On this the last Sunday of the Church year, the Feast of Christ the King, we celebrate that Jesus is the Lord of all creation, the king of the universe.  The Gospel chosen for this feast is taken from the trial scene where Jesus is being interrogated by Pilate, who directly asks Jesus. “Are you the king of the Jews?”  Jesus responded in so many words:  “Why do you ask?”

The evangelist John’s portrayal of Jesus’ trial before Pilate depicts Jesus and Pilate having a rather extended dialogue over Jesus’ identity as a king.  We are left to reflect on what it means to be a king.

Pilate comprehends a rule in which the sovereign can enforce his will.  But everything Jesus is about pertains to another plane, one based on loving relationships.  Jesus draws all people to himself, not by force or fear, but by the example of his life-giving love.

Jesus was certainly a strange kind of king:  Jesus was born in a stable and reached his glory on the cross of Calvary.  I invite you to gaze at our image of the crucified Christ.  Jesus is a king who serves – not one who rules.  Jesus’ dominant ministry is mediating the forgiving love of God to sinful people.

The prayerful question we ask ourselves:  “In what ways is Jesus the ruler, the king of your life?” 

Presently as we are dealing with the fear and threat that was generated by the horrific terrorist attack in Paris last weekend?  Is the message of love and forgiveness professed by Jesus as the Lord of our lives get modified as we are gripped with fear of terrorists?  How safe are we from the threat of senseless violence?  Are we still expected to look with love on those whose hearts may be filled with hate?  Can we welcome refugees with love in our hearts if we are paralyzed by fear that these refugees are a threat to our safety?

We mourn the breakdown of our global family and the violence in so many places when humans created in the image of God choose death instead of life, when they choose revenge instead of mercy.  In the midst, we still ask how is Jesus the king of the culture we live in?

Closer to home, is Jesus the king of your family life?  Is each and every member of your love treated with the love that Jesus has for each member of your family?  How much of a commitment do you have for family prayer?  Can you really say that Jesus is the King of your family life if you are too busy to pray together?

Is Jesus the king of your sexual life?  If we use pornography for our sexual pleasure in ways that does not reflect our profound respect for another’s person’s sexuality, are we really believing that Jesus is the king of our lives?  How much of our hearts are filled with generosity when we reflect on the number of children that we would like for our family?

This weekend we are celebrating our stewardship commitment Sunday, a time to Jesus first – to make him King – in at least three areas of our life  --  our time, talent, and treasure.   We are asking you to place your stewardship commitment card in the second collection today.  If you have forgotten to bring yours, there are extra stewardship cards in the pews.  We invite you to fill out the card now as together we reflect on the stewardship of time, talent, and treasure.  We then ask you to place the stewardship commitment card in the second collection today.

The stewardship of time is your prayer life.  Prayer is our conversation with Jesus.  How often to you talk with Jesus?  Personally I cannot envision a day to go by with our spending some time in prayer.  Can you say that Jesus is the king of your life if prayer is not part of your daily life?  If Christ is the king, the Mass needs to be part of your life Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

The stewardship of talent is how you use your God-given talents.  In the stewardship of talent, we are called to participate in some dimension of our parish life to serve others in our parish community and to help us be a faith community that gives praise and thanks to God for our blessings.

Is Christ the king of your lives if our participation in our parish amounts to a few minutes each Sunday?  We can sit back and lament that our parish used to be larger than it is now.  We can lament that our youth are not as religious as we are.  Or we can commit ourselves to become part of the solution and be willing to use our talents for the building of our parish community.  If we trust in the kingship of Jesus as the Lord of our parish life, then our future is full of hope.  The spirituality of stewardship calls us to make a commitment to serve, for example, on one of our parish leadership teams.

Is Jesus the king of your hard-earned finances?  How much are we called to share what we have with our Church, with our diocese in the CMA, and with people in need in our community?  If we are able to tithe the biblical 10% of our income, that is incredibly generous.  Do we think in terms of tithing as we value our income?

But still, there is a further question to be asked:   we need to further ask is Jesus the King of your life over how you spend the remaining 90% of your income.

Christ the King won’t ask how many material possessions you have, but He will ask if they dictated your life.

Christ the King won’t ask in what neighborhood you lived, but He will ask how you treated your neighbors.

This weekend we are asked to make a decision on our spirituality of stewardship.  We ask you to take a couple of minutes in quiet or perhaps in filling our stewardship commitment card to be placed in the second collection.  Thank you for your generosity and for your spirituality.

Apocalyptic language is a message of hope.

Autumn now seems to be giving a hint of the winter to come. Many leaves have fallen and others are continuing to fall.  There seems to be more cold darkness as the days grow shorter.  Additionally, the liturgy calls us to consider the end times as we approach the end of the liturgical year.  The first reading from Daniel and the Gospel from Mark uses very apocalyptic language designed to be sensational.  “The sun will be darkened.  The stars will be falling from heaven and the power in the heavens will be shaken.”

They speak of the breakdown of the stable parts of our surroundings.  Yet, apocalyptic language is a message of hope.  Why?  Because Jesus has triumphed over sin and evil.  The ultimate victory belongs to Jesus.  Even though it seems like our world is falling apart, for those who trust in Jesus, the message is always one of hopefulness.

Even before the ultimate end times, all of us at one time or another experience our life being shattered;            

                --we lost our job;

    --our spouse proved unfaithful;

                --we fell into a habit of sinfulness.

                --we learned we were ill;

                --we lost someone dear to us.

Our world fell apart—the sun was darkened; the moon lost its brightness.

But you did not abandon us, Lord God.   In the midst of turmoil, we received a great grace.  We understood for the first time the meaning of our faith.  We discovered inner resources we didn’t know we had; friends rallied around us.

The Gospel calls us to learn a lesson from the fig tree.  Even in the midst of the deep winter of our lives, the twigs on the fig tree have become supple indicating that summer is near.  In the big picture, before this generation has passed away, new and wonderful things will have taken place.

Lord, prayer is trusting totally in your love, knowing with unshakeable confidence that heaven and earth will certainly pass away, but your love for us will not pass away.

Jesus makes it very clear that we do not know when the end will come; of that day or that hour no one knows.  Our task is to act as the people who have been given the responsibility to use creation well, to act as good stewards, and to remember that when we abuse creation, we are breaking God’s fundamental loving trust is us. The creation is God’s; we have been entrusted with it; we are called to be good stewards. 

In our parish, we are beginning a two week cycle of stewardship.  We are inviting all of us to consider the commitment we make in helping us as a parish community to celebrate the spiritual dimension of our lives – the ways we give thanks to the Lord our God in prayer for the blessings of our lives.  We reflect on what it would mean for us to become more than a “one-hour a week” Catholic.  What commitment are you called to make to build our parish community so that we better serve one another and how we witness to the love of Jesus in our community?

What is stewardship?  It is a very biblical word.  From the first pages of the Book of Genesis, we all called to be stewards of God’s creation.  In the sacrament of Baptism, we are missioned to witness to the love of Jesus in the world.  We do this by a stewardship of time, talent, and treasure.

The stewardship of time is our prayer life.  Is prayer a part of our daily lives?  How do we pray? Do we come to Church to participate in our Eucharistic Adoration?   Do we pray with our family?  As a parent, is family prayer a part of the rhythm of your family’s life?  Is the Eucharist a commitment Sunday after Sunday after Sunday?

The talent portion of our stewardship is using our God given talents in the building of our parish community.  How can we get involved in our parish life?  We are having a ministry faire immediately after Mass in our parish life so that you may become more familiar with our parish ministries and that you will make the decision to become involved in one or more of our parish ministries.  This ministry faire is an important part of our stewardship commitment.

We have four parish leadership teams:  worship, faith formation, community building, and operations.  There are multiple ministries within each leadership team.  We would love for you to take a few minutes after Mass to stop down to the parish hall and see how you can become involved in one of our parish ministries.

This coming Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm, I will be an “state of the parish” presentation, and we will dialogue together on the blessings and areas of growth for our parish.  As your schedule, I am hopeful you will join me this Wednesday Evening at 7:00 pm.

The stewardship of treasure is your decision to tithe a portion of your income to the Church for the building of the Body of Christ.  You have received a stewardship commitment card in our parish mailing to you.  Next Sunday is stewardship commitment Sunday in which we ask you place your commitment card in the second collection reflecting your stewardship of time, talent, and treasure.  If you are able to increase your stewardship commitment by a bit, it enables us to expand the ministries of our parish.

Part of the stewardship of treasure is our commitment to the diocesan CMA.  We have become stagnant in reaching our goal of $81,456.   We are stalled at $43, 845 from 220 donors that is 53% of our goal.  We need the support of everyone for us to reach our goal.  We would ask you to consider making your CMA pledge this week.  Thank you so much.

In a few words, the spirituality of stewardship is grounded in our conviction that all is a gift of God.  What is have been given is given for the sharing.  We are missioned to be the stewards of God’s creation.  Each one of us has a responsibility.   With the grace of God and when we work together as the faith community of the Church of the Holy Spirit, all things are possible in Him who strengthens us.

The way through loss and death...is love.

In the first Scripture reading from the book of Kings,  the prophet Elijah was asking the poor widow of Zarephath first for a cup of water and then for a bit of bread.

If we are to understand the widow of Zarephath, we need to notice something about her that has not been probably part of our experience:  she is starving.  She and her son have strictly rationed themselves as their store of food diminished.  Meals would have gotten fewer and fewer.  She and her son must have been wasting away long before they got to the last handful of flour.

Yet when a stranger asked her for something to eat, she looked him in the face – and did not say no.

Would we have the compassion of the widow of Zarephath who was worried not just about herself but about her son a well.  She gave to the stranger the food she had saved for her son.

There is such an important lesson here.

To give from our livelihood is not only an act of generosity; it is also an act of trust in God.  We can give from our need only if we trust that God will provide for us.  Jesus himself demonstrates the ultimate act of generosity and trust in God as he gives his life for us on the cross.

And as the Scripture tells us, she was rewarded for that trust in God:  “her jar flour did not run dry.”

When does our giving and giving generously challenge us that we have to trust in God for that next bit of bread?  Have we challenged ourselves to give generously as the widows in today’s scriptures?

But looking at the readings today from the book of Kings and Mark’s Gospel, I was struck by something else.

The readings are about giving, yes, and giving generously.

They are also about something unexpected.  They are about loss, and death.  The two women in these readings are widows.  Once, they loved someone, and depended upon him.  But death changed everything.  Their life has changed.  A widow’s life can be very difficult.  They are grieving.  Financially they are suffering significant hardships. 

And yet.

The widows we meet today at instead of hoarding their assets for themselves, and holding on to whatever they could.  They surrendered.  They gave of themselves, however they could, whatever they could.  A little cup of flour, a couple of small coins.  They held nothing back.

And they were blessed.

There is a lesson we all need to hear.  We may suffer losses that rob us of those we love.  We may grieve, and we may mourn, and we may ask ourselves “Why?”

But the way through loss, the way through death… is love.  Opening our hearts.  Giving ourselves.  Holding nothing back. 

The Scriptures give us a powerful message about grieving.  “Blessed are they who mourn; for they will be comforted.”  Jesus and his mother Mary have taught us how to grieve.  Yes, we are to be in touch with the loss we experience, the loved one we miss so deeply.  We certainly are not to sweep our feelings under the carpet and pretend to be brave. 

As did the widows in the scriptures today, the great lesson in grieving is to hold nothing back, to continue to serve, and most importantly, continue to trust in God.  “And the jar of flour will not run dry.”

Pope Francis has often told us that the poor have much to teach us.  Today’s scriptures are beautiful examples.  These widows had no one to speak on behalf of their needs.  It would be easy to take advantage of them.  Yet, what they teach is about faith.  When we trust in God, our lives are very much blessed.  These widows know a truth about the spiritual life that too often escapes us.

These widows through the loss and death of their husbands came to the profound realization of the faith journey.  The poverty of the poor opens their hearts to turn to trust in God as the source of all blessings.  As a result they can give to the stranger their lasts cup of flour or the last penny to their name.  God will not abandon them.

For ourselves, as we pray over the scriptures, are their parallels in our lives with the poor widows of the Scriptures?  Please God we have a ton of money.  Your response to that:  “Wait a minute, Father, money doesn’t grow on trees with our family.  We need to be very frugal with our resources.”  I really, really understand that, but it is also true we do not experience the poverty and hunger that so many hungry people experience around the world.  Comparatively speaking, we are very blessed.

Friday afternoon, I celebrated Mass with many widows at Penfield Place nursing home.  As you know, the lives of nursing home residents are very much simplified.  Their faith comes from this simple trust that we can do all things in whom who strengthens us.  Nursing home residents do not have the mobility that you and I enjoy, but these residents have much to teach us in their simple trust that God will provide for us and that our lives are very much blessed.

As Pope has said, the poor have much to teach us:

n  We are to give and to give generously.

n  When we give from our need, we simply trust in God’s unending love.

n  The way through loss and death is ---- to love.

Blessed are those who have to rely on God for every breath they take.

The blessedness of the beatitudes are for people who have invited Christ into their daily lives.    Their blessedness is an inner blessedness, an inner joy that comes from trusting and rejoicing and being grateful for God’s unending love for us.  In the beatitudes, we see the heart of God.   Saints are people who are aware of God’s great love for them, and are witnesses of the love of Jesus in the world.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the poor in spirit…The poor in spirit are those who know that stand in need of God’s redeeming love.  Our wealth doesn’t come from are material assets; our real wealth comes from in God’s healing love for us.  To tap into God’s unending love for us, we need first to recognize our need for God’s grace.  This is to say we need to recognize our poverty of spirit which moves us to find an inner blessedness that is God’s gift to us.  Blessed are those who have to rely on God for every breath they take.

The greatest spiritual deception of all is thinking we are self-righteousness; that our spiritual will power is the source of our holiness.  That is the biggest illusion of all.  The spiritual life begins with our need for God.  Left to ourselves, we are poor; we stand in need.  The grace of this situation is that it can lead us to trust not in ourselves, but to trust in God.

And so the beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

Reflecting on the beatitudes is a wonderful introduction to the Jubilee Year of Mercy that Pope Francis has announced for our Church.

In preparing for the day that I was ordained a priest, I had 12 years of seminary formation – four years of high school, four years of college, and four years of theology.  I spent a lot of time in the classroom.  When I think of the seminary formation of the first apostles, Jesus enrolled them in the school of mercy.  The disciples of Jesus found themselves in a continual classroom for learning how to be merciful.  They listened to Jesus preach about forgiveness.  They watched as Jesus healed the sick, expelled demons and forgave sinners.

Yet the deepest lessons for the disciples occurred when they themselves went through a heartbreaking baptism of mercy.  The Gospels tell of the disciples’ constant failure to understand Jesus and his mission.  They think they are on the way to power and greatness.  They are dismayed when Jesus predicts his suffering and rejection in Jerusalem. 

The whole story reveals that the disciples had to experience their own need for mercy so that they would be prepared to preach it to others.  For example, Peter, the leader, undergoes a profound failure, denying any relation with Jesus in his hour of need. 

St. Paul, like St. Peter, is prepared for his mission as Apostle to the Gentiles by his own wrenching experience of failure and conversion.  Again, it might seem strange that God would choose an enemy of  the church to be its greatest evangelist, until we realize that Paul’s conversion was essential to his conversion.

The baptism of mercy of Pete and Paul was to recognize the left to their own devices, they were on a sinking ship.  Conversion happened when they made the leap of faith in trusting in God for every breath they took.

It was so in the time of Jesus.  Her was welcomed by sinners but rejected by respectable people, especially religious leaders.  They saw Jesus as undermining morality by being too easy on sinners and lawbreakers.

In our day, Pope Francis has stated in his Apostolic Exhortation the Joy of the Gospel that this same resistance to mercy has in many ways come to characterize the institutional Church.  Pope Francis seeks to revitalize the Church by insisting we be a Church of Mercy;  we are to share the joy of the Gospel with one and all. 

Pope Francis is calling the whole church to a conversion that comes from our poverty of spirit.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those whose wealth comes from their trust in the merciful love of Jesus.

Francis has preached the Gospel with his smile and his eagerness to embrace God’s people.  The pope has also preached the Gospel by making mercy our highest priority.  The leadership of Pope Francis helps us to discover the merciful love of Jesus.

The parables of Jesus are stories of mercy.   The Parable of the Prodigal Son identifies the deepest obstacle to mercy.  Those who feel they have never received mercy themselves find it hardest to let God give it to others.  This can be seen in the behavior of the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.  He wasn’t able to celebrate with his younger brother because he was not aware of the father’s merciful love for him.

Mercy comes from mercy.  Our mercy to each other comes from God’s mercy to us.

What about ourselves?   What about our Church?  How aware are we that we are the generous recipients of God’s merciful love?  Are there ways we are reluctant to share the merciful love of Jesus with others?  You can be sure if we are reluctant to be a Church of mercy, a Church extravagant in witnessing to God’s unconditional for one and all,  we ourselves need to go back to the first beatitude.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Out of our poverty, out of our brokenness of spirit, may we experience the conversion of relying more fully on God’s grace.  May we receive the grace of experiencing more fully of God’s merciful love that is extended to us.  Blessed are they who rely on God for every breath they take.

"Lord, that I may see."

In the recent pilgrimage of Pope Francis to the United States, to Washington, NYC, and Philadelphia, we were all very conscious of the security guard that surrounded Pope Francis every step of the way.  Obviously, there were concerns about his safety.  He had a tight schedule and so on and so on.  I think we were touched when Pope Francis broke through security to kiss a baby or simply to be present to a person and to bless them.  His reaching out to be with people was a most touching memory we have of our beloved pope.

In today’s Gospel, the disciples were the security guard for Jesus as He was leaving Jericho.  To keep some order and to keep people from bothering Jesus, the disciples kept people like the blind Bartimaeus as a distance.  The disciples basically told the blind beggar to shut up.  He was disturbing the peace.

The irony of this Gospel passage is that it was the disciples who were blind.  They had a spiritual blindness to the healing, merciful mission of Jesus.  They simply did not get it.  They were very content to leave people with disabilities as unnoticed people on the side of the road.

I wonder if we faithful Church goers, starting with the pastor, sometimes act as the security guard for Jesus in the same way that the disciples did in the Gospel account.  Who are the people we tell to shut up and we want to keep at a distance from our faith community.

Perhaps it is people who we judge are not living a moral life -- people with a different sexual orientation, people who have experienced separation and divorce in their married life, people we judge not to be living a Christ-like life, people we think are phonies, people who are disruptive to the ways we pray.  Often we are unaware of the ways we can keep people from experiencing the merciful love of Jesus.

May the blind man Bartimaeus represent all the unnoticed people, all the forgotten, people with disabilities, and the people we try to shut up in very polite words.  May we witness to the merciful love of Jesus to all who are in need.

As we pray over today’s Gospel, be aware of the physical blindness of Bartimaeus, and be aware also of the spiritual blindness of the disciples.  As we pray in the Bartimaeus, “Lord that I may see.  We pray for both physical and spiritual sightedness to the ways Jesus is present and the ways Jesus wishes to be present to all who are in need.

In the first Scripture reading from the prophet Jeremiah, the prophet is promising restoration to a weary people, promising the Israelites a future full of hope, promising God’s people a new dawn of God’s merciful love in their lives.  When you are beaten as the Israelites, your vision becomes jaded and you have a hard time believing that your future is full of hope.  But the clear message is that the crosses of life, when we are anchored in Christ, lead to the dawn of a new day.

Bartimaeus never gave up.  He was persistent.  He made known his request to God.  He was a man of faith.  In this account, he understood the mission of Jesus far better that the disciples die.

May we with the persistence of Bartimaeus ask the Lord that I may see.  May we see and experience the truth of our lives.  God’s love for us is unending.  Whatever anxiety we experience, whatever struggle we are dealing with, whatever disabilities hold us down, we all are the recipients of the abundant merciful love of Jesus.  Lord, that I may see how you are present to me in my time of need.

This week’s Gospel invites us to place ourselves along the way with Bartimaeus to contemplate and admit our own blind spots.  This is   bit of a challenge for all of us because it is so easy to be unaware of our own blind spots.

A blind spot in our spiritual spot may be the blindness from experiencing the merciful healing of Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  What is the last time we have experienced this sacrament?  What would it take for you to remove this spiritual blindness and know the forgiving love of Jesus in this beautiful sacrament?

Who are the unnoticed people on the side of the road that we so easily pass by?  How aware are we of the people near us in Church today?  What can we do to connect more fully with the people in our faith community?

Who is the person in our family life that we have built up a wall of blindness that makes it so difficult to reach out to.  Lord, that I may see how your grace can bring healing to this relationship?

The dialogue of Jesus with Bartimaeus is the dialogue Jesus has with us today.  The Lord is asking us:  What do you want me to do for you?  May we respond with Bartimaeus:  Lord, that I may see.  Let Bartimaeus be our guide.  He asks for the most important gift God can give.  May we see what is of real value in life.  May we know what is true.  May we judge rightly and walk confidently in the light of Christ. 

Notice in the account that the very first thing Bartimaeus sees when he is healed is the face of Christ.  To know Jesus is the key to the Christian life.   To know Jesus is to know God and our true self.

Bartimaeus’ prayer is answered.  Once he has seen Jesus face to face, there is no other life for him except to be with Jesus and to follow him.  He leaves behind his beggar’s cloak and joins Jesus and the other disciples on the way to Jerusalem.  Like a man in love, he has seen the face of his beloved, and there is no turning back.  May we too be cured of our blindness which keeps us from seeing the face of Jesus.  We seek the conversion that comes from encountering Christ.

The Francis Effect

This afternoon at St. Joseph's Church, we viewed a wonderful documentary witnessing to the spirituality and vision of Pope Francis.  With the guidance of the Holy Spirit in March of 2013, the College of Cardinals elected Jorge Bergoglio to be our Pope, the Vicar of Christ on earth, the chief shepherd of the Church.

He chose the name Francis seeking the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi.  Who is Pope Francis?  In his own words, he is a sinner who asks for our prayer.  His beauty is that he is a simple, humble person of faith with a solidarity and and a great love for the poor.

Among his many memorable quotes was his response to a question about a person who is homosexual, Pope Francis simply said:  "Who am I to judge?"  With this quote and by his way of life, Pope Francis communicates the merciful love of Jesus.  In initiating the jubilee year of mercy, Pope Francis wants us to a Church of Mercy -- a field hospital for the wounded, rather than a tribunal that restricts people in need from experiencing the merciful love of God.

If you would like to join a six week small Christian community to further explore the spirituality of Pope Francis, call the Church office  -- 586-8089 -- or go on the parish website.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

I would be glad to have the rich young man in today’s Gospel account as a parishioner of St Joseph’s.  What we know about him he kept the commandments.  He was a good rule keeper.  He was in Church every Sunday.  He contributed to the support of the parish and to the CMA as well.  He probably would volunteer to serve on the parish council.  From a pastor’s point of view, what is there not to like about him?

He knelt before the Lord and asked the right question:  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Hopefully that is our question to the Lord in prayer as well.  Jesus looked on him with great love and said there is one thing you lack.  “Go, sell what you have and give to the poor and then come, follow me.”  Wow!  Talk about being asked to get outside your comfort zone.

I invite you to see if you can make an honest connection with a couple of questions that are not so nearly demanding as the Lord was with the rich young man.

Could it be true that we prefer to watch an hour’s television rather than pray for ten minutes?  Do we sometimes find it easier to travel between cities to watch a football game than to travel a couple of miles to go to Church?  Do we easily spend $50 in a restaurant rather than putting $20 in the collection basket? 

 

In asking that, l certainly am not talking about bad people.  In all truth, I easily spend more time watching television and being on the internet than I am praying. I ask these questions because we are all searching for our right relationship with God.

We all need to ask the question the rich young man asked of Jesus.  What must I do to inherit eternal life?  The rich young man in the Gospel has a leg up on many of us as answered the Lord by saying he has kept all the commandments. I am very impressed by anyone who gets A plus in keeping the ten commandments.

How do we answer that question when the Lord tells us:  “You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have a treasure in heaven, then come, follow me.”

This challenges us to ask our relationship with God.  What is the real treasure of your life?  What is the North Star for you that everything else is seen in relationship to it?

So what is your treasure?  We all have our treasures - what's yours? It's a serious question. What is your treasure? What do you give your time, your energy, your love to mostly?

Your treasure may your good reputation, your beautiful family, the job you are very successful at, your golf game, the buffalo bills or the fighting Irish of Notre Dame, your hard earned assets.

In the Gospel, the man with many possessions wasn’t able to let go of them in order to follow Jesus more completely.  I need to ask myself: what possessions do I cling to? 

What is my tipping point in terms of prayer?  What is my limit?  Is it the hour for Sunday Eucharist?  Does that happen 52 weeks a year?  How much time each day do I commit to prayer?

What is my tipping in sharing with those in need == whether in parish ministry or responding to people in need anywhere?  How much time am I willing to share to be of service to others?

What is my tipping in terms of treasure?  What percentage of income do I tithe?  What is my comfort zone in this regard? 

Does the use of our time, energy and resources indicate what are the important relationships of our lives?

The Gospel lesson is clear. Our relationship with God must be our greatest, our prime relationship, the one which gives meaning to all our other relationships. If it is not so for us we doom ourselves to go hungrily seeking for substitutes which invariably disappoint - a succession of dashed hopes and new infatuations, leaving us empty and cynical. When we come to think of it, our relationship with God is the one thing we take with us into the next life - all else will be left behind. Shouldn't we cultivate it while we can?

The invitation and challenge is clear. Jesus is asking each one of us to give priority to God in our lives and to get rid of all that we love more than him, everything which prevents us from saying yes to his wonderful invitation: and then: come follow me.

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