enemies will raise a palisade against you;
they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides.
They will smash you to the ground and your children within you,
and they will not leave one stone upon another within you
because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

It is quite powerful to imagine Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, and then to imagine Jesus weeping over our world today. I want to ask him, "Lord, tell us, what is hidden from our eyes? What is it we are missing?"

Then, I remember when Pope Francis went to the island of Lampedusa, the Italian refugee colony where a boat of refugees had sunk and many refugees lost their lives. He asked us if we had forgotten how to grieve. It is in this memory that I realized that Jesus was grieving because of his great love and compassion for those who were going to go through terrible suffering. At Lampedusa, Pope Francis asked us if, in our world today, anyone feels "responsible" for what happened there. He said these powerful words:

"The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn't concern us, it's none of our business.

"We are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of 'suffering with:' the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep!"

Though you face opposition now, though you are tempted to abandon the truths you believe in, you can still remain faithful. Yes, it’s hard some days. But don’t give in. Talk to the Lord. Ask for his help and encouragement. Believe that in Christ you have an advocate who sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. You have a redeemer who has sent his Spirit to empower you and to give you the wisdom and self-control, the joy and peace necessary to carry on, faithful, to the end.

If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.

“What the Bible says is really true—it’s better to give than to receive.” — Ted Turner (1938- ), media mogul and philanthropist

Gospel text: (LK 19:11-28)
While they were listening to him speak, he proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the kingdom of God would appear there immediately. So he said, “A nobleman went off to a distant country to obtain the kingship for himself and then to return. He called ten of his servants and gave them ten gold coins* and told them, ‘Engage in trade with these until I return.’ His fellow citizens, however, despised him and sent a delegation after him to announce, ‘We do not want this man to be our king.’ But when he returned after obtaining the kingship, he had the servants called, to whom he had given the money, to learn what they had gained by trading. The first came forward and said, ‘Sir, your gold coin has earned ten additional ones.’ He replied, ‘Well done, good servant! You have been faithful in this very small matter; take charge of ten cities.’ Then the second came and reported, ‘Your gold coin, sir, has earned five more.’ And to this servant too he said, ‘You, take charge of five cities.’ Then the other servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your gold coin; I kept it stored away in a handkerchief, for I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding person; you take up what you did not lay down and you harvest what you did not plant.’ He said to him, ‘With your own words I shall condemn you, you wicked servant. You knew I was a demanding person, taking up what I did not lay down and harvesting what I did not plant; why did you not put my money in a bank? Then on my return I would have collected it with interest.’ And to those standing by he said, ‘Take the gold coin from him and give it to the servant who has ten.’ But they said to him, ‘Sir, he has ten gold coins.’ ‘I tell you, to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Now as for those enemies of mine who did not want me as their king, bring them here and slay them before me.’”

After he had said this, he proceeded on his journey up to Jerusalem.

Does today’s gospel leave you a little uncomfortable? What’s described here doesn’t seem fair, and it isn’t, at least by our standards.

Jesus isn’t talking about God as an international investment banker. Money is just a metaphor. The underlying message is very clear: What we have received is not for us alone; it is to be shared and thereby multiplied. We are stewards, pure and simple. Not just of money – but of talent, aptitude, opportunity, health, heritage, industriousness – everything. It’s all gift, no matter how hard we seem to have worked for it. (Others have worked harder, and have far less.) None of it is intended mainly for us, the caretakers. It is to be shared, not kept. If we don’t see to it that it benefits everyone else, then we’ve failed, and we’ve lost everything we had been given to boot. Yes, indeed. Not our way at all.

Chance alone ensures that assets will become unevenly distributed over time, whether money, talent, or opportunity. Restoring some measure of evenness is up to us as the stewards of all God’s gifts. It won’t happen without us. A disciple of Jesus is not just a believer, not just a member of a Christian church, but someone who actively continues the Master’s work.

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.

I wanted to tell you this, to tell you: courage, go forward, make noise. Where there is youth, there should be noise. Then, we’ll adjust things, but the dreams of a young person always make noise. Go forward! In life there will always be people with proposals to curb, to block your way. Please, go against the current. Be courageous, courageous: go against the current - Pope Francis (August 2013 to youth)

Scripture text: (2 MC 6:18-31)
Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes, a man advanced in age and of noble appearance, was being forced to open his mouth to eat pork. But preferring a glorious death to a life of defilement, he went forward of his own accord to the instrument of torture, spitting out the meat as they should do who have the courage to reject food unlawful to taste even for love of life.

Those in charge of that unlawful sacrifice took the man aside, because of their long acquaintance with him, and privately urged him to bring his own provisions that he could legitimately eat, and only to pretend to eat the sacrificial meat prescribed by the king. Thus he would escape death, and be treated kindly because of his old friendship with them. But he made up his mind in a noble manner, worthy of his years, the dignity of his advanced age, the merited distinction of his gray hair, and of the admirable life he had lived from childhood. Above all loyal to the holy laws given by God, he swiftly declared, “Send me to Hades!”

“At our age it would be unbecoming to make such a pretense; many of the young would think the ninety-year-old Eleazar had gone over to an alien religion. If I dissemble to gain a brief moment of life, they would be led astray by me, while I would bring defilement and dishonor on my old age. Even if, for the time being, I avoid human punishment, I shall never, whether alive or dead, escape the hand of the Almighty. Therefore, by bravely giving up life now, I will prove myself worthy of my old age, and I will leave to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws.”

He spoke thus, and went immediately to the instrument of torture. Those who shortly before had been kindly disposed, now became hostile toward him because what he had said seemed to them utter madness. When he was about to die under the blows, he groaned, saying: “The Lord in his holy knowledge knows full well that, although I could have escaped death, I am not only enduring terrible pain in my body from this scourging, but also suffering it with joy in my soul because of my devotion to him.” This is how he died, leaving in his death a model of nobility and an unforgettable example of virtue not only for the young but for the whole nation.

God is always calling us to a better life than the one we are living — a happier, more complete and more fulfilling life. Sometimes we reject God because his gift seems to require too much effort from us, too much sacrifice. For many — maybe all of us, at times — the cost of letting God more fully into our lives seems too high. He seems to ask too much and it is tempting to ignore God’s constant call to conversion.

We all have a tendency to become comfortable with the familiar, so much so that it can cripple our ability to receive God’s grace and effectively end our conversion process — the process of letting God turn us into better disciples and better people. Stagnation is a real danger in the spiritual life, a danger that God wants to save us from.

When we cooperate with God’s grace we can expect miracles in our own lives — miracles no less great than the raising of the dead. Saint Paul once persecuted the church with great energy and enthusiasm. He was literally a murderer of Christians but God transformed him into a saint. Saint Paul ultimately had a conversion experience and became the greatest missionary the church has ever produced. God gave Saint Paul a new life. He raised him from the death of life apart from God.

How does God want to raise you from the dead? How does he want to transform you and convert you? What parts of your life is God asking you to leave behind? What new life is God calling you to? These are questions that every Christian should ask. What is keeping God from working in your life? Is it apathy? Are you too comfortable with life and unwilling to welcome God’s saving grace?

When we answer God and allow him to transform us, He never disappoints.

“Faith does not eliminate questions. But faith knows where to take them.”

“If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything." ― Peter Kreeft, (Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics)

Gospel Text: (LK 18:35-43)
As Jesus approached Jericho
a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging,
and hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what was happening.
They told him,
“Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.”
He shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”
The people walking in front rebuked him,
telling him to be silent,
but he kept calling out all the more,
“Son of David, have pity on me!”
Then Jesus stopped and ordered that he be brought to him;
and when he came near, Jesus asked him,
“What do you want me to do for you?”
He replied, “Lord, please let me see.”
Jesus told him, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.”
He immediately received his sight
and followed him, giving glory to God.
When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God.

Quite often, our society, the culture of the “politically correct”, will try to shut us up: with Bartimaeus they were not able to. He did not shrink back. Despite «people (…) scolded him, ‘Be quiet!’, he cried out all the more, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’» (Lk 18:39). What a wonderful thing! We feel like saying: —Thank you, Bartimaeus, for this example.

And it does pay to do like him, because Jesus does listen. He always listens!, no matter how much noise some may make around us. Bartimaeus' simple but complete trust —uncomplicated— disarmed Jesus and got to his heart: «and ordered the blind man to be brought to him, [and] (...) He asked him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’» (Lk 18:40-41). Before so much faith, Jesus does not waste his time! And... neither does Bartimaeus: «Lord, that I may see!» (Lk 18:41). And, no sooner said than done: «Receive your sight, your faith has saved you» (Lk 18:42). Because, if «our faith is solid as a rock, it will also defend our home» (St. Ambrose), that is, it will overcome everything.

Who is that blind man for you, if you are in the crowd saying “shhh”? If you are the blind man, are you persistent in your faith?

God does not impose himself against our power of choice, but often enough He comes by close enough: let us, then, learn Bartimaeus' lesson and... let us not miss him!

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Teresa

Gospel Text: (LK 21:5-19)

While some people were speaking about

how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,

Jesus said, "All that you see here--

the days will come when there will not be left

a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down."

Then they asked him,

"Teacher, when will this happen?

And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?"

He answered,

"See that you not be deceived,

for many will come in my name, saying,

'I am he,’ and 'The time has come.’

Do not follow them!

When you hear of wars and insurrections,

do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,

but it will not immediately be the end."

Then he said to them,

"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues

from place to place;

and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.

"Before all this happens, however,

they will seize and persecute you,

they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons,

and they will have you led before kings and governors

because of my name.

It will lead to your giving testimony.

Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,

for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking

that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.

You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends,

and they will put some of you to death.

You will be hated by all because of my name,

but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.

By your perseverance you will secure your lives."

As we move from one Church year to the next, we also move along the in the timeline of human life allotted to each one of us. We age. The certainty of our death is meant to illuminate our life and the certainty of the end of all time and the coming of the Lord is meant to illuminate time's very purpose and fulfillment in Christ. Death can become a second birth. Francis of Assisi prayed these words in his most popular prayer "it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." He referred to death as a "sister" implying that he had a relationship with it. So too did all of the great heroes of our Church, the saints.

Do we view death in this way? Is death a catastrophe to be avoided, a source of fear? Or, as we age, is death becoming a friend, a companion who beckons us on to a more meaningful, redemptive life? Is death becoming a "sister" whom we will welcome in due time? Do we believe that it is simply a change of lodging, a passage to a new birth in the Lord? The author of the Book of Wisdom reminds us that "God did not make death and He does not delight in the death of the living" (Wisdom 1:13).

We need to decide whether we use time for bearing good fruit or to view it as a tyrant who frightens us as we fruitlessly try to resist his claim on our perceived youth. This act of choosing rightly helps us to develop a disposition; a way of living that involves the proper exercise of our human freedom aided by grace. When time is welcomed as an opportunity for bearing the fruits of love and holiness, we receive it in love, perceive it as a field of choice and build an environment for holiness. We choose to fill our lives with love and pour ourselves out for the God of love. When we live this kind of life, Jesus can find a home within us from which He continues His redemptive mission, in time.