Monthly Archives: October 2025

Homily: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner”

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Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C (go to readings)
Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18
Psalm 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14

Who were the Pharisees? We often get the sense from the bible that they were an arrogant, self-righteous, judgmental group. And part of that may have been the disciples of Jesus holding a grudge against the group that not only argued against and were often criticized by Jesus, and they conspired to crucify Jesus, but also they continued to harass and torture Christians. So, they were easily portrayed by the Christian community, including the gospel writers, as the evil oppressors.

But according to Jewish historians of the time, the Pharisees were a well-respected religious group. Their name, “Pharisee,” is from the Hebrew, “Pərūšīm,” meaning, “separated ones.” They were known for their piety and faithfulness to the requirements of the law. When Israel returned from the Exile, they recognized that their exile was caused by their corruption, and their return permitted by God because of their repentance and return to righteousness. The Pharisees believed that this legal righteousness was the way for Israel to return to its golden age. Israel was God’s holy people, a nation of the priestly people of God, set apart, to be a light to the nations, as the scriptures say. And so, the Pharisees took the priestly purity code of the law, required for preparation and conduct for serving God in the Temple, and extended it to apply to all Israelites at all times. As we see in the gospels, while some, perhaps many, might have been corrupt, in which their outward show of piety cloaked their inward attitude of arrogant self-interest, some, perhaps many, were honest, devout, and holy, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. So the Pharisees, in general, then, were the heroes of most stories, calling sinners back to righteousness to the Lord, distancing themselves from pollution and sin, and so, wise and holy guides for the people.

Who were the tax collectors? They were despised as corrupt and greedy traitors to the nation of God’s people. They took an exorbitant cut for themselves as agents of the Roman oppressors, who already required high taxes, and collected them without mercy. Historians suggest that tax collectors would have to bid on a certain territory or neighborhood, and pay the Romans in advance for the taxes due to Rome from that area, and then the tax collectors could collect however much above that they wanted for themselves, and live very well. However, they were despised by the Romans for being Jews, and despised by the Jews for cooperating with the Romans. So, they often were not welcome in public places such as temple and synagogue, for being unclean and immoral and strongly disliked. So in most stories, they would obviously be the bad guy, the scoundrel, the proud and rich weasel who would always get their comeuppance. Always.

So, all that is to really help you see how shocking it would have been to hear Jesus’ parable in our gospel today. Jesus often would have surprises and twists in his parables to help people to remember them and think about them. He was, of course, a master storyteller. So if you were hearing a story that starts with, “Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector,” you might not yet know the story, but you knew that the Pharisee was going to be the good guy, and the tax-collector was going to be the bad guy. But what does Jesus do? He reverses the roles.

Last week, we heard Jesus tell the story of the widow and the corrupt judge, and our need to be persistent in prayer. Today we hear the story of our need to be humble, or “poor in spirit” in prayer. Jesus says, “The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself.” Who is he praying to? Right. “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector.” So, the only thing he gets right so far is gratitude. But gratitude for what? For being better than the rest of humanity. Just wow. And then he starts praying about the flaws of this other person behind him in the temple: “greedy, dishonest, adulterous, like this tax collector.” A great lesson in how not to pray. I’ll often hear people confess being judgmental. [I can tell if someone’s judgmental just by looking at them. (That’s a joke)]. I think that often in our society, we feel so judged, so unworthy, such a hot mess, so aware of our flaws and failures, that it’s very tempting to compare ourselves with someone who seems to be a worse mess than us, just to feel better about ourselves. “At least I’m doing better than that loser.” So not only does Jesus condemn that in today’s gospel, but it also then makes that other person feel judged, because we are judging them, and then they have to go find someone more miserable than them to judge, and now everyone feels judged and like garbage, and that’s not the way to be the kingdom of God.

And so, this Pharisee doesn’t stop there. “I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” So the Pharisee prays by praising himself and his good deeds. Now, it is good to fast twice a week and pay tithes on our whole income. But we don’t bring it to prayer boasting about it, expecting God to pat you on the head like a good boy. Forget the good that you do, and come to God as a beggar, poor in spirit, humble, and asking for God’s mercy and help. Not like this Pharisee, boasting about how close he is to God, how holy he is, like they’re besties. Remember what Jesus said about the slave who had to serve his master before taking care of himself. “When you have done all that you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” We can’t do anything that puts God in debt to us for our good deeds. We can’t earn our entitlement to holiness. Everything we do is less than what we ought to be doing if we were perfect. But by coming to God, asking for mercy and help, he accepts our lowly offerings as a parent lovingly praises a child for their crayon art, which the parent happily puts on the refrigerator. Look what you did, isn’t that cute?

So, the good and holy Pharisee is not so good and holy. Let’s look to see how wicked and heartless the wicked and heartless tax-collector is. “But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’” Oh come on Jesus, we want to hate the tax collector! He’s supposed to be the villain! But the tax collector humbly confesses how far he is from the holiness and goodness he is called to, how lowly he is to not even be able to raise his eyes to heaven, but is filled with repentance, and the scandal of his own life, and simply prays to God, “Be merciful to me, a sinner.” I think it’s beautiful that half of his prayer is in his bodily posture. I’m reminded a bit of Pope Saint John Paul II’s, “Theology of the Body,” which teaches us that since our actions, like our words, can communicate the glory of God and the goodness and truth we as humanity are called to express, that the tax-collector says as much with how he prays as what he prays.

Two footnotes to this description of the pharisee. First, a good act of contrition for the Sacrament of Reconciliation requires three elements: An element of repentance, an element of asking for mercy, and an element of intent to sin no more. Any good act of contrition has these three elements, except for one, which is called “The Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s adapted from this part of the gospel, through the mediation of Jesus to God the Father.

The second thing is that if Catholics love and have internalized any part of the gospel, it’s the part about sitting at the back of the church. If I put out chairs outside across the street, I’m pretty sure people would sit there. No. God became incarnate to be intimate with us, to draw us closer to himself, to share himself, his life, with us. Sitting up front does not mean you think you’re holier, that you’re exalting yourself, or that you’re the nerd who always sits in the front row at school, taking things way too seriously. Our response to God drawing close to us is for us to draw close to him. Yes, his divine splendor and majesty inspire awe and fear, if we were to enter his divine presence with any imperfection. But here he comes to us hidden in signs and sacraments and mystery, accessible to us. And we need to lean into how he wants to improve our life, to heal our hearts, to unite ourselves with him. And for that, we acknowledge any false humility. The truly humble know all the more how much we need God. And we sit at the feet of the Master, as Mary did while her sister worked, or as Saint John at the last supper, resting his head on the sacred heart of our Lord. So next week, don’t go to the back. Get a little closer, don’t be shy. Move forward, respond to the call to draw near. The front of the church should fill up first, with us all eager to receive from the Lord. I promise you, if you sit up front, there’s like “almost zero” chance you’ll be struck by lightning.

To wrap this up, Jesus says, “I tell you, the latter went home justified, (the tax collector), not the former (the Pharisee), for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” If we exalt ourselves, how high can we really reach, to lift ourselves up? A great among sinners? But if we come before God as poor in spirit, needy, a beggar, aware of our many faults, and pray, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” he exalts us to heaven with his grace, affirming that we are good, and we are infinitely loved, and we are forgiven, and helped by his care for us to go out in peace and joy, serving him and serving him in our neighbor, pouring ourselves out spreading the good news of God’s incredible love for each of us. That we might be able to say, with St. Paul, at the end of our journey, “I am already being poured out like a libation, (emptied as a sacrificial offering) and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith… the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed… To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Homily: The Thankful Samaritan Leper

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Homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C (go to readings)
2 Kings 5:14-17
Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4
2 Timothy 2:8-13
Luke 17:11-19

The first king of Israel, a thousand years before Jesus, was King Saul. He wasn’t a good king, and God instructed the prophet Samuel to anoint David to succeed him. Saul’s family was from the north, and David’s family was from the south, in Bethlehem, although David made Jerusalem the capitol city. When David decided to build the Jerusalem Temple, his prophet Nathan said it would not be him but his son Solomon who would build the Temple. King David started amassing resources, his son King Solomon built the Temple, and his son King Rehoboam repeatedly raised taxes and other funds to pay for the Temple.

But by this time, the tensions between north and south had gotten so heated that Israel split into two kingdoms, the ten northern tribes of Israel in the North, with its capitol, Samaria, and the two southern tribes of Judah, or Judea, in the South, with it’s capitol, Jerusalem. By a few hundred years later, the North, tired of seeing their money taken south and given to the Jerusalem Temple, set up their own shrines in the North, and they grew financially, morally, and religiously corrupt. For their unfaithfulness, the north was attacked and invaded by the great empire Assyria, with its capital, Ninevah. And the Assyrians wiped out most of the 10 northern tribes, dispersing them among the nations of the world, and Assyria replaced them with 5 different other groups that they had also conquered, each with their own religion and gods (remember the 5 previous husbands of the Samaritan woman!). Some poor areas of Israelites were left, mostly in Galilee, surrounding the Sea of Galilee, or Lake Tiberias.

A few hundred years after that, the southern kingdom of Judah was attacked by the Babylonians, or Chaldeans, and they marched the Judeans, or what was left of Israel, off to exile in Babylon, until the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians and then the Medes, who released Israel to go back to their land, and they resettled Judah and Galilee, while Samaria was still largely occupied by the foreigners who had been put there by the Assyrians, and who had intermixed with the Israelites who were left behind. And so the Israelites who returned from exile, having realized that the exile was their own fault for their corruption, had repented, and had, as they saw it, been released because they had returned to righteousness, now came back to find in their land these mongrels of corrupt breeding and corrupt religion, and these would be the Samaritans. So, by the time of Jesus, you had three geographic groups: the southern area around Jerusalem, under the rule of the Romans, the very northern area around the Sea of Galilee, kind of like Israel’s red-neck country, and in between you had the Samaritans, these half-breeds, who were an abomination. And it didn’t help that the Samaritans and Israelites constantly pushed each other’s buttons and kept the mutual hatred and tension high. And of course there were neighboring kingdoms such as Syria, Aram, Edom, Moab, etc, with whom Israel was at peace or at war with, depending on the day.

Also in the background of our readings today is the Mosaic Law in Leviticus that covers skin conditions. A fun read. The law really kind of groups a lot of skin diseases under the umbrella term, “leprosy,” although some were temporary, like an allergic rash, some were genetic, like psoriasis, and some were contagious, like fungus, bacteria, or what we now call Hanson’s disease, which is a bacterial infection that progressively kills the nerves, which numbs the skin, and leads to terrible infections and what we think of as leprosy specifically. So, in Leviticus, anyone with a skin disease is instructed to present themselves to the priest, who is not only usually the most-well educated in a village, but also the one whose office it is to protect the integrity and safety of the community, and the priest would declare you clean or unclean. If you were unclean, you had to isolate out of the community, stay far away from anyone else, shout “unclean” when anyone was approaching, and basically if it wasn’t something that cleared up, it was a life-sentence of isolation and despair, separated from family, friends, employment, temple or synagogue worship, and was often considered a divine punishment. It was a living death.

In our first reading, we meet the great Syrian warlord Namaan. Namaan had everything, but unfortunately, he also had leprosy. But he also had a slave girl from Israel, who informed him that there was a prophet, Elisha, in Israel, who could cure him. So Namaan set out for Israel with a letter from his king to give him safe passage to the King of Israel, asking for Namaan to be healed. Apparently, the letter didn’t mention the prophet, because when the King of Israel read the letter, he tore his garments and exclaimed, “Am I a god with power over life and death, that this man should send someone for me to cure him of leprosy? Take note! You can see he is only looking for a quarrel with me!” So Elisha the prophet hears about this, and sends a message to the king to send Namaan to him. And so Namaan, in all his splendor and gravitas and entourage arrives at Elisha’s house. And Elisha sends out a message to Namaan to wash seven times in the Jordan River, and he will be clean.

This is not the kind of treatment Namaan was used to. He was a very important person. Not only did this humble prophet not come out to greet him, just sending a messenger out, but go down into the sad dumpy mudhole that was the Jordan River, and do it seven times? There are much more beautiful rivers in Syria. And so, he’s angry and ready to go back home. But his servants talk him out of it. So then we pick up our first reading, “Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of Elisha, the man of God. His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean of his leprosy.” So not only was he healed, but you can imagine the rough, ruddy and calloused skin of a warrior. But it says his flesh became again like the flesh of a little child. We could say he was recreated, restored, to the original perfection that was lost. So that’s important. But what’s more important comes next. This foreigner, Namaan says to Elisha, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel… please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth, for I will no longer offer holocaust or sacrifice to any other god except to the LORD.“

You might remember that when Jesus started his ministry in Galilee, in the synagogue of Nazareth, he read from the scroll of Isaiah, and then he said, “there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” And when the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. Why? Because that part of the scroll was a reference to the Messiah, they had heard of the signs and wonders he had done, and Jesus had just identified himself as the Messiah. But they were looking for a Messiah that was Israel’s Messiah, their long-awaited hero, who would free them from the oppression of the Romans. They weren’t interested in a Messiah whose attention was to those outside of Israel. They didn’t understand the full depth of the meaning of the Messiah, and that this was a spiritual rescue mission for eternal liberty, not a political mission for Israel. Their understanding of God’s gift was too small, or perhaps God’s gift was greater than they really wanted. They weren’t interested in those around them, just their own experience of suffering.

But again, as Jesus pointed out, they rejected him because they didn’t really know the scriptures. Look at our psalm, which of course is also from the Old Testament: “Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done wondrous deeds; in the sight of the nations, he has revealed his justice. Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands!”

And so we end with seeing Jesus put his words into his works in the Gospel Reading from Luke. It starts off by saying, “As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices, saying, ‘Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!’ And when he saw them, he said, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’”

So Jesus was in a sort of unsettled neutral territory between Galilee and Samaria, and he encounters these ten lepers, a mix of the two. Because suffering is kind of a great equalizer. They were banished from both their own communities and came together as the island of misfit toys, Israelites and Samaritans together. And they shout from a distance, as they’re required to do, but they don’t shout, “Unclean!” They shout, “Lord have mercy,” just as we always do at the beginning of Mass. “Kyrie, eleison!” in Greek.

And Jesus doesn’t approach them, he just instructs them, “Show yourselves to the priest,” As they were going, they were cleansed, so that when they would arrive at the priest, he would declare them clean, he would declare them not only healed and restored bodily, but restored as part of the body of the community. He healed their despair, their isolation, but he also healed their bonds of love, and their capacity to worship God in the temple, which they lost when they became unclean.

Now, a nice-intentioned modern person might have told them, “Well, you can go do what you want. Don’t listen to those rigid, exclusion-minded people.” But that’s “cheap grace.” It compromises truth to feel nice. But it robs people of the great joy of healing and reconciliation and thanksgiving experienced, after who knows how long of conversion, and praying and hoping for real healing and reconciliation. And God knows that the longer and deeper that suffering and longing is experienced, the greater and more complete is the joy and gratitude when that suffering is healed by the great mercy of God.

While I’m sure all the lepers in our gospel reading were joyful at their healing and restoration, only the Samaritan had the thanksgiving to return to Jesus. And it says, “And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.” Not only did he thank him, he bowed, he prostrated—which you would only do in worship of God—at the feet of Jesus. He clearly understood that Jesus had power of God. Remember what the King of Israel had said, “Am I a god with power over life and death, that this man should send someone for me to cure him of leprosy?”

Nothing earthly could cure leprosy, the only hope was God, and here, God had healed, reconciled, and restored. Thanks be to God! And for the scriptures to point out that only this Samaritan, this foreigner, recognized Jesus’ divine power, was testimony, like Elisha healing Naaman, that God is calling all people—you, and me, and all the world—to recognize how we have been healed, how we are called to be restored and reconciled to God and to each other, and how we are called to offer our eucharistia, our thanksgiving praise to God. To “sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done wondrous deeds!”

Homily: Increase Our Faith

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Homily for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year C) (go to readings)
Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14
Luke 17:5-10

You’ve heard of the 20th century Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, a woman many considered a living saint. Many admirers came to visit her, to have a look at her, to speak to her, to touch her, if possible. Sometimes they would tell her, “You are a saint,” or she would overhear others saying of her, “She is a saint.” She would get upset, turn to them, and say, “Don’t say that. Don’t make it too easy for yourself. Don’t escape this way. I know why you are saying, ‘she is a saint.’ You say that to convince yourself that you are different from me, that I am different from you. I am like you. You could do what I do. You don’t need any more than you have; get moving!” While that might be a good introduction to our readings, I think a good summary might be a quote from the Old Testament prophet Zechariah: “Do not despise small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. (Zec 4:10).

We’re blessed with a short gospel reading this week, and in the gospel of Luke it follows right after the parable of Lazarus and the rich man which we heard last week, and then there’s a few verses about radical forgiveness and the danger of leading others astray. And then we have the first part of our gospel reading. The disciples ask Jesus, “Increase our faith,” and he responds “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Mustard seeds are like black ground pepper, they’re very small, but they yield a surprisingly large bush, which is actually rather invasive like a weed, it spreads very fast. So Jesus more than once has taught his disciples that their faith should be like a mustard seed. A seed of a little faith received by a heart that’s fertile ground can change a person’s whole life, and even those around them! And a little seed of a community of believers can spread and lead to the conversion of the Roman Empire!

So, the mulberry tree is a tree with an expansive underground root system. Ancient Israel actually had regulations that planting trees had to be 30 feet from a well or a building or a road so their roots wouldn’t expand out and ruin the foundations or the well, but mulberry trees couldn’t be planted within 50 feet of anything to allow for their huge root system. They were very firmly planted trees, and they could be moved only with great difficulty. But Jesus says that with faith like a mustard-seed you could say to a mulberry tree to uproot itself and be planted in the salty sea, in sand, and it would do it. So, we might say that when we live by our faith, we should expect God to yield unbelievable outcomes to our prayers and our obedience to faith. We are called to cooperate with grace, and grace will produce results that could never have been anticipated, that defy what we could imagine.

But also, the disciples ask for this gift of increase of faith after Jesus challenges them. And so, another thing we can get out of this image of the mustard seed is that we shouldn’t procrastinate being bold in living out our faith because we don’t think we’re ready. We don’t need big faith, we need little faith, in fact, we need whatever faith we have, and to act on it, and let God yield the increase. To say we need to wait until we have more faith is to say that it depends on us instead of on God. You can’t wait until you’re ready, because you’ll wait the rest of your life, because you’ll never feel ready. You have to just do the thing, to launch, and course correct along the way, like learning to ride a bike. You can’t ride if you’re not moving forward.

On my blog where I post many of my homilies, I have one of my favorite quotes from G. K. Chesterton, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” The meaning is that some things are so important that we cannot put off doing them simply because we’re not the best person, or we don’t have enough time or ability, or all the proper preparations. The simple importance of the thing requires it to be done, and the simple fact of having done it is more important than whether we have done it as well as we would have liked. The problem with mustard-seed sized faith isn’t that our faith isn’t even as big as a mustard seed, it’s that we’re too big. Our faith is too much about what we have to do, or what we have to be. Just say yes to God and start out, get some momentum, and let God show you what he does with that. That will make you humble. Keep going, and he will keep you going the right way.

So then there’s the second part of our gospel reading, about the slave that worked all day, then has to make dinner, before he or she can have dinner themselves. And we might get a little grumpy toward the master there, but remember the master’s an image of God, so get yourself back down to a mustard seed, and try to see what he’s trying to teach you. What he’s saying is that you can never do so much for God that God owes you anything. You can’t do so much good that you have one up on God, or you can manipulate God into your debt. We are unworthy servants. So, the good that we get from God is out of his goodness and his love toward us, not because he owes us. And our work should not be motivated out of trying to get anything out of God.

How many times does our prayer just sound like making wishes we want God to fulfill, like he’s a genie, instead of a dialogue of love with God? Often, we look at prayer as trying to convince God to give us the good things we want. The thing is, God already wants to give us good things, but he’s trying to get us to want to receive the good things he wants to give us. Often the problem is that what we think we really want is far too small compared to what God wants to give us. So God has to wait while he guides and prepares us to receive his superabundant gifts. And it seems in that time that he’s just not answering our prayers, it might seem like he’s not even listening.

Part of the above paragraph is inspired by (ok, taken from) my absolute favorite of the Lighthouse Media CDs and MP3s, given by Msgr. Thomas Richter of the Diocese of Bismarck, entitled, “Trust in the Lord.” I’ve listened to it countless times, and I cannot recommend it enough. I’d link it here for free, but the only online free copy has poor quality. So get the MP3, and tell me what you think!

That’s where the Old Testament prophet Habakuk is in our first reading. It’s a very small book, only three chapters, and Habakuk is complaining that God is allowing his people to see such destruction and suffering. “How long, O LORD? I cry for help, but you do not listen! I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene.” This is a terrible experience, and we’ve all been there, and depending on what we’re asking, it seems like forever. And many people lose their faith in suffering and grief, and it seems like prayers are useless and God is not even there listening.

But God responds to Habakuk, “Then the LORD answered me and said: ‘Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.” The vision is of course the rescue of Israel from their oppression and suffering. And Habakuk is to write it down clearly because it is not only for him, but for all to see that God has been preparing this vision and will fulfill it, and all will see how God has made and fulfilled his promise of redemption for his people. And of course, the ultimate fulfillment of this promise is in Christ, the true and perfect redemption of God’s people from the oppression of sin, their call to conversion, and the lasting peace through the open gates of heaven.

And this ties back to our gospel reading, teaching the kind of faith we are to have. It cannot be a demanding faith, or a weak faith, but a powerful faith. Paul tells Timothy in our second reading, “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord…” and then he says, “but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” So, God is working and preparing his gifts, even when we cannot sense it. So yes, we do have to suffer, as Christ our Lord suffered, with great faith in God. And God gives us the grace and strength to persevere in waiting in confident faith, in sure and certain hope. God said to Habakuk, “if it delays, wait for it… The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”

So, the one who is impatient loses their faith, but the one who perseveres, who relies on God to supply his grace and an increase of faith, shall live and see the goodness of God. There’s a very loose but beautiful interpretation of this that says, “There will come a time when your tears will fall not because of your troubles, but because God has answered your prayers.”

And so, we can end on the high note of our responsorial psalm, Psalm 95, which, if you pray the liturgy of the hours, you pray at the beginning of every day. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD; let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation. Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us joyfully sing psalms to him. Come, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the LORD who made us. For he is our God, and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.” How beautiful is the life God invites us to, even redeeming our suffering, our tears, our patient waiting on him, and our privilege to eagerly to serve him in love and joy.