Host: Welcome to Saint Patrick Catholic Community Podcast. We're glad you're with us.
Fr. Stephan: Know that, I'm a grief counselor, and one of my process of doing this, I met a woman who's over 90 years old, and, she lost her son. She's grieving the loss of her son, so she had to sell his house and then take things out, so she got rid of most stuff, but she took a lot of things in boxes and brought it to her house, and all these boxes are in her guest room. Tons of boxes. And she was telling me how difficult it is for her to walk into that room. And she knows she has to open a box, but she's she sees all the boxes, and every box has a memory or something in it, and she's just overwhelmed by it, just overwhelmed.
And she's asking me, what can I do? And this and I I just you know, you learn just look with compassion, listen very closely. And he said, you know, we walk into this room. Don't look at the whole room. This is too much.
Just look at one box. Take that box and leave the room. Open the box. Great memories. Memories that'll probably make you cry, But look through that, and what do you wanna keep, and what do you wanna give away to friends or people you who may need them.
And if you do this one box at a time, one day you look at the you look at the room, you realize, there aren't that many boxes left. And the healing is beginning of all the of all the great issues and stories about your son. But what struck me is the whole experience of seeing everything and being so overwhelmed. Think about what happens in our lives when we feel so overwhelmed. Sometimes it's it's sometimes the division going on in our family because of politics or because of religion, and we just don't talk anymore.
So, all we see is that, and we wanna see that we don't see any person anymore, we see the whole issue, and we're overwhelmed by it. Sometimes, it's we're in war, and I don't what to do. There's so much there's so much stuff to do, I don't know what to do because of so much war, or there's so much homelessness. What do you do? There's so much out there.
We we we so overwhelmed. And how do we respond to everything that's so all overwhelming for us? I think Jesus gives us an idea in the gospel. He sees the crowd and he could be totally overwhelmed because he sees the whole crowd and they are like sheep without a shepherd. They are distressed.
And he couldn't just say, oh, that's too much for you. Let's get back in the boat. That's just too much. But he doesn't. He doesn't do that.
He responds in a certain way. And it's significant how he responds. He says, the I was always thinking how it goes. The field the how do you how do you say that? The field is abundant, but the but the laborers are few.
In other words, we need to respond to all this with discipleship, responding as a disciple of Christ. So he's saying, we respond one person at a time, we respond. And so the first thing he does is he he calls 12 people together. We hear the names of the first 12. There are other people who are following him, but this is the 12 he was he's gonna call to be sent out, which means apostle, to be sent out.
And they're gonna be sent out to do marvelous things. Now these people are ordinary people. They weren't they weren't scholars of the law. They weren't they didn't have all this education on how to preach. These are people who are like tax collectors and farmers and those out those out in fishermen.
Normal stuff. And they're called they're called to go out, share the good news, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and this is how you share the kingdom. Go out and cleanse those who are dirty, who are full of sin. Go out and raise the dead. Go out and cast out the demons.
They're called to do this not because of their own power, not because of their own worth, not because they're they're great at this. They're called because Christ has called them. You see all this going on, you respond by one disciple. Just be out there one person at time. Respond.
Now, honestly, if anyone has experiences of raising someone from the dead, tell me. I wanna hear this. But I think we are called in such a way to respond out of our baptism to be like Christ. Maybe all these great positive things of raising people from the dead, but how about if we're retired, how many people do you know who are just struggling by themselves? How do we reach out to those who are really struggling?
Maybe they lost their spouse, and now all they're alone. How do we respond to them? Or for working, we know that people are struggling in their families and what do we say then because of their struggling also at work, and do we just take time to say, how can I help you out? See, it's the it's the little things, one person at a time. Little things is how we live the gospel.
So we how we are the hands and the feet and the mouth of God. It's the little things. How can we do this? Well, first of all, as we heard in the very first reading, when god's through Moses said, I want you to to tell the people that they are a holy nation, and they're to keep my commandments and they will be my people. You are they are my people.
What made them God's people? Not because they were great, they actually were a small group of people, but because God loved them. God chose them. Not because of anything their selves, but because God loved them. I wanna understand that because in baptism, we became a part of this family, this holy nation.
Not because of anything we did, but because God loves us. And because of who we are as God's children, we are now called to respond as disciples. Even Paul is trying to struggle with this because he's seeing people saying, I can't I can't be like Christ. Who am I? And he starts off by saying, you know, at the very beginning we were helpless, we were sinners, and Christ died for us.
God didn't wait till we're all perfect as a holy nation, never making mistakes. By the way, if you know anyone who's ever made a mistake, tell me. God knows who we are, and that's why Christ died for us. He saved us. We did nothing except now accept it.
We can't earn God's love. We can't earn salvation. Christ loved us, died for us even in the midst of our pain, in our suffering, in our sinfulness, our helplessness, Christ died for us. Didn't wait till we're perfect. So when we gather here, we don't gather here as perfect people.
Let's be real, we're not perfect people, yet God still loves us. And God wants to nourish us nourish us with his own body and blood, so we can go out and be disciples one person at a time to share the good news. And not even perfectly. We know the stories of Peter. He wasn't the perfect person and yet he still went out to do what Christ asked him to do.
The invitation for us is to recognize who we are. First of all, we are God's beloved children. Unworthy as we are, imperfect as we are, we are God's part of God's holy nation. And God invites us when we look at all that's going on in the world, all that's going on in our families, or what's going on in our lives, to recognize not be overwhelmed by it, not be angry about it, but just take one step at a time to reach out to one person at a time who needs to know the good news. Maybe it's someone we we have in our family, maybe someone we meet on the street, someone we meet in the grocery store.
One person at a time. That's the invitation for us today. May we live the gospel, not perfectly, but with God's grace to transform this world one person at a time.
Host: This has been a Saint Patrick Catholic Community Podcast. For more of our shows, go to our website and click Saint Patrick's Studio.