ALL SAINTS: Rev 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 Jn 3:1-3; Mt 5:1-12a

 

A story is told of a traveling portrait painter who stopped in a small village hoping to get some business. The town drunk — ragged, dirty and unshaved — came along. He wanted his portrait done and the artist complied. He worked painstakingly for a long time, painting not what he saw but what he envisioned beneath that disheveled exterior. Finally, he presented the painting to his customer. “That’s not me,” he shouted. The artist gently laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and replied, “But that’s the man you could be.” Today’s feast reminds us that we all can become saints.

 

All baptized Christians who have died and are now with God in glory are considered saints. All Saints Day is a day on which we thank God for giving ordinary men and women a share in His holiness and Heavenly glory as a reward for their Faith. In fact, we celebrate the feast of each canonized saint on a particular day of the year. But there are countless other saints and martyrs, men, women and children united with God in Heavenly glory, whose feasts we do not celebrate. Among these would be our own parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters who were heroic women and men of Faith. All Saints Day is intended to honor their memory. Hence, today’s feast can be called the feast of the Unknown Saint, in line with the tradition of the “Unknown Soldier.”

 

Today, the Church reminds us that God’s call for holiness is universal and that all of us are called to live in His love and to make His love real in the lives of those around us. Holiness is related to the word wholesomeness. We show holiness when we live lives of integrity and truth, that is, wholesome and integrated lives in which we are close to others while being close to God.

 

This feast offers a challenge to each one of us: anybody can, with the grace of God, become a saint, regardless of his or her age, lifestyle or living conditions. St. Augustine accepted this challenge when he asked the question: “If he and she can become saints, why can’t I?”

St. Catherine of Siena was right: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”  

 

In today’s Gospel (Mt 5: 1-12), the Church reminds us that all the saints whose feasts we celebrate today walked the hard and narrow path of the Beatitudes to arrive at their Heavenly bliss. As Pope benedict remarks, “ the blessed par excellence is only Jesus. He is, in fact, the true poor in spirit, the one afflicted, the meek one, the one hungering and thirsting for justice, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemaker. He is the one persecuted for the sake of justice.” The Beatitudes are God’s commandments expressed in positive terms.

 

Thomas Merton was one of the most influential American Catholic authors of the twentieth century. Shortly after he was converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s, Thomas Merton was walking down the streets of New York with a friend, Robert Lax. Lax was Jewish, and he asked Thomas what he wanted to be, now that he was Catholic. “I don’t know.” Merton replied, adding simply that he wanted to be a good Catholic. Lax stopped him in his tracks. “What you should say,” he told him, “is that you want to be a saint!” Merton was dumbfounded. “How do you expect me to be a saint?” Merton asked him. Lax said: “All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you consent to let him do it? All you have is to desire it.” Thomas Merton knew his friend was right.

The feast gives us an occasion to thank God for having invited so many of our ancestors to join the company of the saints. May our reflection on the heroic lives of the saints and the imitation of their lifestyle enable us to hear from our Lord the words of grand welcome to eternal bliss: “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joys of your master” (Mt 25:21).

 

OT 30 [A]: Ex 22:20-26; I Thes 1:5c-10; Mt 22:34-40

 

A man attending a crowded Church service refused to take his hat off when asked to do so by the ushers. The preacher was perturbed too, and after the service told the man that the Church was quite happy to have him as guest, and invited him to join the Church, but he explained the traditional decorum regarding men’s hats and said, “I hope you will conform to that practice in the future.” “Thank you,” said the man. “And thank you for taking time to talk to me. It was good of you to ask me to join the congregation. In fact, I joined it three years ago and have been coming regularly ever since, but today is the first day anyone ever paid attention to me. After being an unknown for three years, today, by simply keeping on my hat, I had the pleasure of talking to the ushers. And now I have a conversation with you, who have always appeared too busy to talk to me before!” –- What do we do to make strangers welcome? Are we too busy that we have no time to keep the greatest commandment? When we come together to worship we can express our love for God by worshipping him and also loving our neighbor which is the flip side of the coin of loving God.

The central theme of today’s readings is the greatest Commandment in the Bible, namely, to respond to God’s Infinite Love for us by loving Him, and to express that love in action by loving Him in our neighbor.

In the Judaism of Jesus’ day, there was a double tendency to expand the Mosaic Law into hundreds of rules and regulations and to condense the 613 precepts of the Torah into a single sentence or few sentences. (The Pharisees identified 613 commandments in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). Two hundred forty-eight were positive (“thou shalt”) and three hundred sixty-five were negative (“thou shalt not”). Jesus’ answer teaches us that the most important commandment is to love God in loving others and to love others in loving God. In other words, we are to love God and express it by loving our neighbor because God lives in him or her. Jesus’ answer was very orthodox, and very traditional. “The summary of the law is not original with Jesus. Its two parts represent a combination of Dt 6:5 and Lev 19:18.

The first verse that Jesus quoted was part of the Shema, the basic and essential creed of Judaism. This is the sentence with which every Jewish service still opens, and the first text which every Jewish child commits to memory.

Jesus combined the originally separate commandments and presented them as the essence of true religion. The uniqueness of Jesus’ response consisted in the fact that he understood the two laws as having equal value or importance. Loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength as our response to His Love for us means that we should place God’s will ahead of ours, seek the Lord’s will in all things, and make it paramount in our lives. There are several means by which we can express our love for God and our gratitude to Him for His blessings, acknowledging our total dependence on Him. We must keep God’s commandments, and offer daily prayers of thanksgiving, praise and petition. We also need to read and meditate on His word in the Bible and accept His invitation to join Him in the Mass and other liturgical functions when we can.

 

God’s will is that we should love everyone, seeing Him in our neighbor. Since every human being is the child of God and the dwelling place of the Spirit of God, we are actually giving expression to our love of God by loving our neighbor as Jesus loves him or her. This means we need to help, support, encourage, forgive, and pray for everyone without discrimination based on color, race, gender, age, wealth, personal attractiveness, or social status. Forgiveness, too, is vital. We love others by refusing to hold a grudge for a wrong done to us. Even a rebuke can be an act of love, if it is done with the right heart.

Christian love is much more about what we decide to do than about what we happen to feel. Usually, we associate the word love with some pleasant feelings, intense and delightful emotions. But the word Jesus used means something much deeper. It is the word "agape" [AH-gah-pay], and it refers to the love that means desiring union with something that is good in itself. If we love ice cream, it means we love eating ice cream because it tastes good, we love becoming one with ice cream, entering into communion with ice cream. The communion is essential part of real love.

If we love a person, it means we love spending time with them, getting to know them, sharing the experiences of life with them.

 

Christian love for our neighbor requires seeing them the way God sees them, but we can only do that if our mind and heart are full of God's perspective, which happens through prayer. This is why the Catechism can say that "we live as we pray" (CCC #2752).

Today Jesus will pour his grace into our hearts once again in this Mass. As he does, let's beg him to teach all of us not only to understand these two great commandments, but to live them to the max.

 

OT XXVI [A] (Ez 18:25-28; Phil 2:1-11; Mt 21:28-32)

In the eleventh century, King Henry III of Bavaria grew tired of court life and the pressures of being a monarch. He made application to Prior Richard at a local monastery, asking to be accepted as a contemplative and spend the rest of his life in the monastery. “Your Majesty,” said Prior Richard, “do you understand that the pledge here is one of obedience? That will be hard because you have been a king?” “I understand,” said Henry. “The rest of my life I will be obedient to you, as Christ leads you.” “Then I will tell you what to do,” said Prior Richard. “Go back to your throne and serve faithfully in the place where God has put you.” When King Henry died, a statement was written, “The King learned to rule by being obedient.” Christ was obedient to the will of his Father unto death, even death on the cross. As his disciples, we, too, are called to be obedient to the will of God.

This passage from the gospel sets before us a picture of two very imperfect sets of people, of whom one set were none the less better than the other. Neither son in the story was the kind of son to bring full joy to his father. Both were unsatisfactory; but the one who in the end obeyed was incalculably better than the other.

 

The Gospel tells us that there are two very common classes of people in this world. First, there are the people whose profession is much better than their practice. They will promise anything. They make great protestations of piety and fidelity. They fight for the rights of the church. They collect together the down- trodden to fight for their rights. But, their practices lag behind. At least some of us fall into this category. Our charity; our compassion; our holy rites are only demonstrations without the element of sincerity. We sometimes profess their faith but never practice.

Second, there are those whose practice is far better than their profession. They are fond of doing kind and generous things, almost in secret. But the real good man is the man in whom profession and practice meet and match.

This parable teaches that promises can never take the place of performance, and fine words are not substitute for fine deeds. The world has many preachers, but it is still looking for performers; the world is keen to have a Florence Nightingale; a Gandhiji or a Mother Theresa.

 

It is common in today's world to find Catholics who openly disagree with core Catholic teaching. We all know people who say that they are Catholic, but who don't come to Mass on Sunday - they only come on Christmas and Easter, if they come at all.

We all have heard or read about politicians who say that they are ardent and practicing Catholics, but who publicly support laws that go directly against some of the most basic tenets of morality as taught by the Catholic Church.

We call ourselves practicing Catholics, and yet we spend more time working on our favorite hobbies than on our prayer life, and we spend more time becoming an expert in our profession than in our faith, and we tolerate in our own lives hidden habits of selfishness and sin while we criticize other people for their more visible faults.

If we think about it a little bit, we see very clearly that this contradiction between what we believe and how we live is not a good thing. It is like the second son in today's parable. He impressed his dad with fancy words and a good show of healthy obedience, but underneath the surface he was still living for his own self-centered gratification, not for the greater good of his mission in the Father's kingdom.

When we fall into that contradiction, it is no wonder that we don't grow in our experience of Christ's love and grace, and it is no wonder that we don't grow in wisdom, interior peace, and the deep Christian joy that we thirst for. Faith, if it's real, makes a real impact on our lives. When it doesn't, our spiritual growth is stunted.

The surest way to banish hypocrisy from our lives is to adopt as our personal motto the phrase that Jesus taught us in the Our Father: "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done." God's will is dependable and truthful, and when we make it our highest priority, we too become dependable and truthful. And unlike followers of some other religions, as Christians we have an objective standard for God's will that protects us from doing evil and calling it "the will of God."

God's commandments, the responsibilities of our state in life, and the inspirations of the Holy Spirit: this is the threefold path to a truthful, fulfilling life, free from the poison of hypocrisy.

Today let’s ask ourselves: Which son am I ? Do my actions indicate my obedience to God’s will? Am I ready to change my attitudes and behavior?

The challenge is to be like a third son: Jesus, who was always faithful. St. Paul reminds us “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, who.. humbled himself, becoming obedient unto the point of death.

Today, let's make Christ's motto our motto: Thy Kingdom come, Lord, and thy will be done, in my life, just as it is in heaven.

 

 

OT XXV [A] Is 55:6-9; Phil 1:20c-24, 27a; Mt 20:1-16a

Today’s readings are all about the human sense of justice contrasted with the extravagant grace of a merciful and compassionate God. God rewards us, not in the measure of what we do, but according to our need and His good will.

 

God does not call everybody at the same time. Some are called early in life as the early labourers were called, having received their baptism as infants. Some were called as teenagers. Some were called during their married life and others, much later in life. And some are like the labourers who were called around five o'clock; their conversion took place at the last hour, like the thief on the cross.

The parable describes the kind of things that frequently happened at certain times in Palestine. The grape harvest ripened towards the end of September, and then closes on its heels the rains came. If the harvest was not gathered in before the rains broke, then it was ruined; and so to get the harvest in was a frantic race against time. Any worker was welcome, even if he could give only one hour to the work.

This story illustrates the difference between God’s perspective and ours.  Perhaps it disturbs our sense of fairness and justice. We think of equal rights for all, or an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Our sense of justice seems to favor the laborers who worked all day and expected a wage greater than that given to the latecomers.  Perhaps most people would sympathize with the workers who had worked longer and seemingly deserved more.  We can understand their complaint since, for most of us, salaries are linked to the number of hours of work. A skilled worker gets more than an unskilled worker. If workers have the same skills, the same hours of work and similar responsibilities, we expect them to get the same wages.

But God does not see matters in the same way that we do.  God thinks of justice in terms of people’s dignity and their right to a decent life. In other words, God’s perspective is that of the owner, who gave some of the laborers more than they earned.  God’s justice holds that the people who have come late have the same right to a living wage and decent life as those who have worked all day and, hence, all must be treated identically. We are laborers who have worked less than a full day.  If God treated us justly, none of us would be rewarded.  We have all been unfaithful to God in many ways; what we have earned from God is punishment.  However, because God is generous rather than just, we all receive a full day’s pay, even though we have not earned it. Jesus understood the value of all people, regardless of what the community thought of them.  He gave all people equal value.

God is like the sun, giving off heat and light to all people, the humble and grateful, and also the wicked and self-serving. It is not the amount of service given, but the love in which it is given which matters.’ Those who carry out the will of God with love and humility will be acceptable before the Lord. So, Jesus says, “The first will be the last and the last will be the first.”

 

Salvation comes to us by God’s grace and our cooperation with it, that is, by a blend of Faith and works. We are saved by receiving and using God’s gifts of Faith, Hope, and Charity. At the same time, we are all in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. Our justification comes from the grace of God.

 

We need to follow God’s example and show grace to our neighbor.  When someone else is more successful than we are, let us assume that person needs it.  When someone who does wrong fails to get caught, let us remember the many times we have done wrong and gotten off free. We must not wish pain on people for the sake of fairness, nor rejoice in their miseries when God allows them to suffer.   We become envious of others because of our lack of generosity of heart.  Envy should have no place in our lives.  We cannot control, and dare not pass judgment on, the way God blesses others, only rejoice that He does so, just as He blesses us.

Our call to God’s vineyard is a free gift from Him for which we can never be sufficiently thankful. All our talents and blessings are freely given by God. Hence, we should express our gratitude to God by avoiding sins, by rendering loving service to others, by sharing our blessings with the needy, and by constant prayer, listening and talking to God at all times. The Holy mass is about giving thanks to God for his ineffable mercy and grace of salvation. Let’s thank him for giving us his blessings even when we do not deserve them. And let’s ask for a generous heart to appreciate and rejoice when others are blessed more than us.

 

OT XXIII [A]: Ez 33:7-9; Rom 13:8-10; Mt 18:15-20

 

The Portland Oregonian newspaper carried this story from the Vietnam War. Several soldiers were together in a trench when a live grenade was thrown in among them. Within an instant, one soldier threw his body on the grenade and muffled the explosion which took his life but saved all of the others with him. In a sense, believers are proffered a similar challenge in today’s readings. Both the first reading (Ezekiel) and the Gospel (Matthew) are concerned with the responsibility each one of us has regarding the spiritual welfare and salvation of others.

 

Today’s readings remind us that correction when done fraternally, it a great act of charity that we should appreciate and practice for the good of others.

In today’s First Reading the Lord reminds Ezekiel, and us, that it is our moral responsibility to warn a brother or sister that they are doing something evil. It’s our duty to inform people of the consequences of their evil actions.

When the Lord first asked Cain about the murder of Abel, he phrased it in a way that tried to help Cain realize he was responsible for his brother: “Where is Abel your brother?”  Cain responded, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). We are all our brother’s keepers.

We live in a world that teaches us to mind our own business, but that doesn’t include someone who is drowning, at the mercy of criminals, or committing a crime themselves.

The Lord today is telling Ezekiel today, and us, to inform consciences out of charity, not to force them onto the right path. If we love someone, we cannot leave them in ignorance about the evil they’re doing.

In today’s Second Reading St. Paul reminds us that every just law is built on love, and if we focus on loving and teaching others to love everything else will fall into place. Society has many laws and measures today that are built on justice, but not always enforced with love.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord reminds us that before entering into litigation with someone who has wronged us we should try simple fraternal correction.

Our society today tends to try and resolve disputes through rules and regulations, lawyers and courts, fines and penalties. We often try from the beginning to get justice from someone through someone else, when we know that nobody reacts well to being pressured into doing something. We should always try to start by settling a dispute fraternally: one on one, in frank but charitable dialogue.

We should not only seek our good, but the good of the person who has afflicted us, and we won’t completely understand their motives if we don’t speak to them. There are many small disagreements that can be resolved this way and to everyone’s satisfaction.

If an attempt at fraternal correction fails it is not a lack of charity to bring witnesses in and, if necessary the (Church) authorities, to help both parties see the truth and adhere to it.

Justice is sought, but the good of both parties as well. If the guilty party does not listen to all the facts and an authoritative judgment, then the guilty party has been shown to not be in communion with those he or she has afflicted, and that has to be acknowledged, sometimes publicly. When the Church formally declares someone to be excommunicated or under interdict it is taking this step for the good of the unrepentant party.

 

A man approached St. Francis of Assisi and asked him, “Brother Francis, I am in a quandary. In the Bible, it says we should rebuke sinners, but I see people sinning all the time. I don’t feel like I should go around rebuking everybody.” St. Francis then said, “What you must do is to live in such a way that your life rebukes the sinner– How you act will call others to repentance.”

 

Fraternal correction is simply pointing out that someone is on a collision course. They can stay on course if they wish, but it’s inadvisable. Some people may be eager to go out and start correcting, but there is a fine line between judging and correcting.

Our Lord taught us, take care of the beam in your eye before you help your brother with the splinter in his (Mat 7:3-5). If we’re going to inform other peoples’ consciences, we need to make sure to form our own.

Reading Part III of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a good way to deal with the beam in your eye so that you can better help your brother with removing the splinter from his.

The best remedy to being judgmental is to remember that we are all sinners in need of grace and guidance.

We’ve spoken today about fraternal correction, but we need to learn to accept correction as well. If someone takes an interest enough in us to point out something that we might need to work on, we should be grateful. If the person is not exactly fraternal about it, and it is a valid point, we should be grateful. As an added bonus, it will help us to be more fraternal in correcting others.

Let’s realize that the desire for other’s salvation should be at the heart of our effort to correct an erring brother. That is why it is a duty laid on us. As we continue with this celebration of the Eucharist let’s us ask for the grace to love others as we love ourselves and to forgive others as we seek forgiveness.

 

 

OT XXII [A] Jer 20:7-9; Rom 12:1-2; Mt 16:21-27

In today’s Gospel Jesus shows his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. The Apostles could not accept it. To them the idea of a cross with the work of the Messiah was incredible. Hence Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, saying, 'God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.' But he turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

Then Jesus announces the three conditions of Christian discipleship: “deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.” Like Peter, the Church is often tempted to judge the success or failure of her ministry by the world’s standards. But Jesus teaches that worldly success is not always the Christian way.

Suffering is an integral part of our earthly life, but it is also our road to glory. There is no crown without a cross. Jeremiah, in the first reading, is a certainly a prototype of the suffering Christ.

St. Paul points out in the Second Reading that our self-giving of both our bodies and our minds needs to be complete. “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,” he says, and, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

It is not possible to live a comfortable life and then die and go to heaven. Only a life of sacrifice leads to heaven. A life of cozy religiosity is really a life of self-serving pride.

The Catechism teaches, “The way of perfection,” that is, the path leading to holiness, “passes by way of the Cross” “There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle”. (CCC 2015).

St. Paul wrote: “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope (Rom 5:3-4).” Suffering is not the last thing in life. It leads us to something greater, as long as we are ready to accept its challenges. “A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.”

In his apostolic letter entitled Salvifici Dolores, Pope St. John Paul II says: Suffering can be a punishment arising from the justice of God. It can also be a test, as it was with Job. And God can also permit suffering in order that it can serve as a seed for a greater good that will come because of it, holiness, or greatness. Our sufferings can also be joined with the sufferings of Christ for our salvation, or for that of others, not because Christ’s suffering are not enough, but because Christ has left his sufferings open to love so that the bitter sufferings of man mingled, with this love, may turn into a sweet spring which shall overflow into eternity. Therefore human suffering can merit great value.

This helps explain why euthanasia is so wrong. Euthanasia is also sometimes called mercy-killing, or dying with dignity.

The Catechism makes very clear that it is always an evil act: "Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable" (#2277).

The Catechism also makes clear that "Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘over-zealous' treatment.

"Here one does not will to cause death; one's inability to impede it is merely accepted" (#2278).

In some situations, drawing the line between normal and over-zealous treatment is difficult. At those times, we need to get good advice, pray, and trust that God will guide us. But the main point is clear: suffering, even terrible suffering, does not take away the value or dignity of a human life.

Suffering is part of life in a fallen world. God allows it and uses it to teach us wisdom, compassion, patience, humility, and many other things, and to let us participate in his cross. It's different for animals. They are not created in the image and likeness of God. They are not able to know, love, and praise God in this life and enjoy him forever in the next. That's why it’s perfectly acceptable to put an animal to death when its physical condition has made its life useless or unbearable. A human life is never useless, and Christ has made sure that, united to him by faith, no amount of pain will ever become unbearable.

Jesus asserts emphatically, “whoever wishes to keep his life safe, will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it. The man who plays for safety loses life. If we meet life in the constant search for safety, security, ease and comfort we are losing all that makes life worthwhile.

There is a powerful scene in the movie Schindler’s List. In the beginning of the story, a Czech businessman named Oskar Schindler builds a factory in occupied Poland using Jewish labor because, in those tragic days at the start of World War II, Jewish labor was cheap. As the war progresses, however, he learns what is happening to the Jews under Adolph Hitler, Schindler’s motivations switch from profit to sympathy. He uses his factory as a refuge for Jews to protect them from the Nazis. As a result of his efforts, more than 1,100 Jews were saved from death in the gas chambers. You would think that Oskar Schindler would have felt quite pleased with himself, but at the end of the war Schindler stands in the midst of some of the Jews he has saved, breaks down in tears, takes off his gold ring and says, “My God, I could have bought back two more people [with this ring]. These shoes? One more person. My coat? Two more people. These cufflinks? Three more people.” There he stands, not gloating but weeping with regret that he has not done more. I wonder if one day you and I, as followers of Christ, will ask ourselves, “Could I have done more? Have I truly borne the cross of Christ?” That is the first question on today’s test: is our Faith sacrificial? Is it costing us something?

Shall we remind ourselves everyday with this verse from today’s scripture: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 

 

 

XXI-A-Is. 22:15, 19-23; Rom. 11:33-36; Mt. 16:13-20

 

In today’s Gospel Jesus confronts his disciples with a very difficult question: the opinion of people about him, and their personal opinion about him. It was the time the orthodox Jews were actually plotting to destroy him as a dangerous heretic.

When the people identified Jesus with Elijah and Jeremiah they were paying him a great compliment and setting him in a high place. Then came, the most important question, “Who do you say I am?” With this question Jesus reminds us that our knowledge of Jesus must never be at second hand. A man might know every verdict ever passed on Jesus; he might know all the Christology; he might know every teaching about Jesus; he might by-heart every commentary on the teaching of Jesus; he might analyze the historical background of every utterance of Jesus. But Christianity never consists in knowing about Jesus; it always consists in knowing Jesus. Jesus demands a personal verdict from every Christian. “Who do you say I am?”

Speaking about one’s response to Christ, C. S.Lewis said, “I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” — If we accept Jesus as a moral teacher, then we must necessarily accept Him as God, for great moral teachers do not tell lies. Jesus is not merely the founder of a new religion, or a revolutionary Jewish reformer, or one of the great teachers. For Christians, he is the Son of God and our personal Savior.

When this question was addressed to Peter, his answer was, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” We do not know what was the idea of Peter about Jesus. He might have conceived Jesus as the son of God who came to abolish the rule of the Roman Empire and restore the Kingdom. Or he might have conceived him as spiritual reformer; but the experience of Peter made him a different man. On the day of Pentecost, this ignorant fisherman addressed multitudes who spoke different languages, but they heard him in their language. He stood before the rulers and authorities and declared his loyalty to his master; he accepted imprisonment for the sake of his master; and finally he embraced death on the cross.

For the last 20 centuries this question has been repeatedly addressed to a number of Christians; and their lives depended on the answer they found for this question. During the first three centuries, the Church boasts about eleven million martyrs who fertilized the tree of faith with their blood. The martyrs are the most intriguing and most beloved saints of Christianity.

Neomartyr Michael Paknanas was less than twenty years old, and he worked as a gardener in Athens in the 1800s. The Turks, who enslaved Greece at the time, were trying to convince him to give up his faith. When flattery and wealth failed to persuade him, they put to use some of their more convincing standard missionary work by torturing the teenager. When all the tortures proved to be futile, the executioner was preparing to behead the young man, but at the same time he was feeling some compassion for him. So he began cutting his neck slowly with the sword by administering very light blows, while asking the martyr to reconsider. The martyr's response? "I told you, I am a Christian. I refuse to give up my faith." The ax-man struck with another light blow to make some more blood flow, to possibly convince him. The martyr repeated, "I told you, I am a Christian. Strike with all your might, for the faith of Christ." This totally aggravated the executioner. He did exactly that, and St. Michael was sent to the heavenly mansions.

These are the people who understood who Jesus is. And what is his place in their lives. The four Gospels are filled with demands straight from the mouth of Jesus Christ. These demands are Jesus' way of showing us who he is and what he expects of us. He expects an answer from each one of us, “Who is Jesus for us?”

The knowledge of Jesus as Lord and personal Savior should become a living, personal experience for each Christian. This is made possible by our listening to Jesus through the daily, meditative reading of the Bible, by our talking to Jesus through daily, personal and communal prayers, by offering our lives on the altar with Jesus whenever we attend Holy Mass, and by our leading a Sacramental life. The next step is the surrender of our lives to Jesus by rendering humble and loving service to Him in Himself and in all others, with the strong conviction that Jesus is present in every person. The step after that is to praise and thank God in all the events of our lives, both pleasant and painful, realizing that God’s loving hands are behind everything. May this Holy Mass help us to recognize Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer and lead us to exclaim like Thomas, My Lord and My God.