predication.net

Jesus’ condemnation of divorce appears for the second time in Matthew’s Gospel. The Pharisees ask a sophisticated question, not about whether divorce is possible (this is entirely self-evident for them, by the Law), but about the reasons and their definition. Jesus rejects their question with a radical reference to God’s will: divorce is inherently a wrong solution, even if it is legally possible. Not everything the law allows is right. In this way, Jesus primarily protects a woman who has found herself in a difficult situation through divorce within a patriarchal society. The Pharisees wanted to make all kinds of zigzags, to lead a debate about where the boundaries are, what is still allowed and what is no longer – it was not about the woman and her life, but about some legal possibility on the part of the man to release her, to put it bluntly, to get rid of her – and perhaps marry different, prettier, wealthier… That’s how it went in Roman society.

The disciples are shocked by this. When they see Jesus’s demands on marriage, they find it easier to avoid it. Jesus rejects this. Not entering into marriage (apart from reasons of physical incapacity – wedding necessarily included handing over life) is meaningfully possible only when doing so really serves the Kingdom of God, i.e., others. In this way, Jesus does not place celibacy above marriage, which was one of the self-evident moral obligations of man (one can say an obligation), but shows this path as fully equal to marriage when it becomes a service to others, to the growth of God’s kingdom. Jesus and then Paul do not recognize celibacy as something morally and spiritually higher than marriage but as a way of service that is equally valuable and important. In their view, celibacy is not an ascetic exercise or an escape from responsibility but a service for the benefit of the whole.

To be redeemed is like being unchained, let out of a cage. Being
saved is like soaring to heaven, free, intense, and glorious.
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Prayer is not about somehow experiencing it emotionally and focusing on it, but to be identified with it and to mean it.
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Protestant-Catholic? What is that? Well, that’s a person who believes he’s weak, powerless and has no choice but to sin and rely on endless
God’s mercy and forgiveness. God’s Word does teach: “Whoever sins
is of the devil because the devil sins from the beginning. And the Son of God was manifested to destroy the devil’s works. Whoever is born of God does not sin, for  his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.” (1 Jn 3:8- 9) – but they go on, Scripture, not Scripture, making their noise… If anyone believes that “Christianity is nothing but a constant exercise in feeling that you have no sin, though you sin, that your sins are nevertheless transferred to Christ.” he has not understood the Gospel or the power of God. And if anyone teaches: “God does not save people who are not true sinners. And so you sin! You sin greatly! But believe in Christ …even more strongly… While we are in this world, we must sin,” is the devil and Satan, who has no sense of the things of God and denies Christ and the Gospel.
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He needs nothing who rides on the Wave of Being, who flows with being itself.
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A Christian is a man who often continues to live what he has lived – but in an entirely new, heavenly way. And so we can see in the garden of the Church holy gardeners, holy soldiers, or even holy bikers. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all die, but we shall all be transformed…” (1 Cor 15:51). Nothing requires to be abandoned or left behind (with perhaps a few exceptions). Everything can be transformed and transfigured into heavenly form – and be changed too! “Let everyone abide in that condition in which he has been called… only let each one live as the Lord has ordained, each as God has called him.” (1 Cor. 7:20, 17). We do not have to leave behind what
we have been living and choose some particular or unique way of life. What we are waiting for, however, is to transform what we have lived up to now from sinful and earthly into a heavenly and holy form, to become a sinful biker, a biker, and a saint.
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Indeed, the Christian relates neither to himself nor others but to Christ and Christ alone; in this respect, his life occurs only between him and Christ, “with eyes fixed on Jesus, the author, and finisher of faith.” (Heb. 12:2) And because the Lord is a Spirit hovering over the waters, which is strange about floating with Him, like Luis Lane with Superman?
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The stability of the Benedictines carries within it an extremely positive attitude and consciousness – what instead a gift, flowing from following God’s calling and in the definiteness of its form: I am where I am meant to be. It is as it ought to be.
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Truth and love. One for a reason, one for will. Without truth, love is blind and mostly does more harm than good. Without love, the choice is complex and often breaks rather than brings to life. Both are necessary; one without the other does not exist. Therefore, God is Truth. Therefore, God is Love. Because of this, it is Life; He is also the Way to it.
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Listening to our sermons… well. The church is a place of evangelism, not teaching. But still. Where is the fundamental teaching in the Church, then? As if
we’ve fallen from the Catholic depths into some Protestant chattiness…
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Indeed, there is only one cure for pride, selfishness, comparison, rivalry, vanity, inferiority, and everything – and that is to look at every moment only and only on Christ, to relate in every moment and only to Christ. Indeed, our life as Christians takes place exclusively between us and Christ. Everything else and everyone else is only through Christ, with Christ, and in Christ. Christ is thus not only the mediator between God and people, but he also becomes the mediator between us and other people, between us and the rest of the world, when we approach them exclusively through Christ.
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Moods are like water, like the mud in which we are stuck. But still, they are only feelings. One can emerge from them into light, air, and the brightness of reason and will. There we must learn to live, that is, to watch: not to drown in moods, but to live sensibly and soberly in reality, a life built on reason and will.
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As Scott Peck puts it, laying down arms in the community means forgiveness (a film, letting go) regarding others and vulnerability regarding oneself.
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It is comparing oneself to fame and judging to feel right. Competition for the sake of feeling important, status with power. This is the pattern of life in the world.
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Liturgy. Holy Communion. If we are looking for feelings, we close our eyes, don’t even sing, but concentrate on our inner, bodily chest somewhere. But if we receive Christ with our whole being, we can keep our eyes open, sing, and don’t need to look for anything. Communion with the Lord we experience much more deeply because “on the surface,” with our entire being, by what we are and what we are. Everything is completely natural, full of Christ, permeated in Christ.
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According to Scott Peck, conversion replaces the stages of chaos and emptiness in Christianity. Or conversely, confusion and emptiness are worldly and non-functional substitutes for Christian conversion.
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To be a pastor in a parish today often means not being a teacher in the first place but the evangelizer of his parish. In practice, this means, in a sense, to separate oneself from the parish – as it were, “in the world but not of the world.” Not to adapt, not to be swept away by it. To live and enjoy the Life of God fully in the midst of it, bearing witness to it by living, being, behaving, rather than in words, in great joy – and not to let any parish spoil that.

Anger. It is not a sign of Christianity but forgiveness.

Forgiveness. Who among us would not encounter the content of this word? Not only in prayer but in personal life. Forgive! Sorry! Forget! The Pope forgave his assassin Ali Akcha after the assassination on 13.5. 1981. To Peter: “How many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me?” Perhaps seven times?” Jesus answers him: “I tell you: Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:21). In one sentence, we should always forgive without any conditions.

In the parable, Jesus wants to raise a serious challenge, a souvenir. Who among us can be so hard on his little debtor brother that he would not forgive him when God forgives us so much? God forgave the debtor ten thousand talents, and the debtor did not forgive his debtor a hundred denarius. God is inherently good, infinitely good; always, while we live, forgive us. This means that we will behave adequately toward his forgiveness. As we find forgiveness from God, we must also forgive our brothers. We must not be “heartless” people. The parable’s conclusion should not escape any of us: “So will my heavenly Father do to you, if you do not forgive each of his brothers from the heart” (Mt 18:35).

Jesus puts in the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our trespasses, as we also forgive our trespassers” (Mt 6:12). The parable is God’s current motivation for all people until the end of the world. In the Old Testament, in the Book of the Son of Sirach (27, 33-28,9), it is clearly stated that insults, anger, revenge, or hatred do not belong in our hearts. Our forgiveness is a blessing to us. The wound heals after the ulcer, but what anger causes is…

In Small Stories, Mikuláš Chaytor writes in the story Two Necrologies: Two men died in neighboring houses on one day. In one, a retired officer, and in the other, a landlord already retired. They were relatives; they lived side by side for years, but for twenty-four years, they were angry, living in sin, judging each other – and what was the cause? Six square meters of land. Commissions, hearings, and courts sometimes found one person right, sometimes the other. When the last court found the officer in the right, the owner became so angry that he lost his appetite, fell ill, and died three days later. The news of the death of a relative and neighbor so controlled the soldier that instead of going and at least asking others for the forgiveness of the dead body, in the sinful joy that God is on his side and has punished his enemy with death, he falls to the ground and dies in sin. Both passed with evil in their hearts. Allegedly, shortly before, they begged theirs to continue and bring the dispute to an end in their favor. Chaytor ends the story with a note: Someone told me yesterday, I want to believe that it is a hoax, that the sons of the two deceased have decided to continue in their father’s footsteps. It means a new battle for six square meters, new insults, and new sacrifices on the altar of sin. It is no wonder that great people know how to forgive.

Two phrases are essential to us as Christians – or rather, the attitudes they express:
1) So what? That’s when the world judges us, evaluates us, and tries to impress into its expectations. But we are no longer of the world. We are not here to please the world but to fight for its favor. Its judgments no longer trouble us. As Paul says, So what? “It matters little to me whether you judge me or another man’s judgment. Nor do I judge myself.” (1 Cor. 4:3)
2) It doesn’t concern me anymore. It does when it comes to the things of this world. To understand. We are happy to help. Commitment to the common good is one of the key marks of a Catholic. But on the other hand… we are no longer part of this fight. We are not living its feverishness or its hopes. We are out of the illusions we’ve grown out of fantasies. We know that the world is and never will be other than the antechamber of Hell. Never will ever be a paradise on earth. That is why we are leaving it. Sure, along the way, we like to help every poor wretch of this world. If we believe in us, we’ll take them in. Gladly. But it’s not our world anymore. His struggles and struggles no longer concern us. We are no longer above it. As Jesus says of us: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” (Jn 17:16). Knowing to separate ourselves from the world and come out of it… is the meaning of the word “holy,” that is, separated from the world and for God and His kingdom.
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The second conversion, the one by which we begin to be Christians – one could liken to that of taking up a sport as a hobby, recreationally – and coming for and asking you, “Wouldn’t you like to do this sport? Could you tell me if you are that serious? And you have to decide whether to move the sport from being a casual hobby that complements your life to a purpose in your life that your life adapts to. This is precisely what the second conversion is about: will I follow Christ? I’m going to move from being a person who lives his life and supplements it with some religious acts (going to church and praying) and principles (I don’t kill my neighbors) towards a person who lives by Christ and for Christ and everything else conforms to this new sense of his life?
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Two things. First, we live when 2nd conversions have yet to pass (statistically) at least 99% of Christians. And probably priests as well. And the second is that God’s miracles at “lurking” just beyond his doorstep, near, near, near.
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Concentration in prayer is not the result of the will trying to concentrate, what commonplace, for which the world of worship is a place where quite normally and naturally, we live not just there for a moment during worship as if we peek.
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Judging is a sign of envy and discontent: I am in denial, overpower, deny myself – and you enjoy? Aren’t you ashamed? Or: I am here, in the background – and you overshadow me; you are noticed and praised and not me; how so? You are not better than me; on the contrary! And now.
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Not for glory. Not for power. Not for profit. For sheer joy!
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Christ must be our friend. Not some “idol” we just kind of worship and bow down to from afar. If that were the case, then he would be an idol in our conception of Him, and our view of Him would prevent us from truly living with Him and following Him. This is what Jesus led His disciples to do, as He says: “I no longer call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have told you all that I have heard from
my Father.” (Jn 15:15) But beware! Being a friend of Jesus and having Jesus as a Friend does not happen by relegating Jesus in our imaginations to our level and into our lives (as, for example, the adherents of the “gospel prosperity gospel”), but by letting Jesus lift us up and up, to Jesus, into His life, to be His companions in His world, in His life, in His work!
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It’s not about dividing life and time between Christ and the rest of the world. As Christians, our life unfolds between us and Christ alone. Everything else is then just drawn into that relationship – and simultaneously purged of everything that cannot be conceived in this relationship because it contradicts it.
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There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who, when they want something, find out the price. And if they still want it, they pay for it. And the other ones who look for a way to get it without paying for it. Heaven has a price, and it can’t be stolen. Blessed is he who doesn’t look for side roads, produces, and gets it.

 Body and Soul. How could we receive Him if not in the same way?
The Body with the Body, the Soul with the Soul, the whole Christ with the entire self? To be holy in mind, this we still understand. But to be blessed with the body, we must first receive it, realize it, digest it, and begin learning it. But with the flesh first, it will work. But along with the body will go everything that belongs to it, from food to money and
property to work.
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Two things the Devil leads us away from Conversion; and Communion, an everyday living of faith, an expected growth in faith.
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Christianity is imparted by a life that can be joined to – not by an activity that can be participated in or even just by a word that can be
heard.
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To live in Christ in the Holy Spirit is to be more silent instead of silent and to perceive without judging, without comparing, without thinking, without consideration, in the open and joyful curiosity of a child of God on a journey with God. But only he can do this who is before himself the least possible,  so that he no longer fears, has nothing to fear, and therefore no longer worries about anything. He is accessible and wholly himself.
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The interior must penetrate the surface. Our Christianity must become incarnate. Otherwise, it will not is real. It has to be incarnated in our body, speech, behavior, and actions. It must be incarnated in our homes, our possessions, our jobs. But still more than that, it must be incarnated in the community of the Church in our parish and our little community. So that not only are we part of the body of the Church, but the Church, the community, is equally part of our body, part of us, so that we are, quite naturally, our Christianity, our life in God, and with God and our work for the Kingdom so that we live all of this quite naturally and do it in the body of communion, which is our body, and we are part of its body.
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To be a Christian is to be already here on earth, a human resurrected – just as Christ was resurrected here on earth. In the hope that one day we too will be ascended as he is already today: Ascended, our Head, Christ. As we share in his life today, we may share in His eternity.
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A sign that we have truly been converted and thus changed our thinking is that two counsels of Scripture are beginning to take place in our minds. The first: continually pray, and the second: be wholly and completely occupied with the will of God. This is a sign of your Christianity and salvation, and you’re going to Heaven. We’re getting deadly serious. This is the point of hesychasm: To fill and focus our minds entirely on God in this way.
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The Eucharist comes to transform the Body of Christ and make us flesh and each other. Therefore, the disposition to receive the Eucharist consists precisely of this I desire with all my heart to renounce myself and to be Christ, his Body, and he our Head and, at the same time, desire with all our hearts to be with all the other brothers and sisters in the church, the one actual body.
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To be a Christian is to be the Body of Christ. And even though by Him in a particular sense we are also alone, in fullness, we are that Body only as gathered. Therefore, the assembly is our strength. When are we supposed in Christ’s name, then we are entirely His Body, and then in us and through us His Power is most fully at work.
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It is so easy to slip and replace God with our idea, and Christianity with your ideas and not even notice it! Humility, silence, kenosis, abandonment of self and will… What else can we do to not succumb to it?
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Do you want to go to Heaven? Nothing simpler! Just renounce yourself so that you can become Christ, and in Christ, God. That’s all. And if you find that difficult… Well, I’ll comfort you! What if I were to tell you that I don’t even have to give up anything because you are nothing and you have nothing?
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Knowing yourself and your wretchedness leads to compassion. Knowing God leads to hope.
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The consciousness of wretchedness manifests in considering ourselves to be only God’s guides and not vice versa. It is not God from whom we expect help in our works. We are not helping God as merely accompanying Him, and most, if anything, in ourselves as some of God’s “bacillus bearers.”we carry where we go – and then we “let it work.”
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The signs and wonders accompanying the proclamation are similar to advertising items that representatives of a company hand out. They hope that through them, to get your attention. Still, at the same time, they expect you won’t just stay but become interested in their company – and there, you won’t be convinced of the promotional items, but the company itself, its products, the quality, and the offer. Even when proclaiming Christ and the Gospel, miracles attract attention. But who stays only with them (a frequent temptation of charismatics, mainly Protestant) is doing a colossal stupidity. For what is interesting is the company itself – God acting in the Body of the Church – and it convinces no longer by the “shenanigans” of miracles but by its quality: by the fact that there is a God in it, that there pulsates the eternal life of God, that it is genuinely the first fruit of the Kingdom on earth.
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Love manifests itself by focusing on the one we love. Focused
attention to the loving Beloved is what in prayer

Some psychologists divide people into four, others into eight groups, and there are other divisions. No two people in the world are the same. Jesus did not bypass this fact in his teaching. He says how He, the God-man, sees it and what He asks of us in today’s Gospel, which begins with the words, “When your brother sins” (Matt. 18:15).
When a brother trespasses, the first thing to do is to formulate a complaint against the other. If we put the complaint into words, we often see how petty, and without foundation it is. The second step is to have a personal conversation with the offending brother. Please don’t settle the matter by letter or telephone if possible. Instead, the living word straightens out the differences which the written word deepens. If a private and personal meeting does not help, a prudent, wise man, or more people as witnesses, should be brought in to help. If this does not help, we must go with personal difficulties to the Christian fellowship. It is assumed that the community does not judge things by human rules alone but primarily in the light of love.

Jesus speaks even of the most challenging thing if everything that has already been done has failed: “Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Mt 18:17). It would seem, but this is only the first motive, that everything is hopeless, but we know that Jesus also came to die for the tax collectors and the Gentiles, He also redeemed them. Love can work miracles. Especially love that is persistent, long-term, resourceful, not selfish… (cf. 1 Cor. 13:1-13). Not to leave a brother in despair. Prayer is especially needed, as Jesus says, “If two of you on earth ask anything with one accord, you will receive it from my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 18:19).

Jesus calls the brother who has sinned “brother.” This is an example for us to follow in a particular case in making amends. Love is to prevail. And it always does in every situation. Remember that we are the brother who has sinned against someone in this context. We need to avoid any collateral, mainly evil intentions. Even if we act more kindly towards someone, let us accept the brother’s efforts with the sincere effort that he means well for us and that he is doing everything with the best of his knowledge and conscience. In such a situation, may we be encouraged to accept the brother’s warning that he is doing it in the name of the Church. Jesus warns us to get the brother’s admonition in humility, even if it is a wrong attitude, and not to blame the fault on another, not to make excuses.

In humility, let us realize that offense and sin threatens us in particular and the community. To delay accepting correction until later can backfire, and even when we presumptuously delay repentance, God can withdraw His grace. The nine alien sins touch on this very point. These are 1. To give counsel to sin. 2. To provoke others to sin. 3. To cause others to sin. 4. To cause others to sin. 5. To give aid to the sin of others. 6. To be silent in the sin of others. 7. To intercede for the sins of others. 8. Do not punish the sins of others. 9. Praise the sins of others.

People learn religion by experience and through relationships.
As a rule, no catechesis, no sermons, and no teaching make any difference is going to make any difference, especially in our Catholic environment, where education is limited to the Sunday sermon. The only way to transform a parish is through tiny communities where God’s life is experienced, where God’s relationships are, and where there is also actual systematic teaching.
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Your Divinity is too blinding for me. That is why You come to me through my humanity so that I may come to Your Divinity through Your humanity.
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The resolution for today at the end of the meditation has its meaning. But not so much when it reads, “Today I will prove to at least one person that and this,” but rather a resolution to live this given day in attitudes and perspectives that contemplation and adoration have opened up for us. In this form, it is a crucial instrument for learning, internalizing, and over time, getting used to living what we
we have received from the Lord in contemplation and adoration.
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Nowhere are we more Christian and never more Church than when we celebrate the Eucharist. There we are drawn into the heart of Christ’s Mystery, into the Heart of the Bridegroom. Only in Heaven will we be more – and the Eucharist is the beginning of Heaven on Earth.
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Fasting doesn’t mean: denying yourself food. Fasting means: I build
a new me! It’s creating, building, not losing!
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“For whoever would save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for shall save it.” (Luke 9:24)
“So neither can any of you, unless he gives up all that he has, be my disciple.” (Lk 14:33)
These are the laws of Heaven, of heavenly life: Love God as He loves
us and give ourselves to Him entirely and whole, without rest. And to trust Him so completely that we leave ourselves no “plan B,” no “back door,” no insurance, and no other security except Him. This is how the Trinity lives within itself. This is how the Communion of Saints lives in the Trinity.
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God’s gifts can only be received in one way – our giving of ourselves: ‘Give and they will give to you: a measure good, stretched, a measure shaken, they shall give you a measure in your bosom. With what measure ye mete,  so shall it be measured to you.” (Lk 6:38)
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The primary fruit of adoration is not new knowledge but new attitudes, a new being, and a new creation. What matters is becoming a new person, a man of God, not a theologian.
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To die and be born again… It’s like the music of Paradise! To be able to put off the older man with all the burden and weight that he carries on and with him and to rise again as a newborn – who else but God can give such a tremendous Gift?
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Without the faithful living Christ, without the true Life of God, without the Gift Holy Spirit, any attempt at any “depth” in Christianity ends in the awkward melodrama and empty philosophizing that he warns against already Scripture, “Beware lest any man deceive you with philosophy and empty deceit!” (Col 2:8)
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“The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.
9 He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.
10 He who loves his brother remains is in the light, and is not a reproach to him.” (1 Jn 2:8-10) How important it is to understand and constantly keep in mind that it is not: If I love my brother, then I am in the light, but: if I am in the morning, then it will be manifested, inevitable its effect and consequence, self-evident and natural, that I love my brother. And if I do not, then it is an indication that no matter what I think or say, I am still in darkness, for “he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knows not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes.” (1 Jn 2:11)

Dear brothers and sisters! Ten wild ducks were swimming in one lake. Suddenly, the carcass of a large fish floated toward them. The ducks were so hungry that they were happy even with the corpse and started munching on it. They kept pushing one duck away from each other. She was starving. Then she remembered that she also had wings. She was afraid to fly above the surface, into the unknown. But hunger forced her, and she flew above the lake’s surface. A large horizon appeared before her. From above, she saw small fish swimming under the surface. She flew lower, caught small fresh fish, and flew over the lake again. She noticed beautiful strawberries on the shore; she also spotted juicy cherries. After eating her fill, she returned to the lake to the nine ducks. They were still enjoying the dead fish and were surprised that this one was somehow not fit to eat. They started to offer her, but she didn’t want it. She just wondered and said to herself, how can they eat it? It’s too bad they didn’t fly off into the unknown with me, she thought, to find better food. How can they taste this?’

And this is what God wants from us, so we are not afraid to soar into the unknown. It is courage that is built on faith in God. And God puts a courageous person of faith at our disposal, the Virgin Mary.

It was also tricky for her to take a step, as it were, into the unknown when she answered the angel: “Let it be done to me according to your word,” when she received Jesus in the form of the fruit of her life. She goes to Elizabeth in faith but does not know what awaits her there. But it goes. The Virgin Mary discovered a spiritual dimension in herself. This dimension gave her, as it were, wings, and she was able to soar in faith into the unknown, and we witnessed the fruits of her faith. It is not only the Savior in the form of Jesus but also the very fact with her body that is taken from earth to heaven.

It is also thanks to the fact that Mária discovered wings in herself and became, as it were, an angel going into the unknown. He teaches those who do not want to be slaves to their own lives. He teaches those who do not want to bite a dead fish based on tradition. Mary teaches us faith so that we discover the wings of an angel in ourselves and are not afraid to fly with her into the unknown. Because a person is not just a bunch of psychological phenomena but is mainly a spiritual being, about which the holy writer says: “Man is only a little smaller than the angels.” Therefore, let’s try to discover an angel with wings in ourselves.

I read a lovely story about a little girl who was small and pale. Mom used to take him for a walk. The people they met looked at the little girl strangely. Once, the little girl asked her mother: “Why are those people looking at me like that?” “Because you have nice clothes,” answered the mother. But Mom died. After a year, the father married another, more beautiful woman. She didn’t take the little girl for walks. “Why?” a little girl once asked a new mother. “Look at you,” says her stepmother, “what would people think if they saw me with you, such a hunchback. Humpbacked children should sit at home.” When she left, the little girl moved her chair under the mirror and noticed her big hump. “What does the hump hide? What is in it?” it asked. When winter came, the little girl died. An angel came to her grave, knocked on it like a door, and a little girl ran out of it. The angel tells him: “Come with me to my mother. The little girl replied: “Can even hunchbacked children go to heaven?” The angel stroked his hump; it fell off like a shell and beautiful wings appeared in its place. And the little girl flew straight to heaven with the angel.

Nice story. Let’s try to make it accurate. Let’s discover the angel in ourselves and try to fly with Maria into the unknown so that, like the duck, we can find something more beautiful than a dead fish.

We can be a child even when we are adults. Today’s saint – John Berchmans – convinces us of this.

When the spiritual-spiritual leader of the youth in a Jesuit college asked his students to write John’s faults, not a single note was found from the hundred boys that contained any flaw or imperfection of John. John had a pure soul. With his life, John was able to fulfill the words of the Lord Jesus from today’s Gospel:

“Let the little children and do not prevent them from coming to me, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:14-15).

We know that Jesus loved children very much. He was God and saw the innocence and purity of the children’s hearts. The heart of Jesus was always the heart of a child. He was still God and the Son of God the Father. We know that Jesus was like us in all things; by the body, man’s duties, and growth, but never by sin. He set an example for us to follow. The words: “Be holy” belong to us too! (Exodus 19:6). These words echo in many forms both in the Old and New Testaments. We hear them as the prophets interpret them and by Jesus himself.
It is an open challenge, an appeal for each of us. How we deal with it, accept it, and bring it to life is up to us. It will be for our glory or our shame. To cheer ourselves up for the positive, let’s take note of today’s saints. We would be very mistaken if any of us thought that John or Maximilian fell from heaven as saints.

John Berchmans, on the day of his vows in the Society of Jesus, wrote the words to his father: – Father, today your son died. I no longer live for the world. I have united myself with Christ by three vows, and I never want to lose this sweet bond. Never! Serve three holy masses for me at my intention at the place of pilgrimage. – John’s father, after the death of his wife and after taking care of John, also joined the Society of Jesus and became a priest. Ján had to work on himself. After all, he was human even after taking the vows. In the same way, he had to fight for his purity, mortification of his senses, and always emphasized love for his neighbor. That it was not easy for him, that he was not a finished saint, is also proven by his confession on his deathbed: – My most extraordinary repentance was communal life. – And yet we know how he died as a 22-year-old, still a novice. He kneels to his brothers, newcomers, and priests by his bed and asks for a blessing. Even then, Ján did not succumb to pride; on the contrary.

Maximilán Kolbe also shows us a similar example of a child.

He was a child of God not only in the courtyard of the Oswiecim death camp, whereas prisoner 16,670; instead of a fellow prisoner-father whose children are waiting at home, he also goes to the hunger bunker, that is, to death by starvation. As a person, boy, priest, and expert, he often reminds himself that he wants to be faithful to God and the Mother of God. Years of work on yourself and your sanctification are hidden from the world. No one but God can see into a person’s heart. A person brings graces into the treasury of the soul. When the soul is complete, it can draw from it appropriately. And Maximilian, when he goes to the hunger bunker instead of František Gajowniczko, prisoner 5,659, draws everything to get a reward from Jesus – eternal life. After 14 days, a carbolic injection ended his life, dying of hunger on August 14, 1941, at 12:50 p.m. His body was cremated so that no memory would remain of him. They destroyed the body, but the soul lives on.

God is eternal. Pure souls oppose God. God loves each of us with the pure heart of a child.

What a wonderful feeling it is to have a pure soul. To be a friend of the Lord Jesus. His brother or sister. To wait that he will take us in his arms, not just for a moment like the children of today’s Gospel, but that a state without end will open for us at the hour of death, a condition when we will be with Jesus forever when we see our God face to face. This thought is not a dream. That is the teaching of Christ. This is an encouragement and reassurance to a select group and to each of us. Jesus turns to each of us today with the question of whether we want to be his children, brothers, and sisters. What an incredible feeling of happiness it is when we can say “yes” in the purity of our hearts. This brings us even more to Jesus. This becomes something for us that cannot be compared to anything or anyone.

What do our closest people say about us? Are we their role model and example? And what can God say about us? What if this is our last chance, moment, and opportunity to prove to God that I want to be his son or daughter?! Amen.