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In this centennial year of his birth, we thank God for this good and faithful priest, for his openness to the work of the spirit, for the ways he gave to others what he first revived, for the ways he showed the relevance of faith to the needs of the human heart, and the way he helped men and women in our time to know him who has the power to save, Jesus Christ.

Only by participating in Christ love, only by sharing it, welcoming it into our hearts, do we find the grace and strength we need to forgive our enemies and to love them.

Though reigning in heaven, Mary remains close to us, her children. The Blessed Mother wants nothing more than to bring forth in us the image of her Son – the Christ of the Beatitudes.

Only the grace of the Holy Spirit can open our spiritual eyes and ears. Even so, it is not easy. We resist. We evade. We rationalize. We harden our hearts. Think of St. Augustine’s conversion described in his Confessions where he says to God, “You called, shouted, broke through my deafness; you flared, blazed, banished my blindness; you lavished your fragrance, I gasped and now I pant for you. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst. you touched me and I burned for your peace.”

If Christ’s Name is emblazoned in our hearts, unworthy and limited as we are, we can be confident that his truth and love will shine in us and through us, spreading truth and goodness, joy and hope, peace and good will, no matter who we are, where we are, or what we may be facing.

When we allow the Spirit to fill our hearts with Jesus’ self-giving love, then we begin to love as he loved and to live as he lived – not perfectly – but enough that we can find the wherewithal to believe, to hope, and to endure, even when the road is winding, the fog hangs low, and the trumpet is uncertain.

Embracing the Scriptures as truly the Word of God, as truly words of spirit and life, let us now proceed to lift up our hearts as the Lord gives himself for us anew, in the reenactment of his death and resurrection and in our reception of his Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.