“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
“Peace begins with a smile..”
“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
“Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.”
“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”
Lorenzo Giustiniani was born into a famous Venetian family in 1381. As a child he was filled with a piety beyond his years. At the age of 19 he had a vision of Eternal Wisdom. After which he renounced all the privilege of his family and entered the religious life of the Augustinian Order of the Canons of St. George on Alga Island, just one mile from Venice. In 1404 he was ordained a priest and became the superior of the monastery. In 1433 he was named Bishop of Venice. He brought peace to numerous state quarrels and founded 15 new monasteries and many parishes. In 1450 he was elected Patriarch of Venice.
Saint Lorenzo Giustiniani was most noted for his Christian charity. He tried to foster the religious life by his sermons as well as his writings.
The Gospel from today’s Mass, Luke 14:25-33 sounds quite hard to live. “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brother and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
Hard to live, this sounds like a complete contradiction of Christ’s command to “Love one another even as I have loved you,” (John 13:34) and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:34-40) Not to mention the 4th Commandment to “honor your father and your mother.” (Deuteronomy 5:16, Mark 7:10) What does Jesus really mean? Father James Kubicki of the Apostleship of Prayer gives an insight into this Gospel.
Our visiting and retired priest gave this beautiful explanation of today’s Gospel. Obviously Jesus didn’t mean to hate anyone, but did mean we need to radically detach ourselves from our family, friends and any self-gratification in favor of a full attachment to God, trust in Him and His will for our lives. Basically make God first and everything else second. Not an easy task. In fact without God’s grace this is an impossible task. But all we have to do is ask for this grace and God will graciously give it to us.
Today, September 5th is the anniversary of the day God called Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta home in 1997. This tiny woman epitomized placing God first in her life and what a difference she made in the world for God. Blessed Mother Teresa entered the Loreto Sisters of Dublin at age 18 in 1928 but it was in 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling, India that she heard what she later referred to as “a call within a call.” Her message was clearly from God, and He asked her to leave her convent and “help the poor while living among them….to follow Christ into the slums to serve him among the poorest of poor.”
Trusting in God, she stepped out, others joined her as volunteers and they became the core of the Missionaries of Charity an order Mother Teresa founded in 1950. As did Blessed Mother Teresa let us each ask God for His grace to put Him first in our lives then “walk by His side” and “give Christ the chance to make use of us.” In fact we must lose ourselves in order to have life, life to the fullest. “A radical letting go of ourselves is possible if we allow God to shape us and use us for His purpose and His good.
The road to success and happiness in life is not one that most would expect. The road to success is picking up our cross daily as did Mother Theresa, and follow Jesus, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26)
