Third Tuesday of Easter

Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God. My trust is in the LORD; I will rejoice and be glad of your mercy.

Trust is an important part of any relationship. We cannot be united with others without trust… be they God, family members, or friends. God wants us to trust in Him. The Devil wants us to doubt God. The world will tell us to trust in ourselves, but if we do that then we will fail to trust in God’s Will. Pride can creep into our lives and make us feel like we are masters of our destiny, but we are masters of nothing. Everything we are and all we have comes from God. He is the Source, the Center, and the Summit of our lives. It is in Him that we find true fulfillment. This is why we are called to commend our spirits to Him and trust He will lead us not where we wish to go, but where we need to be.

How do we show our trust in God? In what ways have we commended our spirits to His Will? What can we do to build up trust in God in others?

O Lord, into your hands we commend our spirits.

Amen.

Thirtieth Wednesday in Ordinary Time

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth.

God calls us to obey our parents and to honor our fathers and mothers. This is sometime difficult to do, especially since our parents are all imperfect. Just like us, they are sinners, too. They have their blind spots and their blemishes and sometimes it can be hard to love them. They aren't always the best influences, either. However, we should always strive to honor them in the sense of loving them unconditionally and doing our best to obey them when it doesn't lead us into sin. Our relationship with our parents mirrors the relationship between God and us. Sometimes we are difficult to love. Sometimes we are sinners. Sometimes we are blind and blemished. Sometime we are not the best influences on others. Still, God loves us and so we should love our parents, too, in spite of their imperfections. For if we love them, then we will be better able to obey our Heavenly Father and Mother so our lives might go well and we might live forever and ever with God in Heaven.

Do we obey and honor our earthly fathers and mothers? What about our Heavenly Father and Mother? How can we become better children of both?

O Lord, we seek to obey and honor you, our Heavenly Mother, Mary, and the parents you've given us in this life.

Amen.

Nineteenth Wednesday of Ordinary Time

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church. If he refuses to listen even to the Church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

Just as we should always seek the forgiveness of God and those people whom we sin against, so too we should give others every chance to be forgiven. Jesus gives us the step-by-step process of forgiveness. First and foremost, when someone sins against us we should seek to heal our relationship in private. We shouldn’t make the harm they did us public. Instead we should try to work things out one-on-one in secret so that no public harm is done. If that doesn’t work then we should seek the help of family, friends, or trusted mediators who might be able to help us heal our division. If things still go poorly, then we should turn to the Church for guidance as to how to handle healing our relationship. If even that fails, and we can honestly say we have tried to heal the wounds within our relationship, then we should be willing to walk away. Perhaps in time the person who harmed us will come around and seek forgiveness. However, what we should not do is seek retribution or become upset with the person who has sinned against us. These actions do nothing but waste our energy and cause us to sin. Rather, we should be patient and humble and loving in our dealings with the person who harmed us and treat them how we would like to be treated. Perhaps one day they will repay us in kind and realize the errors of their ways.

Do we seek forgiveness from God and His children? Do we forgive when someone asks for our forgiveness? Are we patient with those who sin against us and never spiteful against them?

O Lord, help us win over our brothers and sisters in God.

Amen.