What is the North Star of your life that keeps you focused on the significant priorities of your life?

Life is filled with challenges and often consumed with activities, whether at home or work or school or at Church.  Many struggle to find time to even share a meal with their families.  Time is at such a premium that often the important relationships in our lives take a back seat to the pressures of the day.

Can you identify with this challenge at least at times?  It was no different for Jesus and his followers.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ young ministry is faced with many of the same challenges that face us.  Jesus had just appointed his apostles, 12 men of varying backgrounds and life experiences – men who will soon understand the demands of discipleship, the sacrifices they will be called to make.  Jesus and his apostles are challenged with a growing group of people putting great demands on their time.  The scene in today’s Gospel is one of chaos, of crowds so demanding the disciples find it impossible “even to eat.”  Listen again to the beginning of today’s Gospel:  “Jesus came home with his disciples.  Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat.”

We like the original apostles seek to fine the balance in our use of time – making time for work, for our commitment to service in our Church, for the activities that give us energy, but also time for prayer to deepen our relationship with the Lord and making time for the significant relationships of our life.

As I now celebrate my 50^th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, I am filled with much joy and gratitude.   The Lord has blessed me in so many ways.  I live life with an attitude of gratitude.  As Pope Francis has witnessed to so beautifully, I am filled with the joy of the Gospel.

In all truth, even after 50 blessed years as a priest, I still wrestle with finding the balance among the competing demands on my time.  As the pastor of two parishes that have many beautiful ministries, as a person who seeks to empower our wonderful staff, as a person blessed with a large family of a brother and two sisters and 19 nieces and nephews and 28 grandnieces and grandnephews whom I deeply love, with a commitment to my brother priests, with a desire to continue to deep my prayer life, like yourself, I wrestle with balance in my life of prayer and ministry and valuing the important relationships of my life.

There isn’t enough time to all we want to do, right?

So, what is the anchor for my life and your life that keeps us centered, what is our North Star that keeps us focused on the significant priorities of our life?

For me, the North Star of my life is the Mass.  It is what we are doing just now.  In this mystery of the Eucharist, we gather to give thanks to the Lord.  We gather to be fed and nourished at the Table of the Lord.\

In the depth of my heart, I thank you for the privilege of being your pastor.  I thank you for the privilege of praying with you in this mystery of the Eucharist.  I pray for the ongoing, faith-filled awareness that I and all of us claim God’s unending love for each and every one of us.  In the words of my ordaining Bishop, Fulton Sheen, “the greatest love story ever told is contained in the tiny white host.”

It’s like it’s too good to be true.  So we too easily take the mystery of the Eucharist for granted.  Please God we always have the awareness and claim the love that God has for us in the Mass.  It is the North Star of our lives.

What I have said before and probably will say again, as we get older, we sometimes repeat ourselves, don’t you know.  As I am filled with gratitude on my anniversary of priesthood, I am conscious of how my dad shared his faith with me in such a life defining way.  So, as a ten year old at Our Lady of Good Counsel School and Church, my dad was helping me to prepare to become an altar boy.  This was back in the day when the Mass was in Latin and there were the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar that began the liturgy.  The altar boy needed to know the Latin responses to the prayer of the priest.  My dad, the faith-filled man that he was, wanted me not only to memorize the Latin responses but also to know the meaning of the prayers I was saying.  So, my dad would take the part of the priest.  This came easily for my dad as his brother, one of his sons, and one of his grandsons are priests.  So the prayer began:   Introibo ad altare Dei.  Translation:  I will go to the altar of God.  Then my dad taught me the response:  Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.  To God who gives joy to my youth.

What my dad taught me 66 years ago continues to be the center of my prayer life.  It is the center and the North Star of my ministry as a priest.  I will go the altar of God…to God who gives joy to my youth.  Introibo ad altare Dei…Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.

Circling back to today’s Gospel, when the apostles dealing with the demands placed on their time in the young ministry of the Church, they did not even have time to eat.  They had to wrestle with finding the balance among ministry, prayer, and family.  I too wrestle with finding the right balance.  I suspect many of you as well are seeking the right balance in the use of your valued time.

I invite you to share in the wisdom that my dad taught me 66 years ago.  May I and you never be never too busy to go to the altar of God…To God who gives joy to my youth.  Introibo ad altare Dei…Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.  May your North Star in finding the right balance for your life be the Sunday Eucharist in giving thanks to the Lord our God and being fed and nourished at the Table of the Lord.

Have a Blessed Day.