Being a Christian means being led by the Holy Spirit into the fullness of our identity as children of God, and becoming a true reflection of Christ.  To be Christ like is to live like Christ, for the Kingdom, using our intellect and will to freely make choices defined by Love of God and Love of Neighbor.  To love God fully and completely is to love like Christ, ourselves and our neighbor. 
 
Because we live in a world which praises achievements, material wealth, status and superficial beauty above all else, the life of a missionary disciple takes perseverance, as St. Paul says to Timothy in the second reading. 
 
The rich man in Gospel this morning wasn’t an axe-murderer, mafia boss, or the head of a human trafficking ring. He had no particularly damaging "sins of commission”, at least none pointed out by Jesus in the parable. He was a pretty good guy, it would seem. And yet, he failed to enter into eternal life. Why? Because of his "sins of omission". Day after day, he closed his heart to a neighbor who was in dire need of help.
 
We, followers of Christ can be just as deeply infected with the secular ideals, values and ethics as the folks who aren't people of faith, even when it comes to life in the Church. Our way of living our faith can be very individualistic and self-centered. We can over emphasis personal salvation being 'self made' morally good people. Meaning we basically avoid actions which are ethically wrong, such as, failing to worship God in the “official” way, committing violent actions against others, behaving in a sexually immoral way, stealing things from people, gossiping maliciously about others, being jealous, envious, angry, resentful and so on. 

We must be more than ‘a good person’ as compared to others, but rather to be ‘good’ with God as our measure.

​Many Jews at the time of Jesus thought that salvation was based on external factors, like race and ritual. Jesus takes the opportunity of this question, about whether or not many people will be saved, to correct those wrong ideas. He explains that in God's Kingdom there will be people from all four corners of the earth - just as Isaiah had prophesied, and as we heard in the First Reading. 
 
He also explains that many who "ate and drank" with the Lord - in other words, many who followed all the many external rituals that governed Jewish eating and drinking at the time - will be excluded from God's Kingdom. Salvation doesn't depend primarily on external appearances, but on transformative relationship with God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
 
The same letter to the Hebrews also says that Christ, Son though he was, learned obedience through what he suffered, and being made perfect he was made the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
 
By being incorporated into Christ through Baptism a person becomes a child of God: this is the very basis of the Christian life and it should be a source of serenity and peace in every difficulty we meet in the course of life. In view of the mission of the Church / Christ, about which was prophesied in the first reading, the disciple of Christ is advised and admonished in the second reading to strive for spiritual strength and avoid sin. However, we suffer from the effects of original sin and so as we endeavor to live continually in union with God, the divine life into which we were baptized, we can expect that God will paternally educate and correct us like a father who loves his children. 
 
Jesus is the prime image of a disciple. He is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who endured the cross, for the joy set before Him. Like any athlete putting himself in shape for a contest, the Christian must ready himself by arduous training, the program of which is drawn up by God. Christian life is to be inspired not only by Old Testament men and women of faith, but above all by Jesus, the Architect of Christian faith. Reflection on His suffering should give everyone courage to endure hardship and to continue the struggle for love of God and Neighbor.
 
And all this leads to peace. Because we are true sons and daughters, God disciplines us as a necessary part of the path to holiness. When the soul is disposed to willingly accept trials the Lord sends or permits, it yields fruit of holiness which fills it with peace. 
 
Disciples of Christ who grow in the love of God and are perfected by His grace and love will increasingly discover that they are able to live peaceably among others. This ‘living in the peace of Christ’ is essential to being free to be humbly obedient to God and in right relationship with others in such a way as to be able to go from inside the family of God to those on the outside and credibly invite them in, giving witness to the truth of God not known or rightly understood.
 
The author of the letter to the Hebrews uses the term “discipline” less in terms of punishment for doing wrong and more as the educational upbringing of a child by a parent, of pupil by teacher. In ancient times education and instruction always involved the idea of punishment. The second reading reminded us that discipline (or training) seems hard at the time, yet later it brings the peaceful fruits of righteousness, as we become more and more like Christ. God, therefore, as a good father brings up his children in an affectionate yet firm way. Adversity and suffering are a sign that this divine teaching method is at work: God uses them to educate us and discipline us. 

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
 
It’s true that fire is a symbol of destroying power, but that’s not so much what we’re hearing from Jesus in the Gospel today. This is not the fire of destruction.  In fact, in scripture, destructive fire imagery is not as frequent as when it stands as a symbol of life. It is the fire of God’s presence. It is the fire of heat and light. It is the fire that purifies.
 
Before Jesus ascended into heaven he told His disciples to wait for this fire, he said “I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Luke 24:49  The Holy Spirit that was known as the “promise of the Father.” According to that promise, the Holy Spirit came down to the disciples of Jesus in a unique way animating the ‘Mystical Body of Christ’ and giving birth to the Church.
 
As with coal that begins heavy and black in its deadness, when cast into the fire it is turned into the likeness of the flame which it catches and itself begins to glow red then white hot, and itself to break into a blaze.  The fire of the Holy Spirit desires to consume us but not destroy us, but to make of us like incense rising to the heavens: the white-hot aroma of the fire of God burning within our souls ascends as a sweet smell, acceptable to God.
 
On Monday 23 November 1654, a French mathematician and philosopher had a mystical and ecstatic experience of the Spirit of God! His name was Blaise Pascal and he was transformed forever. He spoke to no one about it but, trying to express what he experienced he wrote some words on a paper. This was found at his death, sewn into his jacket. On the paper Paschal wrote this: 

From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight: FIRE God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob; not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. Joy, joy, joy; tears of joy. “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

The fire of which Paschal spoke is that same fire of divine love which Jesus spoke of; the fire of the Holy Spirit. An encounter with the blazing love of God that no one could emerge from unchanged. This fire of purifying, transforming, overwhelming, thrilling, energizing - Love. 
​
Into our state of physical, mental inactivity, of our sluggish half-lives Christ was and is waiting for us to be enflamed with the Holy Spirit that makes us glow and flame with earnestness, burn with love, aspire with desire, cling to Him with firm conviction, and be in focus and measure like those mighty spirits that stand before the Throne, the seraphim that burn with adoration and glow with rapture. A fire that transforms all our imperfections, and desires to leave only the purified soul of glad obedience, of perfected love.
 
From human experience we know that fire purifies in a powerful way. So powerful and moving is our experience of this truth, that every ancient culture in some way ritualized fire as a symbol of purification. Every disciple of Christ / Child of God must come to know this same power within them. Each having been cleansed in the waters of baptism must yet be purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit. We are to be like clay in a furnace, as it warms it whitens, the stains melting off. What remains is more truly itself and more precious. Our anticipated Holiness is wrought in this cleansing and purifying water and fire. Through which we must pass if we are to dwell in the everlasting burnings of a Divine Spirit and a changeless love.
 
It was not in His power to kindle this holy fire in humanity until He had died for men’s sins. The Cross necessarily precedes Pentecost in the salvific plan of the Father. There can be no Divine Spirit in full and lofty power poured out upon humanity until the Sacrifice has been offered on the Cross for the sins of the world. 

God told the Hebrews to be ready. He also told them when. Jesus tells us to be ready. But says the timing will be unexpected. Christ’s message today is to live each day as a preparation to meet him with joy.  Semper Paratus: Always Ready.

Consider the 'getting ready / being ready' in the context of how we order and approach each individual day and how this ought to be similar to how the Priest makes ready the Altar for the Sacrifice. Our lives can and ought to be an altar of praise to God, an altar which is prepared and made holy, daily.  Approaching our day in this way requires that we pray as we begin, ensure we are ready for the fullness of graces through an examination and seeking the necessary reconciliation. It requires mindful attentiveness to the presence of God and personal intentionality about entering into today with God. We will need to be reverent as we prepare to live the gift of life today and continue to be reverent as we celebrate the gifts of each moment. Know what it is we are offering to God and have certainty of faith about that which God is offering to us. 

Essential to being able to do this everyday with greater love, wisdom, power and strength, is our full and active participation in the celebration of Mass, at least every weekend and the worthy reception of the Eucharist. In the Mass we receive the strength and the courage to live always ready. In the Mass we receive the assurance that God is close to us, and that he wants to help us to truly love. In the Mass we are brought into unity with others, and we recognize that they are worthy of our love and sacrifice.

With the tune of 'My favorite things' in mind I say... These are a few of my favorite Saints!

On July 31 we remember St. Ignatius of Loyola, on August 1 St. Alphonsus Ligouri, on August 4 St. John Vianney and August 8th its St. Dominic! What a great few days of Saintly celebrations and inspirations!  No less than 3 of those Saints became founders of Religious Orders; St. Ignatius Loyola founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits); St. Alphonsus de Ligouri, Doctor of the Church and founder of the Redemptorists; St. Dominic founder of the Dominicans.  

These three Religious Orders have been profoundly influential among both believers and non believers and their apostolic missions changed the societies of their times and the world for the centuries to come.  For those who might doubt the impact and influence that one person of faith can have, despite challenges and opposition, I highly recommend studying or reviewing the history of these men and those men and women who joined with them in response to God’s call on their lives.  You are one person, but God can do considerably more in, with and through you than you could possibly imagine!
 
One of the legacies that is attributed to Saint Dominic (1221 ad), is the invention of the Rosary, at least in a form similar to what we have now. There is a pious tradition based on ‘word of mouth’ and the more than a dozen instances of Pope’s referring to the connection between the Rosary and St. Dominic. What seems to be indisputable is that St. Dominic promoted praying the Rosary as part of his preaching ministry, work with the poor, and for those who struggled, strayed and were fallen in the faith.  

​Speaking of the history of the Rosary, Father William Saunders wrote, “the structure of the rosary gradually evolved between the 12th and 15th centuries. Eventually 50 Hail Marys were recited and linked with verses of psalms or other phrases evoking the lives of Jesus and Mary. During this time, this prayer form became known as the rosarium ("rose garden"), actually a common term to designate a collection of similar material, such as an anthology of stories on the same subject or theme. During the 16th century, the structure of the five-decade rosary based on the three sets of mysteries prevailed.”

​Today, as we receive Christ, really and fully present in the Eucharist – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – the supernatural life we received at baptism is strengthened. 
 
In this Sunday's Gospel reading, we listen as Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. He instructs them in the words of the Lord's Prayer, and then he tells two parables that drive home the importance of persistence and boldness in the prayer of his disciples.
 
The Lord's Prayer is much more than just a prayer that we say, it is also meant to be a prayer that we live. Saint Cyprian of Carthage, a third century bishop and martyr wrote, "My dear friends, the Lord's Prayer contains many great mysteries of our faith. In these few words there is great spiritual strength, for this summary of divine teaching contains all of our prayers and petitions." [1] In the twentieth century, Pope Benedict XVI observed, "The meaning of the Our Father goes much further than the mere provision of a prayer text. It aims to form our being, to train us in the inner attitude of Jesus." [2] When we pray the Lord's Prayer we enter into the world of Jesus and into the depths of his relationships with God and with others. We begin to view life, God, others, and ourselves through divinely enabled understanding. Praying these words with attention entails a training in vision.
 
It seems to me that the Lord's Prayer invites us to adopt the attitudes of commitment and trust. We begin not with ourselves but with a larger vision -- asking that God's name be held holy and immersing ourselves in commitment to the coming of God's reign. We transcend our own small worlds and look at the bigger picture. The reign of God for which we pray refers to what takes place when the rule of a gracious, faithful, loving God permeates creation and human relationships. Cardinal Walter Kasper speaks of the reign of God as the sovereignty of God's love. As we pray these words, we commit ourselves to live as agents, as mediators of the sovereignty of God's love. In a time in which our nation seems so divided, and gun violence wreaks havoc in our cities, no other commitment could be more important.
 
The commitment that is intrinsic to the Lord's Prayer is meant to be suffused with an attitude of trust. This trust is implied in the very word that begins this prayer -- "Father." Uttering this word draws us into Jesus' own unique relationship with the God he called "Abba." Jesus used the language of the home to address God. Scripture scholars suggest that "Abba" meant something like "my own dear Father." Reflecting on Jesus' "Abba" address of God, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff observes that it suggests that "God has a heart that is sensitive to our problems, that his eye is always upon our sufferings, and that his ear is open to our cries." The God revealed by Jesus is One to whom we can come with unrestricted trust.
 
This same atmosphere of commitment and trust permeates the other petitions of the Lord's Prayer. In praying for our "daily bread," we ask God simply and directly to give us all that we need to live and to follow the Lord Jesus in our lives. We move on to petition God for mercy, at the same time pledging to forgive those who have hurt us. We know that we depend completely on the loving mercy of God, and we confess that with honesty and trust. Finally, we pray that God will not "subject us to the final test." Here we acknowledge our weakness in the face of trials and temptations. We ask for the grace we need to be faithful to the God who is tenaciously faithful to us.
 
As we approach the table of the Lord this Sunday and at every Mass in which we fully participate, may we re-commit ourselves to be instruments of the sovereignty of God's love in our world. And may we receive the Lord with trust, confident that "God has a heart that is sensitive to our problems, that his eye is always upon our sufferings, and that his ear is open to our cries."


[1] From a Treatise on the Lord's Prayer by St. Cyprian of Carthage, bishop and martyr
(Nn. 8-9: CSEL 3, 271-272)

[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, 133.

Hospitality and God: Good Hosts / Good Guests
Encounters with God are necessarily transformative 
Loving God leads to loving Neighbor
 
Considering that this week’s 1st reading from Genesis comes immediately after the account of Abraham encountering God, who offers him a covenant that would immediately result in his name being changed to Abraham and a promise of becoming the Father of Nations through which salvation would come, “Salvation is from the Jews” John 4:22; we should take a moment to consider Abraham, his transformative encounter with the Lord and the nation formed as promised.
 
The original name for the people we now call Jews was Hebrews. The word "Hebrew" (in Hebrew, "Ivri") is first used in the Torah to describe Abraham Gen. 14:13. The word is apparently derived from the name Eber, one of Abraham's ancestors. Another tradition teaches that the word comes from the word "eyver," which means "the other side," referring to the fact that Abraham came from the other side of the Euphrates or referring to the fact Abraham was separated from the other nations morally and spiritually. 
 
Another name used for the people is Children of Israel or Israelites, which refers to the fact that the people are descendants of Jacob, who was also called Israel. 
 
The word "Jew" (in Hebrew, "Yehudi") is derived from the name Judah, which was the name of one of Jacob's twelve sons. Judah was the ancestor of one of the tribes of Israel, which was named after him. Likewise, the word Judaism literally means "Judah-ism," that is, the religion of the Yehudim. Other sources, however, say that the word "Yehudim" means "People of God," because the first three Hebrew letters of "Yehudah" are the same as the first three letters of God's four-letter name.
 
But Abraham is not just a physical seed, the great progenitor of a great nation of and under God. The Psalms succinctly character­ize Abraham in three words: “the LORD’s servant.” He is a model of one “whose faith and actions were working together”James 2:22. Jewish and Christian theologians agree, Abraham is the Father of the faith, the first Jew. Abraham is the one who breaks with the pagan deities of his age and embraces monotheism; he becomes the first great mis­sionary God.

In the First Reading from the Book of Genesis, 3 men, strangers, visit Abraham, the friend of God.  Abraham addresses the leader of the group, whom he does not yet recognize as the Lord; in the next two verses he speaks to all three men. The other two are later Gn 19:1 identified as angels. The shifting numbers and identification of the visitors are a narrative way of expressing the mysterious presence of God. This is, at its heart, a story about faith in action, about hospitality. It is about Abraham faithfully loving others as God loves him.
 
Today’s 1st reading also comes immediately before the story of Sodom. There we meet the same three men who have taken shelter in the house of Lot, a relative of Abraham. Sodom and Gomorrah became types of sinful cities in biblical literature. Is 1:9–10; 3:9 sees their sin as lack of social justice, Ez 16:46–51, as disregard for the poor, and Jer 23:14, as general immorality. This is, at its heart, a contrasting story. It is a story of the abuse of hospitality. Faith has been forsaken. Selfish and self-serving desires have replaced love of God and neighbor.  What we read about in this story, is how sin and opposition to God makes us incapable of real hospitality, of even recognizing Holy encounters, let alone being able to be transformed by them.
 
Hospitality is a very important element of life in the Middle East and two of today’s readings deal with aspects of hospitality. The second reading deals with being willing to sacrifice, an integral part of what it means to love God and Neighbor, and which is often a necessary component of hospitality.
The purpose of God’s covenant is not merely to bless Abraham’s family in a hostile world. Instead, he intends to bless the whole world through these people. This task is beyond the abilities of Abraham’s family, who fall again and again into pride, self-centeredness, foolhardiness, anger, and every other malady to which fallen people are apt. We recognize ourselves in them in this aspect too. Yet by God’s grace, they retain a core of faithfulness to the covenant, and God works through the work of these people, beset with faults, to bring unimaginable blessings to the world. Like theirs, our work also brings blessings to those around us because in our work we participate in God’s work in the world.
 
In Romans 4, Paul emphasizes that Abraham is father of all who believe—both Jews and Gentiles. As father of believers, Abraham sets a pattern for all believers to come. He is a paradigm of faith. He walked by faith. But faith, to Abraham, was more than an attitude of trusting God; faith was also an action.  Paul in effect says to the Romans, “You’ve got to do things Abraham’s way, or you have done it the wrong way.” Paul then cites Genesis 15:6 in sup­port of his argument: “Abraham believed God, and it was cred­ited to him as righteousness.” In Paul’s view, a right relation with God comes by faith, by trusting Him as Abraham did. His was a pilgrim attitude of relying on God and His word. 
 
In the Gospel reading Jesus visits the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. It’s our understanding that he is no stranger to the house. It seems to have been a place where Jesus could go to when things got too difficult for him in nearby Jerusalem. It also speaks of hospitality but from a very different perspective. It addresses our hospitality toward God, being in God’s presence in our in our hearts spiritually, but also in our ‘faith filled’ homes and at Church, in God’s house.  It speaks of reverence before all else in the presence of God.  But it also speaks of the way in which human persons ought to receive each other, with reverence for each unique human person who images the God of all creation, in whom the likeness of God is to be found.

In our very action-oriented society we may tend to sympathize with Martha slaving away in the kitchen while Mary seems to just sit looking dreamily into Jesus’ eyes. The situation may look less than ideal but we must remember that the purpose of the story is to help us get our priorities right. It is significant that this story immediately follows the story of the Good Samaritan. The former story began with the abstract concept of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself”. The story reveals that a real neighbor is one who shows compassion in deed for a brother/sister in need. 
 
These stories brought together; the good Samaritan, Mary and Martha, Abraham’s feast and the utter wretchedness of Sodom and Gommorah – help us to understand more deeply how our faith reveals to us the full beauty of creation and creator, which is transformative and moves us to actions of appropriate love.  These stories also speak of or infer how sacrifice and suffering can be an integral part of hospitality, loving God and Neighbor. But this sacrifice and suffering, reflective of the nature of God’s love for us, isn’t demanded. We are invited to follow God’s lead, to live and love and worship as we ought.  We are invited to choose to love, to choose to sacrifice, to choose to suffer – if and when it serves the good, the true and the beautiful.
 
We can view our suffering as a contribution to the completion of Christ’s work in the world, insofar as we are members of the mystical body of Christ the Church. When we suffer for the sake of others, in service of the things that God has called us to do, then we are participating in Christ’s redemptive suffering—mysteriously completing the work that Christ began on the cross. Not that all our suffering should be viewed in this way, since as Peter reminds us, “If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps” 1 Peter 2:20-21. 
 
Choose to let God transform you through your encounter with God at Mass. God’s great feast to which you have been invited.

To the repentant person Moses said, "If only you would heed the voice of the LORD, your God, and keep his commandments and statutes with all your heart and all your soul.”  Echoing the words, he had first said to the Israelites who were about to enter the promised land, “Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.” And he encouraged them about doing this, as he said, "For this command that I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you. No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out."{that is, memorized and recited; And in your heart: internalized and appropriated}
 
The core of the Christian message is faith as total trust in God and his message, which comes through Christ and love as the driving power of all our actions and relationships. We cannot love ourselves, our neighbors or God, as God intends, without faith. This faith, as the Apostle James says in his Letter: “without good works is dead”, in other words, faith without active love is empty of the divine life of God animating it. It is good to be appropriately sensitive to orthodoxy, about thinking and saying the right thing in conformity with the Church’s teaching, but orthopraxis necessarily follows upon orthodoxy. Faith that does not express itself in love is Pharisaism. 
 
In the Gospel reading a ‘scholar of the law’ approaches Jesus. Now, when you encounter the word “lawyer” in Scripture, concentrate on the “law” root. The “law” here is the Mosaic Law, the codified system of rules and regulations meant to govern Israel in God’s ways as the nation lived in the Promised Land. The suffix “–er” means “one who practices.” A “lawyer,” therefore, was an expert or scholar of the Mosaic Law. When the ‘Scholar of the Law’ brought his question to Jesus he knew the answer was in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The living Word of God is clear that we must love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and that we must love our neighbors as ourselves.  By that time, these verses had already been combined in Jewish thought and had indeed been considered to be the foundation of the whole Torah.  But it is the second part of that question that gives Jesus the opportunity to further open the mind of the Lawyer beyond how he and many others understood meaning of ‘who is my neighbor’.  
 
Leviticus 19 opens with an imperative addressed “to all the congregation of the people of Israel …: “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy”. In Jewish thought, Leviticus 19, and indeed the whole Torah, is addressed to the congregation of the people of Israel only. Therefore, the commandment to “love your neighbor” – both in the original context and in later Jewish interpretations – is inevitably restricted to members of this congregation.   In this context ‘neighbor’ (rea) refers to a person encountered within the framework of covenantal relationships. As well, in Hebrew the words “neighbor” (rea) and “evil [one]” (the word that can also designate “an enemy”) share the same consonants: רע (resh and ayin). The difference is only in the vowels, which were not in the text. Therefore, when in the parable Jesus asks the lawyer, “What do you read there?”he is asking, ‘Are you able to see, in the words of the Torah, the command to love both neighbor (narrowly defined) and those you would see as enemies?  Thus, if we think of Jesus as one who “did not come to destroy but to fulfill” the Law, we will see that his use of Leviticus 19:18, and his understanding of the neighbor, however challenging it was for his listeners, was still based on the Torah.  Love for God and neighbor must serve as the basis for any ethics.
 
A key word, twice used in the parable, is “compassion”. In fact, the verb used to express the feelings of the Samaritan for the victim lying on the road is the same as that used to describe Jesus’ compassion for the crowd, when he described them as “like sheep without a shepherd”.  We are to understand that the neighbor is the one “who shows mercy”, one who can show real compassion to a total stranger in need, unconditionally and without moral judgement.
 
Looking back to the dialogue between Jesus and the Lawyer, the newness and shock of this parable will escape a non-Jewish reader, but it is important to understand that “Jews generally then, and now, fit into one of three groups: priests (kohanim) descended from Aaron; Levites (levi’im) descended from other children of Levi; and Israelites, descended from the children of Jacob other than Levi. The citation in the parable of the first two anticipates the mention of the third.” After priest and Levite in this story, a first-century Jew would have expected mention of someone from the third group—an Israelite. However, the third person in the parable is not the expected Israelite, but an unexpected Samaritan – the enemy of the Jews, so Jesus parable would have seemed outrageous to his Jewish audience. Not only is the appearance of this Samaritan absolutely striking, but the fact that this Samaritan expressed compassion and care to his supposed enemy, while the priest and the Levite fail to provide help for their supposed neighbor, directly challenges the contemporary Jewish interpretation of the word “neighbor”. Thus, not only continuity, but also the newness of Jesus’ teaching, is evident here.
 
The parable of the Good Samaritan allows us, above all, to see in Jesus the fulfillment of the law regarding love / compassion to others, pre-eminently seen in and what Jesus has done for us - for the human family as a whole, and for each of us individually. We were like the man left on the side of road to die. Each of us has been robbed of our original holiness by original sin.  Our selfishness and sins, and the sins of others, have deeply wounded our souls. We lay on the side of life's path in need of a Savior.  We have been bruised and broken and wounded by life in a fallen world. In his incarnation, Jesus comes to us like the Good Samaritan. He is the merciful Lord who heals and restores us with the oil and wine of his sacraments, who pays for our salvation with his own sacrifice on the cross at Calvary, who entrusts the boundless riches of his grace to his own innkeeper, the Church, who in turn watches over our convalescence, our growth into Christian maturity, until Jesus will come again.
 
Through the first and the Gospel reading Christ reveals man to man’s self by showing us in his example, the way of love which is the necessary fruit of faith. St Paul, in the Second Reading, proclaims that Jesus is "the image of the invisible God." He is God, our Creator, who has become like us in all things but sin, so that we, in our fallen state, can recognize how Jesus reveals to us his own divine nature as God, who is love. Jesus is God the Father's own self-image, so perfect and complete that it shares the Father's very divinity and exists as a distinguishable Person, the eternal Son.
 
In the sixteen-hundreds a series of visions was shared with a humble French nun, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. In these visions Christ revealed his ‘Sacred Heart’ and by which revelation he communicated about his love for us expressed in both his divine and human natures. These visions were the beginning of the famous devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When he first appeared to St Margaret Mary, he stood in front of her and showed her his heart, describing it as a furnace of love.  Then he reached out and took her heart in his hands.  She saw her heart as if it were a tiny little atom.  Jesus put it inside his own heart, where it caught fire and started to burn with the flames of his love.  On another occasion, he allowed her to look directly at his heart. She wrote later that it was as bright as the sun and as clear as crystal.  Driven into the top of it was a cross.  On one side was a deep gash - the wound he had received on Calvary when the soldiers thrust a spear into his side.  Wrapped tightly around the middle of his heart was a ring of thorns.  Jesus explained that these thorns were the indifference and ingratitude that he received from the men and women whom he loved, for whom he had died, for whom he had become the world's Good Samaritan.
 
“Love your neighbor as yourself” The next really important question that rises from this parable and the Laws in which it is rooted: How am I to love myself?

Like the young man who asked Mother Teresa ‘what can I do?’, we to have to start somewhere if we have not been very engaged in the ministry of the mission.  Some of us may be aware that we’re no longer gifted for what we have been doing but don’t know what else we could do. Many, like the young man will be sadden and discouraged by felling like they cannot single-handedly convert or change the world!  For all of us, the important thing is to allow the Holy Spirit to stir up our courage, to help us discern our path and to seek to become strong and able. We can follow the example of someone like St Teresa of Calcutta who realized that there were thousands and thousands of the poor, destitute and dying who needed her immediate help. But she started with just one at a time.
 
Christ called 12 Apostles, appointed seventy-two disciples from among many, to collaborate in his mission.  We must never think that we are alone in the mission field.  We may not see the other missionaries engaged in the way that we are or want to be, but they are out there in fields, and they are at home and in Church as prayer partners for the missionaries.  Most of all, Christ is with every one of them. The Holy Spirit is empowering all the missionaries in their ministries of love.
 
This is the pattern of God. God chooses coworkers to help build his Kingdom: he is a team player. Jesus is saving the world, but not all by himself. He wants to do it with our help to keep spreading the announcement to the ends of the earth, until the end of time. From the pope down to the most recently baptized believer, we all share the same mission: to help Christ build up his Kingdom.
 
This should be our greatest joy.
 
As Pope Benedict once wrote: "I am convinced that there is a great need for the whole Church to rediscover the joy of evangelization, to become a community inspired with missionary zeal to make Jesus better known and loved." [Pope's letter to Pan-Asian meeting on culture, organized by Cardinal Paul Poupard, 27 November 2006]
 
So, back to the question, ‘what can I do?’… 

• Do what God calls you to do
• Do the Holy Spirit is tugging at your heart to do.
• Start doing something, and your gifts will lead you to the right thing.
• Remember, the simplest truth about being a missionary disciple is above all to love your neighbor as yourself… right now, today, what does that look like.

One word that occurs in all three readings today is “peace”. Isaiah, in the First Reading, speaks of God sending “flowing peace, like a river”. Paul speaks of the peace and mercy that come to all who become a transformed person in Jesus Christ. And, in the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples to bring peace with them to every house they enter. 
 
In the Second Reading, Paul, speaking to the Galatians, says that it doesn’t matter if a person is circumcised or not. Paul is referencing a concern that was a problem in some of the communities he evangelized, because there were Judaizers who firmly believed that if Gentiles were to ‘convert’ they should still be held accountable to Jewish laws.  But there is also a deeper truth that is universally applicable to all who become disciples of Christ. Ours is a faith that necessitates transformation. Jesus calls us as we are. God loves us as we are. But, unless I am on the way to becoming a genuinely transformed person in the image of Jesus, then my baptism and all my other religious experiences will have little salvific value.  Meaning, that a baptized person who is living a life of unrepented sin, isn’t going to heaven just because he’s baptized.  St. Paul also dealt with that issue among the Corinthians.
 
As Christians we ought to be bringers of peace. But we need that peace and inner security first within ourselves.  Becoming a child of God through baptism is simply the only way, of becoming a new creation, an altogether person that Jesus and Paul speak about. This new person acquires a deep sense of both God’s utter transcendence and utter immanence, the God who constantly calls us beyond where we are and who, at the same time, deeply penetrates our being and our every experience. This new person, responding to the universal call to holiness, strives in Christ to live a life of increasingly perfect integrity and truth, a life of deep compassion and concern. This new person lives in freedom and abiding interior peace. It is a peace that a close following of Jesus can bring. 
 
In today’s Gospel, Jesus recommends his disciples not to weigh themselves down with all kinds of baggage. Missionaries need to be reliant on God, they need to trust God.  They must be detached from material processions. In other words, material possessions cannot occupy an inappropriate importance to them.  As well, on a deeper level, the best missionaries are in fact free and at peace. That doesn’t mean that we are not ‘works in progress’ but that we are striving to be like Christ in this way and be able to reflect the glory of God freely and fully as we give witness and testimony of the saving truths of our faith in the mission field, bringing peace to every house we enter.
 
In a world that seems so rich and prosperous and yet is so impoverished of the security and peace it so frenetically seeks to find; we are called to become laborers with Jesus in the harvest. We are called today to labor so that our society may be gradually transformed into a place where the values of the Gospel, often so little understood even by ourselves, will prevail.
 
Be an oasis of peace for others in the missionary field to which you are called.