Matthew Williams – Page 32 – Meditation on Daily Mass Readings

August 21, 2020July 30, 2020

Reconstruction

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

When we read the first reading, we may wonder what all this is about layering sinews upon bones, and then once the body is reconstructed, infusing spirit. There is a sense of a process of rebuilding. When we think about recovering from sin, we most often think of the cleansing/purifying aspect. We go to confession, and we are fully cleansed, fully new–we can start over.

But in the spiritual life, in addition to the point-in-time cleansing process of God’s forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance, there is also a massive rebuilding process that God undergoes with the soul. And it tends to be long and drawn out, not because He can’t do things quickly, but because He respects the limitations of our nature and does not want to overwhelm us.

When we are born into original sin, we are born with our nature in a sense in ruins. When we are baptized, our friendship with God is restored and He enters in. But all of the ruin of our nature is not suddenly restored thereby. Our being remains in spiritual blindness, coldness, darkness, and much of what we are pulls us forcefully away from God.

Through a consistently cultivated life of prayer and the sacraments, and daily effort to say “yes” to God based upon a conscious decision for Him, we partner with Him in the rebuilding process. We work with Him to allow His grace to lay sinew on bone, skin on sinew, and then increasingly to infuse the whole with His spirit. Blessed are those who consciously decide for God from a young age, for such a decision tends to be more straightforward and whole-hearted, and God can do great things in a shorter period of time.

But what is the target state of this rebuilding process? Conveniently, we find it in today’s Gospel:

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Perfect love–union with God and obedience to God, and profound charity to neighbor–is the target state toward which God’s process of rebuilding the human person tends. The process passes through the sometimes long and difficult phases of detachment, purification, and spiritual dryness described by the great spiritual masters. It also passes through ever deeper and more fulfilling experiences of God. So buckle up. Because this isn’t an optional challenge in the spiritual life. It’s a commandment–THE Commandment.

Ideas for conversation with God: Consider that your spiritual life may have difficult periods ahead as you paddle upriver to keep consistent in your “yes” to God, and He goes to work on your soul. Tell Him you are giving Him a blank check to fill in. Tell Him that you know He is worth it. (“To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” Jn. 6:68) Tell Him you are committed for the full journey. Ask Him to give you the strength to persevere in this most wonderful process, for which He paid with His blood.

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August 20, 2020December 13, 2020

Din of Evil, Triumph of Good

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Two discouraging words when it comes to the spread of evil and godlessness are “majority” and “power.” “Satan is having a field day,” some say, and it is true. We decipher the cunning hidden agendas of individuals and organizations with massive amounts of money and key positions of cultural and political leadership aimed at removing God and His principles from every aspect of culture and society. They deceive others, and in some cases themselves as well, into thinking that the agenda is about justice and personal freedom. But in reality, they push continuously toward totalitarian government supplanting Divine Providence, and political alignment with a certain overreaching social agenda supplanting personal morality and charity.

But today’s readings betray an even deeper force at work that we can decipher. If indeed the noisy powers of the day, in every age, repeat over and over the first sin of supplanting God with man, something else is going on. Something else which, while quiet, carries the impetus of a volcanic surge.

That “something else” is the tireless and unstoppable impetus of God’s mercy. Here, words like “minority” and “weakness” become wondrous and beautiful, as God moves through the populous, drawing real people close to Him, purifying them, and leading them back to Him. He is quiet and understated, but His mercy is gloriously stubborn as it searches every human heart for a crack or crevice of openness through which He inserts the challenge to follow Him.

“I will pour clean water on you and wash away all your sins.” “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

If we consider history in this light, it belongs to the saints–both those recognized, and those anonymous. Even the stage of evil upon which they act out their lives is set for their sake, as a contrast against which their virtue and beauty shines, and a challenger through which their greatness is strengthened and increased.

We must work tirelessly for the triumph of good in the world, including in the public sphere; but our hope should not lie in a flashy, short-term victory. Rather, we must hope in the hidden but glorious action of God in hearts that we will never see, who may never be interviewed on TV or participate in a poll. Just as He acts in our hearts, not through external pressure, but through the breeze of His Holy Spirit.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Talk to Our Lord about the prevalence of evil in the world. Does it disturb Him? Does it worry Him? Does He have it all in hand, or is He expecting us to “save Him” from it? On the other hand, if He has it in hand, How would He like us to help along the triumph of good in the world? What are His expectations for us and from us in an often frighteningly chaotic world?

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August 19, 2020July 30, 2020

Shepherd of our Hearts

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Often we become anxious because of the failings–sometimes, grave failings–of those in authority commissioned to serve us, both in society and in the Church.

God apparently shares our concern. Scripture often talks about how those to whom much has been given will be called to account for it. The first reading shows us that when our leaders fail us, especially those shepherding the Church, His righteous passion for His people is stirred.

And yet, mysteriously, He continues to commission frail human beings with the care of His flock. And He tells us to listen to them. For example, He calls out the Pharisees repeatedly for their selfish and hypocritical shepherding of the people of God–to the point that the first reading could be all about them. And yet, while cautioning His disciples not to act as the Pharisees do, He still encourages His followers to listen to and heed what they say.

And it is well known to us as Catholics, that although the history of the Church is spotted with profoundly unworthy shepherds, God’s command to us to follow its Magisterium has not wavered, and those who do so have the guarantee of following His path.

Clearly, as disappointing as many shepherds have been to the Lord, He longs to have human beings share in His own noble role as the Good Shepherd. For there is no attribute of God so exalted that He doesn’t call us in some way to share in it, albeit to a finite degree corresponding to our nature.

And let us not forget that there have been countless great shepherds in the Church who have made this dream of His come true. St. Paul. St. Augustine. St. Athanasius. St. Leo the Great. St. John XXIII. St. John Paul the Great. Even today, coincidentally, we celebrate the feast of a great shepherd, St. John Eudes, who tirelessly preached devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Secularists are quick to point out any flaw in a shepherd not, as in our first reading, to correct constructively. They argue the impracticality and absurdity of the Christian ideal based on the apparent inability of its most ardent proponents to live according to it.

In reality, though, the example of any single individual who lives up to that ideal, like our saint of the day, is an irrefutable demonstration of the possibility of reaching it with God’s grace. The life of every saintly shepherd is a glorious miracle of God enabling the living of the high ideal that He demands. And the example of the innumerable saintly shepherds who have thus lived in the history of the Church constitutes a massively eloquent testimony.

Still, when we encounter at close quarters a shepherd who is gravely flawed, who does not demonstrate a real sense of the sacred, or worse still, who intentionally deceives by deliberately leading a life contrary to what he preaches, this discourages us deeply. This leader, to whom we have entrusted at some level our spiritual care, has failed us miserably.

What answer does God give to our discouragement? He certainly is not indifferent to it, as we see in the first reading: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!” But His answer comes at the end of that reading, and in the Psalm: “I myself will look after and tend my sheep.” “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.”

His promise to shepherd His flock Himself is not a call to flee our flawed Church to the ranks of evangelical Protestantism. 🙂 But it is a clear message that while human shepherds pasture our minds and holy ones can inspire us, it is He and He alone who shepherds our hearts. Whether our shepherds are more like the Pharisees or like St. John Paul the Great, we must consistently heed what the Church teaches us, but the only one to whom our heart clings as its Lord is the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. In the end, we are His sheep, and only His. And He will never, ever fail us, even as the primary conduits through which He communicates Himself, both sacramentally and instructively, are flawed human vehicles.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Dialogue with Him about the saints who have most impressed you personally, and then any false shepherds who have caused you particular discouragement. Ask Him if, in the face of varying levels of virtue among human shepherds, He is still capable of guaranteeing you overflowing happiness through an authentic and fulfilling relationship with Him.

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August 18, 2020July 29, 2020

Tin Gods

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

There is a reason rich people think of themselves as gods:

“Oh yes, you are wiser than Daniel,
there is no secret that is beyond you.
By your wisdom and your intelligence
you have made riches for yourself”

A person who has become wealthy in his/her own lifetime, the so-called “self-made man/woman,” has achieved something indeed. By means of their “wisdom” and their “intelligence,” self-made wealthy persons have successfully cajoled others–many, or a few–to part with the very means of existence itself to a highly disproportionate degree, and hand it over to them willingly. Perhaps they have added a little bit of value to a great many people’s lives. Perhaps they have invented something momentous. Perhaps there are shady dealings involved, but for the sake of argument, let’s say not. They have succeeded in what literally every other person on the planet is striving to accomplish, to a degree that they possess many multiples of the average person’s wealth. They are “wiser than Daniel.” They are smarter. They are shrewder. They are like gods.

Even those who inherit wealth can enjoy this illusion. They can carelessly use their wealth to command respect and service from everyone with whom they surround themselves. Their money allows them to command. They are like gods.

They may not be happy, but they possess something that is a seemingly acceptable–nay, covetable–substitute for happiness, and if it is threatened, they will cling to it till the end. And, as the first reading illustrates, it will be their utter and total destruction.

The economy of salvation and true happiness could not be more distantly removed from this paradigm. It is an economy where one gives not only “houses or brothers or sisters” to God, but where one gives oneself and all one is and has completely to the service of God and others. It is this willing and total gift that draws happiness into one’s bank account, not one’s street smarts and shrewdness.

So how does one change from the former into the latter? How does one stop clinging to the ersatz-happiness and take the leap of faith into total gift of self?

“For men this is impossible,
but for God all things are possible.”

God’s raw grace alone, directly infused into the rich man for his conversion, is the only power that can work this miracle. It alone can introduce a drop, a hint, even an effusion of what happiness can be into the reluctant, glutted, jaded soul of the rich. It is for this reason that prayer and sacrifice for others is the fulcrum of God for the conversion of sinners.

But we are foolish if we think that the rich woman to be converted is “she,” “her,” “that one over there.” Every single one of us has attachments, desires, covetousness that make us no different from the rich. If we are not rich in fact, we are so by desire. We long to use our superior knowledge, shrewdness, intelligence, talents to drive us to a status superior to others–to become like gods. We may wish to do so in order to have greater power to do good. Whatever the reason, it is an illusion.

Only complete commitment to the economy of salvation, whereby we leave our welfare and status in God’s hands and give of ourselves every day to God and to the service of others, can bring us the happiness that we think we are chasing when we chase riches. There is no other way.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Him and examine with Him what part of you still longs for the sense of security, power, and superiority that wealth brings. With Him, dig tenaciously to find those hidden parts of your heart that believe that good can only be achieved by the rich and the powerful. Then, renounce those lies and desires and give Him yourself forever; let the world control the world; lay your head on His heart, and know that there you find not only your peace and happiness, but also the power to bring others through your gift to their happiness as well. Turn your heart fully to Him and to the economy of salvation.

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August 17, 2020July 29, 2020

A Binary Choice

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

To truly appreciate, wonder at, and ultimately experience the surpassing joy that is an ongoing relationship with God, it is important to understand how terrible by contrast is the sin in which we habitually live.

When the rich young man approaches Jesus to ask Him what is necessary to gain eternal life, Jesus does not tell him to do his best, that God understands his wounds and psychological limitations–do your best, and God’s mercy will lift you up out of your misery after this life into eternal bliss.

He holds a much simpler line. He says, “Keep the commandments.”

The truly amazing thing about this exchange is that, rather than balking at this hard line, the rich young man realizes that beyond even this challenge, something is still lacking, not just in general, but for attaining his aim–for attaining eternal life.

Jesus does not gainsay his further prodding. He asserts what Catholic salvation theology will later reaffirm and explain: That to enter heaven, complete detachment from created reality and exclusive attachment to God is not optional, but necessary. Indeed, it may be posited that people go to Hell, not so much because they reject God as because they reject the painful and necessary process of their own transformation through detachment.

All sin stems in some way from from attachment to self and created things. And the first reading spells out with horrible clarity what this attachment leads to: Ultimately, a despoiling of all happiness. We may see an allegory of this in the cocaine addict. It is said that the first cocaine hit is the best; the addict thereafter chases that first high but never fully finds it again, as each succeeding high is less gratifying than the last, and the addict descends into complete, inescapable misery. So it is with the soul attached to self and creative things, in habitual sin. Life in sin is so miserable, that drastic, painful wake-up calls, like that portrayed in the first reading, come to resemble more an intervention for a drug addict than a punishment.

Still, as miserable as the life of sin is, many more times exalted is life with God, here on earth, but especially in eternity. “…and you will have treasure in heaven.”

Ultimately, the choice for God or for sin is drastic and binary: “He who does not gather with me, scatters.” Nor is it a choice between two paths at a fork in the road, but rather, a choice to paddle upstream, or to drift. Those who make the choice to drift will not enjoy friendship with God on earth or, more importantly, enter eternal life.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Affirm categorically that your life choice is for Him, that you are willing to undergo whatever sacrifice and accept whatever suffering is necessary in the process of choosing Him over sin. Look at a crucifix and thank Him for opening the door to this choice, which was tragically closed to us by our first parents, through His act of salvation.

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August 16, 2020July 26, 2020

Foreigner

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The lineage of my Christianity traces back through France–Frankreich, Gaul, Gallia–the barbarian nation conquered by the empire that also conquered the chosen people of God, Israel, the nation of Jesus. (A Roman named Dionysius brought us the message of Jesus, and we thanked him for it by separating him from his head.)

To Jesus, I am a foreigner. We are all foreigners. From the day Adam and Eve were ejected from the garden of Eden, we are no longer natives–we are foreigners.

Today’s first reading talks about how God will accept foreigners (not just Israelites) if they keep to His covenant. Paul talks about bringing the Israelites who rejected Christ to belief in Him through jealousy of the Christianity received by foreigners. In the Gospel, Jesus initially denies a foreigner, a Canaanite, the benefits He has reserved for Israel, then grants her those benefits in admiration of her faith in Him (and her single-minded love for Her child, which helps her surmount His initial feint at rejection).

Jesus Christ calls us to the greatest exaltation, like what we saw yesterday in Mary at the Assumption; He calls us to the most profound intimacy with Him–no less an intimacy than that proper to the Blessed Trinity itself.

But He calls us as foreigners.

As long as we are sinners, we do well to approach Him, not with the attitude of entitlement of a son or daughter, but with the deference of a poor foreigner approaching the opulent throne of a great lord. While indeed, He offers us everything, He owes us nothing. When we ask Him to help us overcome our sin and reach our full potential, we come as beggars.

This attitude should in no way mitigate our confidence or cause us to distance ourselves from Our Lord; rather, it should fill our confidence in Him with greater wonder and gratitude. As we approach Him over and over as the prodigal son, the child turned foreigner, He unexpectedly embraces us once again as His very own. He calls us not servants, but friends. He makes us again children of the Father. He showers upon us the choicest of His gifts, when we merely ask in faith and trust, like the Canaanite woman.

And He can teach us to do the same with others around us whom we may be inclined to disdain, who to us appear as foreigners…

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Approach the Lord as a foreigner; thank Him for His love and friendship; ask Him never to let you take them for granted, as a child might take for granted the wealth of its parent. Ask always to remember that the divine intimacy that He offers you comes in spite of your status as sinner, as a self-exiled foreigner. And ask Him to help you treat others with the same embracing mercy.

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August 15, 2020August 15, 2020

The Secret of Mary’s Power and Glory

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Why did God give Mary gifts so far above every other creature? She is the one human person besides Jesus Christ who is present both soul and body in Heaven.

Was it simply to crown the gifts He had already given her? She had received exemption from original sin at conception, and the inestimable gift of becoming the Ark of the New Covenant, with her body carrying God in the flesh, the pledge of God’s reconciliation with man.

Certainly, the Assumption was gift upon gift, but there is something in between one gift and another: Mary’s “yes.” There is no doubt that this “yes” (“I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to your word”) led God, as it were, to fall madly in love with her and whipped up His zeal to make of her the pinnacle of all creation.

Besides the fact that Mary’s “yes” was constant, at the visit of the angel, through the horror of the cross, and with the birth of the Church at Pentecost after Christ’s Resurrection, Mary’s “yes” was grandly special in another way. We find evidence in her words in today’s Gospel. If we could imitate this particular quality of her “yes” consistently, there is no reason to believe that we would not be equally pleasing to God, and give Him the same sort of channel for His love that she gave Him.

This quality, so clearly seen in her words today, is overwhelming awareness of and gratitude for His tender, powerful, and personal action in her life, along with the certainty of His tender, powerful, and personal care for the future. And this focus of hers never changed, even as she watched her own Son die on the cross in front of her, even as she tirelessly supported the Apostles in the foundation of the early Church.

In addition to allowing for special gifts like her Assumption, this fullness of gratitude and trust that characterized Mary’s “yes,” her gift of self to God, won for Mary a limitless power to walk souls through the door into Heaven–the door that Christ has opened for them with His death and Resurrection.

Mary didn’t and doesn’t still today win souls for God through public preaching and subtle argumentation. With her life, she won the power to bring great grace of conversion to souls through the gift of her own freedom in gratitude and trust, minute by minute, to God. And that power is still seen today as she continues to intervene directly in the lives even of hardened sinners and despairing souls and draw them back to her Son.

The secret to effectiveness for the Kingdom of God lies not in conjuring up and executing the most daring, ambitious, and compelling plan of evangelization. The secret lies in the gift Mary gave, which is the currency of the economy of salvation, the currency that buys compelling divine grace for souls. The secret lies in the open-hearted gift of self to God, in limitless gratitude and trust in all circumstances.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Him if He aspires for your greatness in eternity to be similar to Mary’s. Explain to Him your weakness, the sins you struggle so hard to get over, and ask Him if these are destined to be an inevitable impediment to your giving your heart to Him–or, if He is able to overcome them with His grace if you request it of Him. Ask Him what it takes to have a heart as full-to-bursting with gratitude and trust as Mary’s.

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August 14, 2020August 14, 2020

Ingratitude for Love

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

If we are prostitutes, stepping out every day on the husband who loves us tenderly for a little money, we may become habituated to this lifestyle over time, and–if our husband does not violently reproach us–even convince ourselves that he has gotten over it. But this indifference and numbness does not make our actions any less heinous, or his heart any less broken.

In the first reading, we see a heartbreaking allegory of how tenderly God has cared for us after we sinned and were cast out, and the horrifying indifference represented by the sins to which we tend to attribute so little importance.

In the Gospel, Jesus underscores the beauty and preciousness of God’s original plan for marriage, which so often is cast aside in divorce. In the face of this plan, divorce, no matter the understandable reasons in each case, is a horrid aberration of something sacred.

So it is with all our sins: Because they feel natural, understandable, we do not take them seriously. But the first reading helps us understand how offensive they are to God. The key to understanding it is the tenderness of His love.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Read and reread the first reading. Ask Jesus boldly to show you what elements in your life are similar in horrid indifference to the those of the rescued woman in the reading. And ask Him for the courage to expose them to His tender forgiveness in confession.

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August 13, 2020July 22, 2020

Debts Big and Little

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Jesus makes His point very well in today’s Gospel. The servant who refuses to be patient with payback of a tiny loan from his fellow servant, immediately after receiving complete forgiveness for a massive loan by his own master, seems to us absurd, repugnant, beyond unreasonable–and so it must have seemed to Jesus’ listeners.

So, why is it so hard for us to forgive those who offend us? When we become enraged or resentful, why don’t we see ourselves in the same absurd light as we see this servant? It is simple: Either we don’t appreciate the enormity of the debt we ourselves have been forgiven, or we don’t trust that in fact it has been forgiven.

We are so accustomed, albeit unconsciously, to seeing God in a relative manner, as one more element of our lives, as one more duty to be dispensed. But God doesn’t see things that way. From His point of view, He is our all in all; He is our Alpha and Omega, our Beginning and End; He envisions us wrapped up in the vary same fibers of union with Him that unite the Trinity.

Thus, the original sin of Adam, which we all inherited at birth, and our individual sins are not just little tantrums to be waved off with a laugh, if we are to believe Jesus’s message in today’s Gospel. The enormity of their import comes from their threefold offense against the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

When we sin, we reject God our Father, our Creator, the very source of our being. Thus we reject our own essence and being at its very roots. When we sin, we reject God the Son, who dragged a bloody cross up Calvary hill, falling with it three times but persevering, ultimately pouring out His blood and accepting death on the cross to give us back that being, to give us back our fulfillment. And when we sin, we reject God the Holy Spirit, who Himself constitutes the union of the Blessed Trinity–we violate that vision of our incorporation into that union that is God’s vision for us. We violate the most sacred intimacy that is God Himself.

When we meditate on our sin, we should not so much meditate on the despicable acts or omissions in our lives themselves, merely to contemplate their innate ugliness–we should meditate on the beauty, the glory, the grandeur, the love, the intimacy of the One we have offended and of His dreams for our destiny incorporated into the heart of Himself. And the price He paid to get rid of that enormous debt for us.

And then drink deeply of the certainty that because of that price He paid, through the sacraments of baptism and confession, that debt is well and truly gone. Completely gone.

And then contemplate our petty grievances with our neighbor. They are as comparatively unimportant as we are small compared to God. We feel them deeply and mightily. But compared to our grievances against God, they are absurdly tiny.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Hold a crucifix, or look at one on a wall, and consider that the one crucified, paying the price for you, is the absolute Master of the Universe, voluntarily made vulnerable. Consider the enormity of even small careless rejections of this great Master. Then, consider that this crucifix has wiped that debt away. Finally, look directly at the offenses that habitually make you most resentful against your neighbor. And likewise wipe them away; give them in complete freedom to this great God on the cross, even if it seems to mean that you feel them all the more bitterly.

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August 12, 2020July 21, 2020

It’s Either/Or

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed the Church was replete with theologians excited to invent–convinced, it appeared, that their hour was the hour of innovation. The thirst for innovation seemed in some cases to surpass the thirst for truth.

One of the brand new theological trends of that time, which unfortunately remains prevalent to this very day among even good and noble souls, is the notion that maybe, just maybe–read: probably, likely–all or at least most people in the end are saved.

This supposition flies in the face of the prior one-thousand-nine-hundred-something years of tradition in the Church and the unanimous teaching of the saints. It also flies in the face of the Gospel itself, where Jesus unequivocally states that those who walk the broad road that leads to damnation are many (cf. Mt. 7:13).

Such theology rejects the message of the first reading wholesale, or relegates it completely to Old Testament times. Yet, this first reading is a very tame precursor to the terrible separation of the sheep from the goats at Final Judgement, about which Jesus explicitly speaks (Mt. 25: 31-46).

And in today’s Gospel, He talks about treating those who commit offenses and fail to listen to the Church as outcasts, indicating further that whatever the Church binds or looses on earth is likewise bound or loosed in Heaven.

That God allows souls to be condemned is of course as mysterious as it is certain–but a sort of understanding can be reached if we accept that God values human freedom more than He does human salvation. He would rather allow persons to walk to their own perdition than remove from them their freedom by forcing salvation on them when they have rejected it.

But who in his right mind would reject God’s mercy and eternal life, in the end, if given the choice?

This too, while mysterious, can be understood in a way when we realize that, by and large, people don’t reject God’s mercy and love–they reject the prospect of their own transformation. In the end, only saints stand in the presence of God. Standing before Him without full alignment to Him would in fact be a fate more painful than Hell. Reaching sainthood, whether on earth or in purgatory, is a deeply painful process of detachment, and while the end result is exaltation, the process feels like one is being turned inside out.

And many, many reject the prospect of this process–quietly but explicitly, in the recesses of their hearts–and lose God as the inevitable result. There is no middle ground.

But hearken to the second-to-last statement in today’s Gospel! “If two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.”

Per the message of St. Faustina, the Church must come together as never before and pray and sacrifice for the conversion of sinners. And in line with today’s Gospel, Our Lord assured this saint that prayer for the conversion of sinners is always answered.

Heavenly Father, by the infinite power of the sacrifice of your Son, penetrate deeply into the hearts of sinners, and convert them to yourself! I give you my freedom as a small token; leverage it as you did the self-gift of the Blessed Virgin Mary to pry open the hardened hearts of sinners and show them compellingly what they are missing! Lead them to Yourself!

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Him to what lengths He would go–in fact, went–to open the door for sinners to walk through to their salvation. Contemplate the degree of His sacrifice for the eternal fulfillment of human persons. And ask Him what role He would like you to play to help them put one foot in front of the other and walk through that door.

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