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Online GivingThis weekend’s reading from First Timothy sounds almost like a coach getting his team ready for the big game. This coach has much higher goals than a home run or a touchdown. Instead of pursuing a league championship, he seeks faith, love, patience, and gentleness. How about us? Are we in the game or on the sidelines? Let’s look at what Coach Paul is talking about.
We strive for faith when we see it as not just believing that God exists or that Jesus is God’s Son. Faith is a relationship with the Lord in which we imitate Jesus’ outlook on life, his teachings, his love of God. We struggle with his commands to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to forgive all wrongs, and to take up our cross each day. As Paul would say, we are “competing well for the faith.”
We pursue love by listening to the Gospel, in which Jesus tells the parable of the rich man who was only concerned with his own comfort. Jesus says that if we truly understood the prophets, such as our first reading from Amos, we would not spend all our energy and wealth on ourselves. We may find that love for our family is much easier than love for strangers or the homeless, but Jesus never said that love would be easy.
As we learn to let go of our need to have everything go our way, we become more patient with people who disagree with us, or with frustrations and problems. We learn to see God in our setbacks as well as in our successes. Striving to see Jesus in everyone, we can become more patient with them. They will begin to see Jesus in us as our devotion to him grows. Experiencing the Lord is the championship we want. -Tom Schmidt, Diocesan Publications
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1873-1897) – October 1
“The cornerstone’s dated 1872, but the stained glass is much later,” explained the pastor, astonished when his visitor accurately dated it to just before the Great Depression, explaining, “The window for the Little Flower”—Thérèse’s nickname — “gives it away.” From her canonization in 1925, her statues and windows adorn most churches where European immigrants worshiped. Entering Carmel at fifteen, victim of tuberculosis at twenty-four, Therese proposed her “Little Way” to sanctity: doing ordinary tasks with extraordinary love. Thus “ordinary Catholics,” many of whom had lost loved ones to tuberculosis, embraced her. Though she never left her cloister, this Carmelite’s spiritual communion and devoted correspondence with missionaries earned her the title Patroness of Missions. Her autobiography, Story of a Soul, continuously in print since her death, chronicles her prayerful perseverance through doubt and caused her to be the youngest person ever named a Doctor of the Church. Countless physical healings and spiritual conversions testify to her fulfillment of her deathbed promise: “After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good upon earth!”
—Peter Scagnelli, Diocesan Publications
Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) – October 4
When Franco Zeffirelli’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon was released (1972), people were shocked by the movie’s graphic nudity in the dramatic conversion scene. Son of a wealthy merchant, Francis’ aimless adolescence ended when a failed military expedition led to his imprisonment and complete breakdown. Once home, Francis rediscovered God in the beauty of nature and the ugliness of human suffering, caring for lepers, praying in the little church of San Damiano, whose crucified Jesus he heard calling, “Repair my house, Francis, which is falling into ruins.” Francis sold his possessions—and his father’s—to fulfill this command. When his father objected, Francis disrobed: “I return the clothes, your name, and all you gave me: God alone is my Father now.” Later, the pope would dream of a ragged friar stretching forth a single hand to prop up the crumbling papal Cathedral of Saint John Lateran. Francis indeed helped rebuild the universal Church, founding the Friars Minor (Franciscans), dying at a young forty-four, bearing the stigmata of the Christ whose living icon he remains—in the Church and far beyond it.
—Peter Scagnelli, Diocesan Publications
