Include God in the Little Things

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    What do our hearts desire most?  Of course, sitting here, we probably would naturally say God.  But if we give time to that which is most important, how much time do we spend thinking about God?  I’m willing to guess that in an average weekday, your mind might focus on: what do I have going on today?; what am I going to make or have for lunch or dinner?; where do the kids need to be?; how much is gas?; what did President Trump say or tweet now?; when will the weekend be here?; does the grass need mowing?; am I going to get the parasite if I eat at Taco Bell?; why does Canada let it get so smoky?  I could go on.  But in any of those, were our thoughts directed toward God or not?  How much time did we spend thinking about God?  What does that say about God’s place in our life?
    All of those things are normal things to think about.  In some cases, you have a responsibility to think about those things.  You can’t ignore the need to feed your family and use an excuse that you were spending the day in prayer.  You can’t tell your bank that you didn’t have time to pay the mortgage because you were too busy giving God the time He should have.  So how do we both take care of our responsibilities and live in a world in which we have to make plans, but also make God the most important thing in our life: the treasure in the field or the pearls of great price?
    We make God the most important by getting in the habit of including God in all of those questions and considerations that happen in our daily life.  I’m not saying that we need to wait to hear a message from the heavens on what we should eat, but include God in the consideration: “God, what would be a good thing to have tonight for dinner?”  Or, “God, please help me remember all the practices I have to get my kids to and not forget them when practices end.”  Or, “God, I’ve got a lot going on today and this week.  Please help me to be patient when I am stressed out, and give me enough time to care for my family and my home.”  Or even, “God, please get me to the weekend before I snap!”  
    It seems like such a simple thing, but it’s a great way to show the importance that we give to God and include Him in our life.  God doesn’t feel needy for our friendship.  He is the source of all wisdom and wants to share that wisdom with us, as he promised Solomon.  God’s desire for us to include Him stems from His knowledge of how we operate the best and how we can not just survive by thrive and be saints.  Including God shows Him how much we want Him to be a part of our lives.
    I often use marriage as an analogy, and that works well here, too.  Imagine you never talk to your spouse about what you will cook for dinner, or when you will mow the lawn, or who will get the kids to and from practice, or how work went, or all those other daily things of life.  Your marriage probably wouldn’t be so great.  If your spouse only knows about the major things going on in life, but you tell the smaller things to someone else, you have inserted another person into your relationship who holds more importance to you than your spouse.  It doesn’t mean you can’t share that same information with anyone else, but there should be a priority in who knows what happens in your life, and your spouse shouldn’t be the last to know.
    [My dear parents, as you have Jack baptized today, you are committing to helping him develop his relationship with God.  In baptism, he will become a child of God, in addition to being your child.  And your role will be to help him to know how to love God and keep God as the most important part of his life.  This means teaching him to pray, that is, to speak to and listen to God on a daily basis, as well as learning what we believe and how we Catholics live.  But you are not alone.  You will have the assistance of Jack’s godmother, your family and friends, and your parish community to help you.  By your life and the choices you make, you will show Jack and his siblings whether God is important, and whether we live according to His will or our own.  This also requires communication with God to make sure that you are living up to the commitment you make today through baptism.]
    We all have a lot going on.  Whether we’re a young child, an adult, or a senior citizen, life can get busy and we can face numerous questions and choices throughout our day.  Don’t answer those questions alone; don’t make choices based solely on your wisdom.  Turn to God for His guidance; ask Him even about the little things in life.  God desires your good, and will show you the best way forward.  And even if He doesn’t seem to answer every little question, He loves that you involve Him and will give you ways of knowing His will.  Train your hearts to desire God above all else.  Practice speaking and listening to Him even about the small matters of life.  If you do, you will be prepared for the kingdom of heaven and eternal happiness with God.

A Father Who Keeps His Promises

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    I try to be a man of my word.  If I say something, I consider myself, except for extreme circumstances, bound to do what I said I would.  This has led me to become very particular with my word choice, and to say, when asked if I can do someone a favor, “Depends on what it is.”  If I make a promise, I intend to keep it, as far as I am able.
    But we have probably all had an experience (hopefully not from me!) when a promise has been broken.  I remember a local story from not too long ago about a contractor who took people’s money, but didn’t complete the work.  Or the sad broken promise of a marriage that ends in divorce, a promise not only made to each other, but also made to the children for their best upbringing. 
    How beautiful it is then, that we have a Father who keeps His promises.  God always is true to His word.  As St. Paul reminds us, when God says yes He means yes, and His no means no.  We hear God promise to David today that He will establish a house for David, and raise up an heir whose kingdom will be firm and endure forever.  David himself saw kingdoms fall and rise during his reign, and so this promise must have been quite encouraging! 
    But that promise seemed like it was broken.  David’s son, Solomon, was the only one who could claim a united kingdom.  The kingdom of Israel and Judah split into two due to the harshness of Solomon’s son, and they never rejoined.  Israel was eventually exiled because they worshipped false gods, so that only the southern kingdom of Judah was left.  But even then, eventually the king was captured by the Babylonians who exiled all the royal family.  After the Babylonian exile, the sons of David never ruled over a kingdom again, at least not an earthly kingdom.  Even after the Jews returned to Judah and rebuilt the temple, there was never a king to rule over them, and they soon found themselves a vassal territory of Rome.  King Herod, who ruled at the time of the Gospel we heard today, was not of David’s line, and he wasn’t even really a king in his own right.  He ruled only because Rome let him, and to try to appease the Jews.  For how many years must the people have thought that God had broken His promise to David!
    Enter the Archangel Gabriel.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, like her betrothed, Joseph, was of David’s house.  They were descendants of King David, though they had no political power.  But Gabriel assures Mary that her son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, will receive “the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”  God had not broken His promise.  He simply fulfilled it in a way that others did not expect.  And this unexpected way improved the apparent promise, as Christ’s kingdom would truly never end, because time could not limit the one who rules outside time, and the rule would not limit itself to only a particular piece of land, but upon all of humanity.  It would be like asking a parent for money for ice cream, but then not getting it when you wanted it immediately, only to find out that the parent was the heir to the Dairy Queen, and you had been named as the new owner and CEO.  It wasn’t what you expected, but it was better!

    We should keep that in mind when we think of God’s other promises: for example, God’s promise that He would never abandon us.  God is always there for us.  If He stopped being there for us, we would cease to exist; not just die, but disappear from existence, like George Bailey from “It’s A Wonderful Life” when Clarence the angel shows him what life would be like if he had never been born.  That’s not to say that we will always feel that God is with us.  St. Theresa of Calcutta rarely felt God’s presence.  St. John of the Cross felt abandoned by God, but knew that God would never forsake him, even in the midst of his dark night.  And what joy Sts. Theresa and John must have experienced when they, having remained faithful to God even in the face of difficulties and seeming abandonment, saw God face to face in heaven! 
    When we are going through difficult times, it is not that God has abandoned us.  God is simply allowing us to prove our love, not just for the good feelings that He so often sends, but for Him directly.  Sometimes God is so close to us that we cannot even sense Him.  Sometimes a struggle is meant to help us grow in a virtue or in general holiness, which will draw us even closer to God in the end.  But God never walks away from us.  He will never divorce us.  We are the only ones who can walk away, and even then, God always remains for us, watching for our return like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, ready to run to us if we come to our senses. 
    God is a Father who always keeps His Promises.  Jesus Christ says yes when He means yes, but sometimes also says no when He means no.  We may not always live to see how the promise is fulfilled.  And the promise may be so beyond our expectations that we can’t imagine how the promise will be fulfilled.  But God will fulfill it.  Have faith; our Father only knows how to give us what is good, even better than we can dream.

Truth and Beauty

Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

When is a king most a king?  That might seem like a very academic question, but it impacts how we understand and celebrate this Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.  A king, I would suggest, is most a king when he has defeated his enemies, and his kingdom is secure.  The ideal of Jewish kings is King David, who conquered all of his enemies.  King Solomon, his son, is least kingly when he is conquered by his wives’ attachment to their foreign gods.  

So for we who celebrate this great festival, when is Jesus most a king?  When He has defeated His enemies, that is to say, Satan, sin, and death.  And when did Jesus do exactly that?  On the cross.  And so, Jesus is most kingly when He is on the cross, dying for our salvation, and, at the same time, destroying the reign of Satan over this world.  That helps us understand today’s Gospel, which is Christ being interrogated by Pontius Pilate.  Of course, this was right before Jesus was led away to His crucifixion.  Pilate asks about Jesus’ kingship, alleged by the chief priests, and Jesus answers that His kingdom is a kingdom of truth.  That truth was released upon the world in the most powerful way when Jesus was nailed to the cross, the truth that St. John the Evangelist also tells us, that, “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Truth is related to something else: beauty.  We so often hear the false, yet ubiquitous statement, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  Beauty, though, is not subjective, because it is the splendor of the truth, and truth is utterly objective.  Something is beautiful as much as it is true, or reflects the truth.  Lies are ugly.  Tonight we enjoy beautiful music.  It’s beautiful not simply because of the number of people, not simply because of the instrumentation, nor even the notes themselves, but because it reflects the truth of heaven.  Now, maybe Mozart isn’t played 24/7 in heaven, but the genius of Mozart, why it has stood the test of time, is that he tapped into something otherworldly, something heavenly, which helps us recognize the grandeur, the immensity, the order of heaven.  And this particular piece was made for the Mass, where heaven and earth are joined in harmony with each other in this sacred space.  Mozart maybe isn’t played in heaven 24/7, but it helps us to recognize that in this church we straddle both heaven and earth as we worship Christ our King, which is true of every Mass.  

Today we worship Christ, the King, who reigned most perfectly from the cross, and who still reigns perfectly in heaven as He continues to pour Himself out fully to God the Father for Christ’s Bride, the Church.  May our adherence to the truth prepare us for what God destines for us, a place in the Kingdom of Christ the King, where we will experience the fullness of the Beauty of God, in which we participate today.

What Do You Desire?

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Christmas is slightly more than 10 weeks away.  As a priest, that makes me say: oh my!  Now, when I was a kid, that meant it was time to start picking through the toy catalogues from different stores to see what I wanted for Christmas presents.  I have no idea why, but there were years where I wanted a Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll (I was a weird child, I guess).  But I focused my attention pretty quickly on what I wanted.

What do you want?  What do you desire?  We’re really good at asking God for things that we want.  Some are as frivolous as a Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll; others are more enduring like love, health, and good friends.  King Solomon, the traditional author of the Book of Wisdom whence our first reading came today, asked for prudence and wisdom.  As we hear in the Second Book of Samuel, he didn’t pray for gold, for a long reign, or for the death of his enemies, but for the gifts that were truly necessary to be a good king.  Prudence is that virtue that tells us when, to whom, and how to do the right thing.  Wisdom is that virtue that tells us what to do, what that right thing is. 

In the Gospel we heard today, a man goes to Jesus desiring to go to heaven.  He, like King Solomon, didn’t want passing things.  He wanted eternal life.  Jesus tells him to obey the commandments.  “Yep.  Got it,” he says.  And then Jesus “loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”  Jesus presses to the place where his desire for heaven stops, and in this case, it was his money.

I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we all have parts of our life that we are not quite comfortable giving to Jesus.  Those parts probably change during our lives, but they’re there, nonetheless.  We all can say (I hope) at a surface level, “I want to go to heaven.”  But then that desire bumps into another desire, and we find out what we value more: heaven or the other thing.  Today’s Gospel is not so much about having money (though it can easily be an obstacle to our relationship with God).  It’s about whatever it is that we value more than our relationship with God and our goal of going to heaven.

If you wonder if you have anything that you value more than heaven, then think about how you would feel if it God asked you to give it up in order to go to heaven.  Maybe it’s control (or what we consider control) of our life.  Some people, like me, like to have things planned out and have a particular direction.  If God asked me to give that up, that would be difficult for me.  God may not ask me to give control up, but if I’m not willing to give it up, then I’m not ready for heaven.  What if God asked you to give up your family?  It should make you sad (if losing your family makes you happy, we need to talk!).  But could you do that for God?  People do.  People who convert to Catholicism, especially in the Middle East, are sometimes disowned by family members.  What if God asked you to give up all your money?  Could you do that for God?  Could you do that to gain eternal life if Jesus asked you to, like he asked the man in today’s Gospel?  How about your political affiliation?  If God asked you to stop being a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or whatever so that you could go to heaven, could you do that?  Sadly, too often I know people who are more committed to a political platform than to their faith.  Whatever it is, if we desire it more than we desire God, than we desire eternal union with Him in heaven, Jesus invites us to give it up to find true and eternal happiness.

Sometimes God doesn’t ask us to give something up, but He asks us if we’re willing to give it up.  But sometimes He does ask us to leave less important things behind, sometimes even to leave people behind because they’re not helpful to our eternal salvation.  How do you know?  Pray.  Pray and ask God what you need to leave behind to focus on your relationship with God.  It may take time, and even if we walk away from Jesus, He never walks away from us.  But I encourage you to pray to God to see what He is inviting you to leave behind.  To help you, I invite you to look up Bl. Charles de Foucauld, who wrote a beautiful prayer on abandoning ourselves to God.

Father,

I abandon myself into your hands;

do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you:

I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,

and in all your creatures - 

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:

I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,

for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,

to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,

and with boundless confidence,

for you are my Father.

Amen.

Not Yet

Fourth Sunday of Advent

I’m not quite ready.  This is the shortest Advent possible, and this year, it feels like it.  I don’t know about you, but it feels like we just started Advent, and tomorrow night/tonight we are at Christmas.  That’s not to say that the time has had good things.  On the contrary, I have had some great celebrations over the past week.  But I just feel like I’m not ready yet.  Now does not seem like the right time for Christmas.

God in our first reading tells King David through the prophet Nathan that it wasn’t, in fact, quite time yet for the temple.  David wanted to build a temple out of his love for God.  David lived in a pretty plush house for the times, and wanted God’s house to be even greater.  And at first, Nathan agrees.  But then, after God speaks to Nathan at night, Nathan tells David that it’s not time yet.  God has blessed David in many ways, and God will even make a dynasty for David that will last forever.  But God will have David’s son, Solomon, build the temple, not David.

A model of Solomon's Temple
in Jerusalem

We can’t really say that God wasn’t ready for David to build a temple.  But the promise God made to David, and even the building of the temple, was not just in the short term, with David’s immediate descendants and a temple building, but looked forward to the Gospel passage we heard today.

God fulfilled His promise to David through Jesus, who has a kingdom that will never end.  Whereas David died and rested with his ancestors, Jesus was raised from the dead after three days, and lives forever.  And since Mary is of the house of David, Jesus is the fulfillment of that Davidic prophecy.  Jesus rules over the house of Jacob for ever from His throne in heaven.  Perhaps that is why Handel’s Messiah is so popular even at Christmas.  The words from the Hallelujah chorus, at which people traditionally stand, is from the Book of Revelation, and says, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” and “The Kingdom of this world/ Is become the kingdom of our Lord/ And of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever” and “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.”  That promise that we associate with Jesus being born, is still fulfilled as Christ reigns in heaven for ever and ever as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  

But God also fulfills in our Gospel the promise to have a temple.  No, there is no building really spoken of in our Gospel.  It speaks about the Annunciation, when Jesus becomes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  But the temple is the house of God, the place where God dwells, and the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary becomes the new temple, not made with hands, that houses God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  And because the temple was the house of God, it had to be pure, immaculate, so God preserved, from the moment of her conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary from the stain of original sin, which we celebrate each year on 8 December.  When King Solomon built the temple and consecrated it, God overshadowed it and dwelt in it.  So, when Mary said “yes” to becoming the Mother of Jesus, and therefore the Mother of God, the Theotokos, God overshadowed her and Jesus began to dwell in her.  

But besides Mary being the temple, because she was the house of God, Jesus is also the eternal temple, which was destroyed in His crucifixion, but rebuilt in three days.  Jesus’ Body is the physical house of His Divinity, and so is the new temple forever, because Jesus’ humanity is never divorced from His Divinity; they are forever one flesh, the marriage of God and man.  

But we, too, are called to be the temple of God.  God consecrates us and begins to dwell within us in baptism.  Our bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit, which the Church holds to even in our death, which is why the Church recommends a funeral and burial with a body whenever possible (even if the Church does allow cremation as long as one does not act in a way that rejects the resurrection of the body).  All throughout our lives we strive to make sure that the temple is clean, and a place where God feels at home.  We don’t do as well as the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was the perfect disciple, but when our temple needs cleaning and purifying, we ask God’s mercy in confession, so that it can be a place where the Holy Spirit feels at home again.  God always gives us the necessary grace to live as His temple, but we have to respond to that grace.

As we prepare tonight to celebrate the Nativity of our Lord, when the temple of the Lord in Jesus became visible in Bethlehem, may we also prepare our temples, even in this last day, to be the pure and holy temple of God.

"You fool"

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

There are many endearing names that we would probably like to hear from God: my beloved; my son or my daughter; my child; my good and faithful servant.  Today we hear a not-so-endearing name that God calls the man in the parable: “You fool.”  

Those are not the words we want to hear from God.  So, why does the man in the parable hear those words?  Was it because the man was a successful farmer?  Was it because he was trying to increase his buildings?  Does God hate people with lots of stuff?

If we look through salvation history, we see people who are successful, who build great buildings, who have lots of stuff, that God loves.  Just a couple will suffice as examples: Abraham was a very successful man and had lots of possessions; King Solomon built a beautiful temple to God.  God didn’t have problems with them for that.  So why was God so peeved in the parable that Jesus told?

The man in the parable is concerned only with one thing: putting his trust in his things and his success.  He has made his possessions and his success his god, worshipping it by applying all his energy to it.  He must not have read Ecclesiastes, our first reading, where the author (by tradition King Solomon), inspired by God, reminds the people that all that we work for in life is left to others, and we should not make it the aim of our entire life.

Sometimes as Catholics and Christians we can have an uneasy approach to money.  Maybe we think that God and the Church says that having money is bad, that being successful is bad.  That’s not what God and the Church says at all.  How many church buildings have been built by the generosity of the People of God?  How many ministries are funded by the donations of people who have done very well for themselves in business?  And Jesus and His Apostles had a money bag, and would often rely on the generosity of their followers, like Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich and/or successful in a worldly point of view.  It is not necessarily a sin to have lots of money or nice things.  But, we have to ask ourselves if our money, our success, or our possessions have become a god to us.  What is our approach to our things?  

It is easy to have things become gods to us.  We work to get them, we put in a lot of energy around them.  Someone has a nice house in a nice neighborhood, so we have to move there and build a nice house, too.  There’s a new iPhone coming out, and even though our phone works fine, and we just got a new one, we need to have the latest gadget in technology.  Or we do all the work in the world to reach that high point of our career, and everything else goes to the back burner.  If we live that way, then God may well say to us, “You fool!”

Because what will happen after you die to all that money that you spent so long attaining?  You don’t get to take it with you.  It will go to someone else: your family, friends, the government.  What will happen that super nice house that you spent all your energy in building and improving?  It will be sold to someone else.  What will happen to your job into which you worked so hard to be promoted?  Someone else will get it, and may even do a better job than you.  When we spend all our time and energy on those passing things, we neglect the things that are eternal, and will survive us after we die: love, faith, in general we might say our soul.

What does last is the love that we give to God and that we give to others.  Sometimes that love is expressed through financial donations, but it is more often expressed in time and energy.  When we spend our time and energy on loving God and others, we work on a success that continues with us in the next life.  When we work on our relationship with God, on forgiving others, and spending time with friends and family, we are not creating false gods, but focusing on what the true God has asked us to do which will make us truly happy not only in this life, but especially in the next.  

Money, success, worldly possessions are not bad in themselves.  But they can often take on a life of their own, and become gods to us.  If we ever wonder if a possession has become a god, then think of what you would do if you had to give it up today.  We may be sad, no matter what, but would we think about how much time we wasted to get that thing now that it’s gone?  If we ever think that we have wasted time when something is taken away from us, then we are probably right; we probably have wasted time on things which are not essential.  Today God, the true God, invites us to take stock of how we spend our time and energy.  Are they on passing things?  Or do we spend our time and energy on that which will remain with us as we approach the judgment seat of God?

"If I Had A Million Dollars"

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            If I were to ask you what you wanted right now, at this moment, what would your answer be?  A short homily?  Millions of dollars?  Both are probably equally likely.  Maybe we want an end to a disease or an illness.  Maybe we want a loved one back who is either estranged from us, or has died.  What is it that we want?

           

Each culture has its own way of seeking wishes.  The Irish have catching a leprechaun.  We can probably all remember the story of Aladdin and the genie who grants three wishes when Aladdin rubs his magic lamp.  Maybe we throw pennies into wishing wells, or just say our wish to the wishing well like Snow White.  In the past few years there has been a surge in people making wishes at 11:11 p.m., and then posting the time on Twitter, just to make sure people know they’re making a wish.  But we all want to have our desires granted.  And more often than not, our wishes are for passing things.

            That’s what makes Solomon’s prayer (not quite a wish) so unique.  The desire of his heart is not for riches, or the death of his enemies, or long life for himself, but for wisdom so that he can rule well over the Chosen People.  If the Lord appeared to me tonight in a dream and asked what I wanted, I hope I would say that I wanted wisdom to help shepherd this parish well.  But a few million dollars for the parish wouldn’t hurt either.  I’d like to think that my desire would be as pure as Solomon’s, but sometimes the desires of the world get in there, even with the best of intentions.

            In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is what we should desire above all else.  He compares it to a treasure of great price in a field that a person finds, and then goes and buys the field to get the treasure; or like a pearl of great price that a merchant sells all he has to buy because of its priceless quality.   If I told you that Fr. Dave, before he left, inherited 5 million dollars in cash and left it somewhere on the parish property, this whole campus would be torn up by people looking for it.  Imagine what someone could do with that money: take a vacation, pay off the mortgage, feed the poor, start a new business.  As much and more as we would desire that 5 million dollars, that is the measure of how much we should value the kingdom of heaven.

            And look at what people will do for lots of money.  They conquer their greatest fears and do really weird stuff like on “Fear Factor.”  They live in a house or in the middle of nowhere with complete strangers and go through physical and mental tests like in “Big Brother” or “Survivor.”  Prime time television is full of shows of people doing funny/stupid/amazing things just to win some money.  What are we willing to do for the kingdom of heaven?

            What we are willing to do always returns to where our hearts are and what we desire.  If we feel the prize is good enough, we are willing to go through a lot to obtain that prize.  St. Francis of Assisi, according to tradition, struggled at times with chastity, with using the gift of his sexuality well.  So, whenever he was tempted to misuse that gift, he jumped into a rose bush so that his mind would move away from the temptation and move towards all those little thorns digging into his flesh.  Now, I’m not suggesting that if you’re tempted to unchaste acts you should start jumping into thorns, but St. Francis showed us that he valued heaven so much, that he was even willing to undergo bodily pain to make sure he could obtain his true desire: heaven.

            In this, my first weekend in St. Joseph parish, I want to let you know that my goal, my pastoral plan, my mission is to help you desire heaven and help you to get there.  A good shepherd leads his sheep towards green pastures and fresh water, and that’s what I’m going to try to do.  By what I say from the ambo and in my bulletin articles; by my actions whether in the church building, in the office, or out and about; by my prayers I will try to help you as your shepherd.  But even though I am a leader of this community, I am also a part of it, and need your help so that I can desire heaven above all things and make sure I’m getting closer and closer.  Will I help lead you perfectly?  No.  That’s why I’ll go to confession and ask for your forgiveness when I don’t do it well.  Will you do it perfectly?  No.  That’s why I’ll be available for confession.  And in asking God and the community’s forgiveness, we will receive grace from God to reorder our desires in the right way, and get back on the path towards heaven. 

            Each Sunday we will come back here to have our desires purified as we give God what He deserves: our worship and attention.  Each Sunday we will admit that our desires have not always been for God and the kingdom of heaven, and we will receive strength from the worthy reception of the Body and Blood of Jesus.  You don’t have to catch a leprechaun.  You don’t have to find a magic lamp.  You don’t even have to wait until 11:11 p.m.  Just come back each Sunday, and together, in our worship of God, we will put our desires back in the right order, and move closer to the kingdom of heaven.