My brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
I bring you glad tidings from our Lord, Jesus Christ! “And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Lk. 11: 9).
This message has not been eroded by the waves of time, nor is it dependent upon the temporary kingdoms of man; for when these kingdoms turn to dust, our Lord, who was before and is now, will be after. The death of Christ on the cross was not the end, but the beginning; and as baptized Christians in the Spirit, we are placed in this sacred story of salvation.
As we are created in the image and likeness of our God, who is eternally in the present, we must not rest on the past, nor worry of the future, but take our place in the present and give our lives to the cross. All else in this world is secondary to this primary call, and we must rouse the tamped flames in our souls to rise and meet the challenges of our time. None of us – no baptized man, woman, or child – is exempt from this call; and to forfeit this invitation into the Kingdom of God is to forfeit Life itself.
Each of us seeks love, understanding, acceptance, success, respect, dignity, joy, comfort, compassion, justice, forgiveness, contentment, actualization and peace. God has bestowed upon us these gifts as wings to lift us up to the very gates of Heaven. And yet, there is another who seeks to cripple us in our journey – turning love to lust, respect to pride, joy to gluttony, justice to wrath, rest to sloth, forgiveness to contempt and acceptance to envy.
We find ourselves in the midst of a struggle too great for any one of us. Sixty million infants have been taken from us. We have chosen wrath above justice for the imprisoned. Pornography is rampant. Marriage is in decline. Our young feel increasingly disconnected. Our republic inches closer to schism. Churches are vandalized. Our faithful are still martyred.
Every Christian generation has seen the darkness on the horizon. We are no different. Our choices are whether we will, as Church, invite our disconnected Catholic brothers and sisters back to the table; ignite a love of Christ in the hearts of our youth; fight for an end to the genocide of our infants; demand even the most criminal have chance to repent; and call all of the faithful to their true vocations, not marred by the stain of self-indulgence.
Our choice is to bend the knee to our Lord Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father, and the Holy Ghost or to bend the knee to the usurper. Our Lord said it quite clearly: “He who is not with me is against me” (Lk. 11:23).
My brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, our time to stand is now. We start by refilling our Churches, and by reaching out to every Catholic who finds themselves drifting away. Lift on high the gifts of the Church and the joy of the Cross; for on it rests the Joy of our Salvation.