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With the words that sound in the Gospel: “Take care that your hearts are not weighed down by intemperance, drunkenness and worldly cares,” the Lord Jesus shows us how important it is to protect your heart and spirit. God created our hearts out of love and for love, and nothing else can fully satisfy our hearts but God. Augustine’s statement from almost seventeen hundred years ago – “for yourself, God, you created us, and our heart is dissatisfied until it rests in you” – remains valid even for today’s people.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that the desire for God is inscribed in the human heart because man is created by God and for God. Only in God can man find the truth and happiness he seeks. Since man comes from God and goes to God, he lives a fully human life only if he lives freely in union with him. But a person can forget about it, ignore it, or even explicitly refuse it. Such an attitude can have various causes, for example, rebellion against the evil that is in the world; religious ignorance and indifference; concern for worldly things and wealth; the lousy example of believers, anti-religious currents of thought, and, finally from the attitude of a sinner who hides from God out of fear and runs away from his call. (Cf. KCC No. 27-29)

Our heart is in all of this. That is why the Lord Jesus warns us and says: “Take care of your heart and your spirit.” The danger for us is that we do not listen to the deepest and most beautiful desires of our hearts and let ourselves be deceived, thinking that our hearts can be filled with the joy of enjoyment – as it is often offered to us by the media. But we are not created to enjoy, but for the love of God, who loves us and calls us to love.

Our misfortune is that we allow ourselves to be seduced by the narcotic happiness of alcohol, money, drugs, and passions… that seems so easily accessible. But it just as quickly leads us to catastrophic consequences; it eats away our sense of everything beautiful, accurate, valuable, honest, reasonable, and fair; it empties us and robs us of the true meaning of life. Lost lives, disrupted, even destroyed health and relationships, marriages and families; fraud and corruption, disrespect and lawlessness… all these are the fruits of letting our hearts and spirits be filled with anything but the love of our God. This is also why the liturgical season of Advent invites us to pray and watch. We know what is knocking on the door of our senses, hearts, and spirit – from the media, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, and the internet. Therefore, not letting anyone or anything enter your heart is essential.

The Lord Jesus will say it in a parable: “If the householder had known at what hour of the night a thief would come, he would surely have been on the watch and would not have allowed him to break into his house.” How many thieves do we allow ourselves to be robbed of today? Whether he is a thief of time and reputation, thief of good relationships, understanding, forgiveness, respect, faith, hope, or love; the thief of peace, marital fidelity and inseparable love; a thief of purity of heart, spirit, and body; a thief of legal certainty and justice, of mutual love in families; a thief of prayer, obedience, and respect for Christ’s Church, etc. Let us remember that vigilance in our lives is nourished by constant supplicating prayer, so we do not fall into temptation and lose faith in the Lord’s faithfulness. For all things pass away, but his word endures forever.

“Take care of your heart and your spirit,” reads today’s Gospel. God always cares about our hearts. Jesus knows that where our treasure is, there our hearts will also be. He knows that good and evil come from the heart. He does not want us to harden our hearts but to obey his voice. He wants us to be close to him with our hearts and not with our mouths; he wants to create a new heart for us. During Advent, it is often said: “Prepare the way for the Lord.” We could also understand it as a challenge: “Create the necessary silence in your life.” Not as emptiness, but as a condition to hear our God, the other person,d ourselves. Silence serves to help us learn to understand ourselves, others, and our God. Why do we often not understand each other? Why don’t spouses, parents, children, or politicians understand each other? Because they don’t know how to listen to each other, or to be quiet. How do we want to experience this year’s Advent?

I want to quote the encouraging words of Pope Benedict XVI, which he addressed to parents: “Dear parents, always try to teach your children to pray and pray with them, lead them to the sacraments, especially to the Eucharist; introduce them to the life of the Church, do not be afraid to read the Holy Scriptures to them in the family, illuminate family life with the light of faith and praise God as Father. Be like a small supper table, similar to the one created by Mary and the disciples, in which one lives in unity, community, and prayer!”

If we want to prepare the way for Jesus into our hearts and lives, we must find and create the necessary silence in which we let God enter our heart’s aheartsirit. It can be the silence of prayer, the silence lived in the Eucharist and before the Eucharist, in reading or listening to the word of God. It may be silence from the received sacrament of penance, the silence we give to another when he needs someone to listen to him. It can be the silence of our little acts of love.

The writer Ivan Kadlečík wrote before Christmas: “It seems that everything is moving towards manipulation as if this is the primary interest of our social establishment. The media, authorities, business chains, political parties, insurance companies, banks, energy companies, transport, and telecommunications manipulate us. All of them are narrowing the space of our freedom for their benefit and the interest of profit and power. We become their hostages, subjects, and serfs. For a serf, even Christmas becomes almost a natural disaster. The Bolsheviks suffered these holidays as a kind of folklore appendix; today, the inner essence of the holiday is massively destroyed, liquidated by all possible means. The time of joy and cheer for the world had come now, when Money was born for our eternal salvation. And that’s why let’s celebrate…

Save Christmas Eve, you save your soul when a thieving hand reaches for your freedom. Otherwise, we would slavishly plod along here senselessly, floundering and stumbling along like salaried employees of a monstrous machine that takes everything from us. Heroism today is not to acquire and subjugate the world – heroism is not to let your tiny territory be taken, defend it, or let in a degenerate large pile of thoughts, feelings, things and pe, and people. Perhaps it is the last human asylum. At least one day or evening a year. Day of mystery, silence, birth, life, light, tenderness, word, inner freedom, respect, humility, and future. With an unused morse code, I am sending an SOS signal. Let’s save our souls!” But we need silence, which conveys the most beautiful thing about ourselves.

Good God, protect our hearts and our spirits. Do not let our hearts become corrupted and fall away from you, living God. Fill him with living desire and love for you. Please help us find time for silence, in which we will meet you, listen, and thus find the way to you, the other person, ourselves, and the depths and beauty of life.

Brothers and sisters, the English writer Cronin worked as a doctor in a region with no hospital. A 50-year-old nurse helped him with his work. In one article, he writes these words about her: She was a soul that radiated light and a smile. She was selfless to the extreme. Day and night, she stayed with the sick for a small salary. I once told her: “It’s ridiculous to work for so little.” But she replied with a bright smile: “It’s enough for me to live on.” I contradicted her: “They should give you at least a little extra because only God knows how much you deserve for your work.” She replied: “Doctor, if God knows how much I deserve, then I don’t need anything else.” After these words, I was stunned. Later I confessed to myself: Then a ray of light penetrated me, in which I saw the extraordinary life of a nurse and the miserable emptiness of my life.

Brothers and sisters, in the Gospel, we heard the words: “The people living in darkness saw a great light . The light shone on those sitting in the dark region of death” (Mt 4, 16). The evangelist Matthew gives us light in today’s text. Many readers speak of God as light and sin as darkness in the holy scriptures. From the first chapter of the Bible, where we read how God first created light (cf. Gn 1, 3), to its last chapter, where Jesus himself becomes the source of light for the new Jerusalem (cf. Rev 21, 23-26 ). Ray also played a bi-significant role in the Christmas holidays we experienced. And also, at the Epiphany – even the wise men were brought to Bethlehem by the light of a star (cf. Mt 2:2; Mt 2:9).

The good Gospel message we heard advises us today to accept light into our lives and, simultaneously, be a light for others, just as the nurse in the opening story was. The Evangelist Matthew wants to tell us that the true Light also wants to shine in our lives. And the light that wants to come to us is Jesus Christ.

And when we look at today’s modern society, we see that darkness in the form of envy, hatred, malice, slander, negative thoughts, and evil practices works everywhere. And only people who receive Jesus – the “Light” into their lives can shed light on this darkness. The more Light, that is, good deeds, benevolent thoughts, justice, love… we can give, the better our society will be.

We tend to criticize life and say how terrible everything is. Yes, it is true, but we create that evil through our decisions. When perceiving the events that are currently happening, we, too, are often seized by the desire to somehow contribute to saving the world. Sometimes the idea of ​​ourselves in the role of Superman flashes through our heads. However, we often suppress such an idea in ourselves, thinking that we would not be able to do it. But do we not have enough strength for it? Do we not have enough options for that? The truth is that there are many people around us who we can help. You need to want and keep your eyes open. After all, we have some abilities, knowledge, and skills. Each of us can give something to the other. Everyone can be “Superman” in their little world at times.

Sometimes a smile, good advice, help, comfort, and a little interest are enough. However, it is essential to open the heart. The biggest problem of our time is not wars and weapons but the nature of man, which is bitter. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta said: Hunger is not only about bread. There is also a hunger for love. Nudity is not only about clothes but also about a lack of respect for one another.

At least in the corner of his soul, every person desires to devote his life to something good and wise. It’s everyone’s personal choice, and it’s good to sometimes think about what it could be for each of us. It doesn’t have to be big things; maybe little things are enough. It’s good to have something to focus on that has meaning for us. And basically, we don’t even have to tell anyone about it; we can keep it to ourselves; we; wet even have to think about it in detail,’; it’s if we just set our mon. Sometimes a sincere interest in people is enough. Love in the heart is the most excellent resource that can capture the light in another person. If we open our hearts to love, we will spread light everywhere. And Light – Christ in the heart and soul- is the best protection against darkness.

No more Light we can receive, the more we will give it in the form of love, joy, compassion… It has already been said and written many times: What we radiate, we attract. We are all creators of a new reality in our environment. Therefore, do not forget that we came from the Light and are returning to the Light. Light is our true essence.

Brothers and sisters, the doctor was struck by the words of a simple nurse in the opening speech. She became the bearer of light in his life. Christ’s Light also hides in our hearts. Let’s meet him with others on the road. The more we shine, the less darkness there will be in our society.

It is natural that as soon as we open our eyes, we begin to discover the beauty of the world, people, and events. The brightness of the sun’s rays and the darkness of the moving shadows will lead us to amazement and gratitude for the unusual images. It is not practical praise that we give to “necessary” people. This is a spontaneous step of previous revelations—something we greatly neglect in our communities.

In today’s Gospel, we hear how Jesus lets himself be carried away by an attitude of joy. The evangelist brings us the image of the praiser: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, it pleased you so.” They are the words of a person who realizes that he has received everything from the Father. It expresses the typical joy of a person who lives in an open relationship and true freedom. Jesus’ praise is an expression of the heart’s response to what the eyes see. In the background is humility and the ability to recognize God’s presence and goodness in the dark history of the world. This attitude of praise springs from the ability to discern things.

And so the next step of every Christian on the Advent journey is a prayer of praise. Such an attitude educates us to look at human history with lively hope. Thus, maintaining a view based on optimism in the spirit of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “A branch will come out of the tribe of Jesse and a shoot will grow from his roots. And the spirit of the Lord will rest on him…” Walking in Advent means emptying your heart of unnecessary worries and thanking the Lord for the signs that we, through his providence, remind him of his presence in the world.

St. Bernard worked zealously to convert sinners. He was also not afraid to visit various inns and other places where sinful people gathered. Once, he played billiards with his friends in a restaurant. One of them asked, “What would you do if God revealed to you now that you will die in one hour?” They answered differently. One would go to confess quickly, another to return what he had stolen, another to reconcile and say goodbye to his family… When everyone had answered, they curiously turned to Bernard. “What would you do?” Bernard replied: “I’d be happy to keep playing pool.”

Soon we are starting Advent – the coming of Jesus Christ. This period should not only remind us that Jesus came to Bethlehem but, above all, our expectation: the second coming of Jesus, the appearance of Christ the King. He urges us today:  “Therefore, watch all the time and pray that you may escape all that is to come and stand before the Son of Man” (Lk 21, 36). Expecting a meeting with the Lord is not something rigid, something which would kill us. This does not mean living in fear. On the contrary. Who lives in such a way that he is ready to meet God, lives a peaceful and joyful life. Because he has what is necessary for a quiet life – a clear conscience. A person with a clear conscience lives in harmony and friendship with God and the people around him. He who does not steal, does not slander, does not lie, who knows how to share, keeps Sundays and holidays holy, approaches the sacraments … in short, who gives to God what is God’s, to man, what belongs to man and to himself, which requires health of body and soul, he is ready to meet God. He is holding a lamp, that is – in his heart is the light of God’s grace.

Our life is full of meetings. From ordinary life, death appears to us as loneliness, as the severing of all bonds, friendships, and acquaintances. But the Gospel says otherwise. In it, we read about a big – new meeting with the Lord, which has a festive atmosphere. Therefore, a “new” forum because it is a meeting with Jesus, a person who has not yet seen with our own eyes but with whom we have been in contact for a long time with the help of our faith. Thus, a person living according to the Gospel, a person living with a clear conscience, has and can enjoy the fact that in death, he will not be thrown into solitary confinement because then he will leave everyone to meet Jesus in whom he will find the fullness of peace and happiness.

To enter the encounter with Jesus, we must have a wedding dress. Otherwise, we will be thrown out the door, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The sign of this dress is our christening shirt, which we received at baptism. We were then cleansed from all sins and became God’s children. Let’s remember this day. It is our birthday when we are born into heaven. Brother, sister, when you received this robe, the baptist said: “…you have become a new creation, and you have put on Christ. Let this white robe be your sign of this rank. Your parents and relatives will help you by word and example so that you may bring him undefiled into eternal life.”

However, in life, we ​​often fall into a puddle as children; that’s why we have the sacrament of reconciliation. Don’t we sometimes delay repentance? Therefore, let’s prepare for the reception in the wedding hall now. Are we ready for a class we have no idea about?

If God revealed to us the hour of our death, would we remain calm like St. Bernard? If we are ready, then yes. If not, let’s consider our approach to reconciliation with God. Let’s resolve today that whenever we feel in our souls that we are heavy, we will surrender everything to God, as he wishes, and thus be ready with our hearts and our life to meet Jesus in full glory.

Some thinkers speak succinctly about the need for dynamism in people’s lives. A person needs movement so his muscles don’t start to stiffen, and his joints squeak. And it also requires constant change in the psychological or spiritual sphere. With long-term passivity at one level of his thinking and behavior, he will get so used to this way of life that he will not feel any stiffness or creaking of his joints. He’ll be fine, and he’dinsteadr not even expresses his opinion so that he doesn’t have to change it. And therein lies the danger of everyday life. We will find our suitable tracks and go where they take us. “Follow me…” They immediately left their nets and followed him. Jesus’ words often cut into uncomprehending or hard souls. It seems that time has not dulled the edge of his words. Even now, we do not want to see the need for his challenge. Jesus did not come to force his teaching or philosophy of love on the people around him and their generations. Among other things, he wants to show us only thatjoy and truth can only be achieved through constant internal changes. He does not want to leave us standing in one place or walking only one way.

For example, it abolishes the laws of blood sacrifices enacted by Moses and points to a new way of building a relationship with God. It seems that he saw very well the need for a person to constantly review his previous way of life, the level of relationships and friendships, and the methods of creating them. Our beaten path of life with different profiled wheel tracks. It is essential to change it. But how do we find an effective way to help us make the correct change and not fall back into the usual “drive”? They say that as many people, as many original heads, and as many heads, as many views. Each one is interesting and more or less accurate. Therefore, they can be an enrichment for us.

Let us open our hearts and discover how the horizon of beauty begins to expand for us – like when we climb up to the top of a hill, and a pa, panorama of nature opens before our view, which we could not see from below. Lord, open our spiritual sight and hearing so that we can see and hear how you individually lead us to yourself in the mundanity of our days.

We know about God that he is eternal. That is why we cannot speak of God as yesterday, today, or tomorrow. With God, it is always now. Sin brought, among other things, the punishment of aging and waiting for the end of life. Therefore, our life is filled with beginnings and endings. We are aware of this even today, at the end of the liturgical year when the texts of today’s readings advise us to look to the future. When a stage ends in our life, it is customary to evaluate this stage before we start the next. Looking back, the past is counted, and we are happy when the evaluation brings a profit. However, God proceeds quite differently. He tells us not to settle for any sense of gain but to keep moving forward. However, he does not want to frighten us with dire predictions but announces that his arrival will be accompanied by something dramatic. Lukáš described it: “There will be signs in the sun and the moon, and in the stars, and on earth the nations will be full of anxiety…” (Luke 21:25). 

Let’s stop and learn from what the evangelist Luke wants to tell us. We are given a satisfactory explanation, which the text speaks of dramatically and refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, which represents the Church amid the world. Exegetes of this text see in these words the end of the world and the beginning of the kingdom of God. Others, on the other hand, interpret these words as a reminder that we should always be ready for the coming of the Lord Jesus, which they understand by each person’s death. Let us also realize that the Lord Jesus will come one day. And this time, which we are beginning to experience, should also prepare us for it.

What will happen when that time comes? Who among us does not wish with all his heart for success and justice? This is what the Lord God promised Jacob, and Jeremiah reminds the nation that the Lord will soon fulfill his promise. Each of us desires success. Everyone thinks that someone will bring it to them. Are we not witnessing many turning to false prophets or various others to experience happiness finally? And don’t we see how they invent all kinds of things to taste joy? A person very much needs someone to bring him joy, guide him, and clarify what ings for him. And so the Lord comes, and that is because people long for him, so that the Savior of the world will arise from them. At the same time, he reminds us to be vigilant because, with his arrival, he will surprise many and frighten them wherever they are on earth.

Luke calls him the Son of Man to explain the distance and difference between the Son of Man and us and to show that he possesses all power. The coming of the Lord is presented as a dramatic connection and a quick meeting of man with God. This unifying meeting of man with God is the cause of the emergence of an actual situation where a state of relaxation is,ses, and new freedom is obtained. And don’t the words of Scripture tell us about this when great signs are mentioned? Under the influence of authors who in the Old Testament talk about extraordinary interventions of God in history, the evangelist Luke tells us about cosmic signs: the sun, moon, and stars, but also signs on earth: about the anxieties of nations, the waves of the sea, but also about death from fear.

Of course, none of us will be able to investigate these signs that St. Luke speaks of, yet we have the impression that his fantastic predictions result from his ignorance or his writer’s imagination. And yet, encouraged by the word of this gospel, we should not learn to look at what is being done around us, and hopefully, we would be able to foresee the coming of the Lord Jesus. Let’s find the causes of all shortcomings: diseases, personal failures, international events, or natural disasters. Therefore, whatever calamity, experiment, prediction of war, revolutionary unrest, swift hurricanes, or dazzling lightning were signs of God’s power shaking the world, they would not allow us to sleep in contented tranquility, and therefore he commands us to move forward so that when the end comes, we desire to receive the Lord Jesus. If we lived daily with Jesus, such predictions would not surprise us.

The Lord Jesus always comes, and we would like an immediate response to the invitation. It is only up to us whether this meeting will continue forever. The Lord Jesus is coming, and we generally know his signs. They persuade us, and yet we fear that we will not be able to realize them. Let’s also remember that his arrival does not have to endow us with joy and justice. It can also bring us the opposite if we don’t listen, which is why we receive two sad pieces of advice today.

The first piece of advice: “Take care that your hearts are not weighed down,” and Lukáš specifies what: “with gluttony, drunkenness, and worries about this life” (LK 21:24). This advice does not apply to most of us. After all, who among us considers himself a reveler or an alcoholic? And who among us does not justify his worries, his situation, his health, and his children’s futuredren by claiming that he is only fulfilling his duty? Indeed, it is worth discussing the value of Luke’s advice. However, we see that Lukáš gives us precious advice. We are to fulfill the duties of each day; we are to get rid of the struggle of our hearts. He, with a hard heart, cannot recognize the signs of the coming of the Lord Jesus. Preoccupied with his worries, he shuts himself up and is only interested in himself. He judges all matters, events, and people according to his benefit, which he can achieve from them, and therefore he cannot even hear the Lord Jesus’ address. More than one of us has already experienced the disappointment of our self-enclosedness, the torment of spiritual blindness to everything that does not belong to us. When we wanted to get out of it, we often threw ourselves into the vortex of entertainment to forget about it. Only he will await the Lord Jesus with joy, who cleanses his heart, opens it for Christ, and does not close in on himself!

Luke also offers us a second piece of advice: “Therefore stay awake all the time and pray” (Lk 21:36). If the heart is pure, only then is it able to listen because it is freed from everything that would make it blind and coincides within the words of the apostle Paul, who says how we should live to please God. Then we will not be afraid of meeting the Lord Jesus when the terms of the Gospel will be fulfilled: “When these things begin to happen, stand up straight, lift your heads because your redemption” (Luke 21:18). This idea of ​​constant preparation was peculiarly but well understood by the man from the following example.

After each good deed, he repeated the sentence:
“Another apple was thrown over the fence!”
One day a friend asked him the meaning of these words.
He received the answer: “Not long ago, I invited the boys into the garden and allowed them to eat as much fruit as they wanted. But they were prohibited from taking anything with them or hiding it in their pockets. The boys ate their fill. Meanwhile, I noticed how one of the boys would sometimes catch a nicpleasantple and throw it over my garden fence for you to collect.
And this became a great lesson for me. I began to think like this: Do good to everyone because every good deed you do is like an apple thrown over the fence. When you come out of this life, you will find all your good deeds as you pass into eternity. They will help you get to a blissful life.”

We know about God that he is eternal. However, we only live here on earth for a specific time. We must prove ourselves and get  as many merits, graces,d good deeds as possible. Therefore, let’s use the time of life as responsibly as possible. The end of the liturgical year offers us a new impulse. Let’s look to the future with hope and be aware that it may be the last time in our lives. We can see signs around us and even feel them on ourselves. 

If a person wants to join a club or a sports team, or if someone has the task of recruiting people into a community, he tries to tell interested parties about everything positive that awaits them in the future. Sometimes reality is deliberately concealed, and shortcomings and difficult situations are not even mentioned.

Lord Jesus does not do that. He says openly: “They will lay hands on you, they will persecute you, they will throw you into prison, they will hate you for my name’s sake” (Lk 21:12). And he adds: “For I will give you eloquence and wisdom, which all your adversaries resist or contradict” (Luke 21:15).

What time does Jesus mean? It was so in the first Christian centuries when the Church was persecuted, but we can say that the Church of Christ is constantly persecuted, sometimes in one country or another. And Jesus’ word seems to be fulfilled even today.

Many of our brothers and sisters suffer among us because of their faith and religious beliefs. Many of us think they must rid us of backwardness, religion, and s prejudices and teach us advanced and more scientific thinking. And that is why those who live in deep faith are often persecuted. But, beloved in Christ, is this a reason to leave our relationship with Christ? Is this a reason to renounce his fellowship, his love? After all, why does Jesus give us a promise even today?

“For I will give you eloquence and wisdom, which all your adversaries will not be able to resist or contradict” (Luke 21:15).

For it to be true, as accurate load Jesus says, it is necessary to realize that we are to be one hundred percent Christians. Lord Jesus gives us this as a condition, even if he does not say it directly. The Holy Spirit will help us if we are people in our lives entirely according to Christ, f we are people of Christ’s character. That is, those who stand behind Christ at any cost, who are willing to sacrifice something for him. All united: believers, bishops, and priests must connect with the Holy Father, support him with prayers, and then the Holy Spirit will help us if we strive to fulfill Jesus’ prayer: Father, grant that all may be one. The prayer he prayed on the eve of his suffering for all of us.

Say, dearest in Christ, is this unity and faithfulness to Christ complete among us? Are we all committed together to the cause of faith and love for Christ? Unless this is achieved, they will have power over individuals. Therefore, let’s try to understand the word of Jesus this way. The Lord gives us a guarantee of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in terms of eloquence and wisdom, his own, but we must also strive to cooperate with the Holy Spirit for our salvation. It is only because of our perseverance that we save a life in eternity and happy bliss. However, as long as there is even a spark of lukewarmness or weakness in our religion, as long as Christ is not the only good for us, and as long as we are divided and fragmented, the weakening of faith will succeed even in ourselves.

Let’s learn from the past. The Church suffered in the first centuries, in England under King Henry VIII, and in France during the revolution, and was cruelly persecuted. Still, those who remained faithful to Christ emerged victorious from these situations.
How is it with us today? What are we doing to deepen our life with Christ?

Let us strive, dear brothers and sisters, for complete unification through mutual prayer and supplication to the heavenly Father. A plea to Jesus Christ that he, who suffered the most, be our only comfort and strength in our sufferings and mental anxieties. May he always bless us to make the right decision for loyalty to himself? So that he helps us in our choices, which will be firm and will not tolerate any polemics and speculations in matters of faith and religion.
If we can think and act this way, brothers and sisters, then we can rely on the wisdom and eloquence of the Holy Spirit, that he will inspire us with suitable thoughts, and we will respond appropriately even to those who have gone astray on their way through life.

In this way, we can understand why Jesus does not only talk about the positives and ideals in his Church but also about suffering and persecution. He wants us to live under all circumstances in the only truth, Jesus himself.