Someone made a comment the other day about not needing to bring a sacrifice to the altar, and in a way that’s entirely true. Jesus Christ died on the cross for us. Everything we receive from that work of His and His alone is through grace and not any merit we have of our own. (Click the link to read more)

June 16, 2017
Friday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 363
2 COR 4:7-15
PS 116:10-11, 15-16, 17-18
MT 5:27-32

Someone made a comment the other day about not needing to bring a sacrifice to the altar, and in a way that’s entirely true.   Jesus Christ died on the cross for us.   Everything we receive from that work of His and His alone is through grace and not any merit we have of our own.   However, we do have to offer a sacrifice at the altar.   Ourselves.   We come to the altar unworthy with a sacrifice that is blemished by our own failures and sins.  That sacrifice is united with the only sacrifice worthy of God’s love, Jesus Christ himself.   That’s the sacrifice we must bring to the Mass… a complete giving of ourselves to God through His Son.

St. Paul reminds us today what that looks like.   It’s not simply getting ready at Mass, our work begins much earlier.   It begins the moment we walk out at the sending from the Last Mass we attended.  Our work begins by dying to ourselves every moment of every day that Christ might live in us.   That same God who died on the cross now resides in our mortal bodies as though in a Temple created just for Him.   All the power of the universe, the life force that animates all life, and sustains the universe itself has been received by us in the Eucharist and if we allow our own frailty, thoughts, and desires to die away can change us into the men and women that we were created to be.

Sometimes we think our thoughts and fancies are harmless.   Who do they hurt?   Especially for the married people, they hurt not just ourselves but they sap away the strength of our resolve.   They weaken our love for the other and embolden our own selfish desires.   They undermine our dedication to a single person and drain the very love and devotion we have toward our spouse, our neighbor, and our God.   That’s why Jesus reminds us that it’s not just our actions that we must work on, but our thoughts towards others.   Our cross is not always just an external situation that is difficult to walk through but is also the nails of our own wants desires, and appetites.   In offering those to God, in allowing the things we want that will hurt us to die in ourselves, we can journey with Christ toward Calvary in an even more powerful way… by accepting the cup that God has given us, regardless of what we want in our own lives.

His servant and yours,
Brian Mullins

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. - Psalm 19:14