Host: Welcome to Saint Patrick Catholic Community Podcast. We're glad you're with us.
Fr.Stephan: I mentioned last week that I'm a grief counselor, but I'm also a spiritual director, which means I meet with people one on one to help them listen to where God is calling them in their life, what God wants of their life. Well, I met this man recently and, a young man who has got a great opportunity at work to get a promotion and make wanna make more money and have more prestige. The one catch was he had to move away to a different state. And he is the primary caregiver of his elderly parents. His friends just said said to him, you're a fool if you don't take this.
This is perfect for you. And he told me, kept reflecting on what what to do, what does god want him to do. And he came to this decision. He says he realized that life itself, the meaning of life means more about not necessarily getting what you want, but loving others. And he loved his parents.
That was the most meaning for his life. So he decided to to not take the promotion. Now some of you may have chose a different decision, made a different decision, but that was his decision not to take the promotion, but to stay back and care for his parents. Because maybe I'll do it later on, but right now, need to do it stay here with my parents. And I thought of that experience because what we hear and heard in the gospel.
Jesus says, whoever loves mother or father more than me is not worthy of me. Now, he's not saying that we should value and love our family less. He's not saying that at all. What he is saying is what's the priority in loving? First priority is to love God above all.
That's the first priority. If we follow that priority, then we can be a better child, a better parent, a better sibling, a better disciple. We'd be better loving because we know we've given our all to the one who who is everything, god. That's the invitation. Where is our priority in our life?
And I think in listening to the rest of the rest of the scriptures today, there's a sort of a a emphasis on what it mean to make Christ or God a priority. And the images I heard in the scriptures were welcoming, hospitality. God has welcomed us into god's life. God wants us to have life. That's a sense of god welcoming us, wants we have us receive his love, receive his mercy, receive everything.
God welcomes us. And god's saying, this is what it means to make god priority is to be welcoming and receiving. So in the first reading, we heard from that this woman who was always welcoming this holy man, this prophet into her home and fed him, finally decided, you know, we really should give him a place to stay. So he built a little room on top of the roof for him. And this holy man was very grateful.
She didn't expect anything from it by putting this holy man, god first, welcoming him first. And she received a reward, a blessing. The following year, you will have a child. She'd expect that, but she knew she had to give the first priority is to be welcoming to this holy man. And even Jesus says in the gospel today, whoever receives you receives me and receives the one who sent me.
So when we receive people, we are receiving Christ in our midst. Other places in Matthew's gospel, he says, whatever you do to least my brothers and sisters, you do to me. So when we receive someone, we're receiving Christ. We welcome someone. We receive we're welcoming Christ.
That's what make Christ god first is by welcoming those around us who are in need, those who need to know what it means to be welcomed. I know my family growing up, my four oldest brothers went to a boarding school. So whenever they came home from school, like in a long weekend break they had, they always brought other students with them, especially students from different countries so they couldn't go home for the weekend. And so we always had so many people around the table. My mom would say they're always welcome.
Of course, my my big family was all squeezed into the table, but we were there. My my my family was teaching us, we always welcome those who are in need. Always welcome. But to do so sometimes means we have to make decisions that are difficult. Maybe I won't do this.
I have to sacrifice this because I need to care for this person. I can't do everything I wanna do because I would need to help this person out. And I know people now who are taking care of their parents, and they never thought that they would they would be doing that. Now they're taking care of their parents, and this limited them. They can't do anything they wanted to do.
Or grandparents who are not taking care of their grandchildren. Now they can't do a lot of things they wanna do. But a sense of we wanna welcome, we wanna be receiving, we wanna be hospitable, we wanna care. That's what it means to make God, Christ, the priority in our life. And that means sometimes taking up our cross, as Jesus says in the gospel.
It is a sacrifice, But it's a sacrifice that always says we heard in the gospel, there's reward. God will reward us. That was this new life he's given us in Christ Jesus. God will reward us. God wants us to have life and life to the full.
If we're just looking for that, if we're just looking for that thing, we'll probably lose it. But forgive our life. We'll find our new life in Christ. That's more it was more precious than anything. And Paul, in his letter today, even talks about how we have died with Christ and rose with Christ to new life.
All through baptism, we have been dead dead in Christ. We have died, but we've risen in Christ. Because we're risen, we are new people. Christ now lives within me. So why can we be this, generous and welcoming and inviting, receiving?
Because Christ is in me. God's grace has has turned my life around. It's not easy, but God is with me and within me. That's why we can do this. And when we struggle, because we will struggle.
Christ is always calling us more than we can imagine. God wants us to have this life. There's a couple that was here last night who was celebrating fifty years of marriage, and they asked me to give have them renew their vows and have a blessing. We did that at the end of mass. But the the week before, they sent me or gave me an envelope, and in the envelope were two letters.
One letter was about her husband, what what he was what he was like, you know, in the those fifty years. That letter was about the wife. He just wrote about how she was a part of his life. And in the letters, it was powerful because it talked about how a struggle it was, but they never left each other. They were there for each other, and it was you know, they're raising their children.
It was difficult. Even one now is in a is in a a care facility because she can't take care of him, but she loves him so much. But they've talked about how they had to sacrifice so much for each other, and that's because they loved each other. That's what it means to make Christ first, god first, a priority. It means we're now it's just as welcoming and just as receiving as god is to us.
I invite us to look at this coming week and see where can I show mercy, show welcoming, receive others in my life? Maybe it says, the gospel says, offering a cold cup of water, which makes sense in Arizona. But maybe it's something else. Maybe it's that one word of welcome. Maybe that one word, I'm sorry.
Or that one word of saying, I'm here for you. What is God calling us to do this week to be hospitable, to be welcoming, to be receiving?
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.