Be Prepared for the Lord!

THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

8 November 2026 – Holy Spirit Church 7:30 & 9:00 am

Wis 6:12-16

1 Thes 4:13-18

Mt 25:1-13

       The parable of the wise and foolish virgins! My personal history with this parable from Matthew’s Gospel goes back to some point in my life as a boy in elementary school serving Mass, especially daily Mass. That was before the II Vatican Council and before the liturgical reform implemented thereafter. In the old saints calendar back then this Gospel came up quite often on weekdays, especially on the feasts of virgin martyrs. Truth to be told, I had sort of a problem with this particular passage. I didn’t really see what this parable about wedding feasts and virgins carrying lamps had to say to me as a ten-year-old boy. But the point is and this holds for old and young alike, that the Church through the Word of God repeats and insists that we be wise, that we seek wisdom, really that our focus be on vigilance in expectation of the Lord’s return in glory. That is a great message as the end of another liturgical year draws near and we focus a bit on the ultimate things.

       The other day I was conversing with one of our retired priests whose last assignment before retirement had put him in charge of a pastorate with both a city parish and a couple of smaller rural parishes. He said that in the rural areas regular Sunday Mass attendance was about 70%, whereas in the urban area it was down at about 30%. It would seem that in his pastorate the wise virgins, well prepared for the Master’s return, were all concentrated in the countryside and the foolish ones who rarely got to Mass on Sunday were living in town. I told him I had my reservations about such a generalization and whether rural living necessarily correlated with wisdom and a more serious practice of the faith, of being vigilant in expectation of the Lord’s return, but Father’s statistics were what they are. Fulfilling our obligation to attend Mass on Sunday is a wise thing. There can be no discussion that faithfulness to Sunday Mass every Sunday, a regular practice of the Sacrament of Penance, and daily prayers are a big part of what it means to be Catholic. Such things are the marks of people with their hearts set on the world to come. They are the hallmarks of people who are wise. To the contrary, those who practically espouse to the slogan “Eat, Drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die”, CARPE DIEM as the old pagan Romans would say, are not only careless or foolish, but they are people without God, practical atheists if you will, no matter how many false gods, talismans, or good luck charms they might carry or hang around their necks.

       The moral of the story, then? City or country, no matter where you live would be to be wise! To seek wisdom! As we read in our Old Testament reading: “For taking thought of wisdom is the perfection of prudence, and whoever for her sake keeps vigil shall quickly be free from care…” We can never be too careful.

       The wise person is that man or woman whose days are ordered aright. They are people focused on God, that is, they pray, they lift their hearts and minds to God.

       Besides being people of prayer, besides being upright, honest, and charitable, what would be the marks of wisdom? What is it that keeps us from being locked out in the cold as fools like those not so thoughtful or less than serious young women in the parable?

       We are coming up on Advent, that other time of the year besides Lent, when people tend to go to confession, at this time we do so to prepare ourselves for the Lord’s birth at Bethlehem. Children and young people who attend religious education classes have the advantage of getting a built-in opportunity for confession, for parents it is harder, they have to be a bit more deliberate, or the season passes them by. Even though the Church Precept only requires confession once a year if you are not aware of any mortal sins in your life, given that we are bound to Sunday Mass under pain of mortal sin, and going to communion out of routine with such a sin on our souls compounds this situation, the question may be posed as to what side of the 30 or 70% you find yourself.

       My counsel for you would be to sit with the bulletin this Sunday and make a plan for confession. We know not the day nor the hour. Be wise!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Let him turn to the Lord!

 

TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

19-20 September 2026, St. Mary Church

Is 55:6-9

Phil 1:20c-24, 27a

Mt 20:1-16a

       Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near… let him turn to the Lord for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.

       Our first reading from the prophet Isaiah offers an essential insight into the point our Gospel parable makes about the landowner recruiting dayworkers for his grape harvest.

It is not so much that God sets His own terms for repaying all who work in His vineyard, which is His right, but rather that when he calls, we have to respond promptly; we have to stop dragging our feet, stop hesitating or holding back. We need to get to work. We have to respond immediately to His call to go along to the vineyard no matter what the time of day or what the circumstance in which we find ourselves when He calls. No giving him a deaf ear.  The master’s call is urgent, and we don’t want to lose out.

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near… let him turn to the Lord for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.

       Isaiah’s big message is that of prompt obedience, of repentance for sin. To the extent that we lend the master a deaf ear, we might just be thinking in terms of our own interests. As a boy, I am sure the thought crossed my mind that there must be some way to work the angle of this parable and get the master’s reward without all the effort of sweating through the heat of the day. Ultimately, I think that is a childish calculation sort of like trying to get ahead by cutting into line or weaving in and out of traffic here in town only to get out of sync with the traffic lights on a busy street. The Church is making a very different point which has nothing to do with cutting corners and getting ahead. It’s all about and only about the master’s call, about our baptismal call to repent of sin, to give up dead works and to follow Christ and through a specific vocation, like Christian Matrimony, or priesthood, or the religious life, to have the master’s reward.

       This year my ordination class for the diocese is celebrating 50 years, and all seven of us are still priests in good standing. That is a special joy, but I have had many more at the age of 76. Since retiring, I have had the joy of celebrating with other classmates from O’Gorman their golden wedding anniversaries. In some cases, I have had the joy of coming to know their children and grandchildren still strong in the faith.

       Even while my service of the Holy See took me out of our diocese for 40 years, I ended up coming home to stay and being a privileged witness to people and events from earlier, from before that. I can remember Bishop Hoch, who spent his whole priesthood and all but his first years up in Bismark as Bishop repaying the debts the diocese of Sioux Falls had to shoulder after its bankruptcy in the Great Depression. Another one of the Bishop’s worries back then was the shortage of priestly vocations, of men to work in the vineyard. Part of the reason he built the Minor Seminary here in Sioux Falls as well as many of the Newman Centers on the state college campuses around the diocese was to seek to build our young men up in the faith and prepare them spiritually and intellectually to hear the master’s call to come to work in the vineyard, to become good husbands and fathers and priests. Back then a lot of bishops around the country were still recruiting priests from Ireland and hoping for one or another immigrant priest from elsewhere to come and serve our people.

        Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near… let him turn to the Lord for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving.

       Isaiah reminds us that we are all called to seek God’s mercy. By our repentance from sin, no matter whether we are young or old, we may find ourselves called to cooperate in other works for the Lord. +

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Prophet's Reward

 

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

28 June 2026, St. Joseph Cathedral

2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16a

Rom 6:3-4, 8-11

Mt 10:37-42

       I have always been sort of stymied by these words of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel today: Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward… I don’t know exactly what to say about them.

       What possible application in your life or in mine could Jesus’ words have? How often do most of us encounter prophets or holy men? Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward… What do you do with a statement like that? What is the Lord promising to reward the person who follows those words of his? …It is an enigmatic statement, but in its liturgy for this Sunday, the Church helps us out by tying this verse from Matthew 10 to a passage from the OT book of 2^nd Kings, where it talks about the Shunamite woman’s hospitality given to the prophet… In his day, Elisha was clearly known as a prophet, and this couple received him into their home as such, as a holy man. The prophet is grateful for the little room up on the roof of her house that they built for him and wishes to repay her somehow for her generosity and so he asks for a suggestion from his servant and then follows up on it.

       (Elisha asked,) “Can something be done for her?” Gehazi reads the situation correctly, seeing that the couple’s greatest suffering was being childless. And Elisha responds accordingly, through his intervention into the order of things, by his prayers addressed to God. The prophet, the holy man of God does for them what only God could do or grant. Thanks to Elisha, the holy man’s prayers, she and her husband are blessed soon after his visit with the birth of a baby boy. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward…

       So great! What’s the application in my life or in yours? No doubt there are any number of possibilities, but fundamentally I think the passage calls us to go deeper in terms of the two great commandments to love of God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Matthew 10 takes me a step beyond the simple admonition to “Love thy neighbor”. It goes beyond the usual scriptural reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Good deeds are not just something we toss out there.  We see the other side of the commands to love especially in vv. 37-38 of today’s Gospel: Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

The Shunamite woman saw and acted. Elisha on God’s behalf saw to it that she was rewarded for her thoughtfulness. The implications of love of God for the life of a follower of Christ open up possibilities. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.

Not only are we obliged to do good, but Jesus tells us we will indeed be rewarded for it.  …and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.

       Nowhere in this passage from 2 Kings do you get the impression that the Shunamite woman was calculating anything or counting on a reward for showing kindness to Elisha. She simply recognized his dignity as a prophet.  Growing up we were always taught that doing the right thing was its own reward. Jesus says it a bit differently, but that is the basic message.

       The admonition to give without counting the cost is only part of it. It’s like when we were taught that although sorrow for our sins and offenses if motivated by our dread of losing heaven and ending up in hell is sufficient for a good confession, but we can and should strive for perfect contrition inspired by a love for God and not ever wanting to offend Him Who has loved us so much. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward…

       The Shunamite woman was not dealing out of a simple sense of duty or even looking for repayment. When we think about the duties of our state in life or more generally about our Christian duties, we should by thinking about is treasuring others for who they are. Beyond duty by the grace and through the holy will of God, we are opening up a whole world of possibility, which is good here but greater in and for the hereafter.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Lent as Training

 

SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

14-15 February 2026

Church of Christ the King

Sir 15:15-20

1 Cor 2:6-10

Mt 5:17-37

 

       In case you missed it or are unaware, this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, the 40 day penitential season in which we in the Church prepare to celebrate Easter, which is to say to enter fully into the great mystery of the saving Passion and Death of our Lord and His glorious victory over sin and death in the Resurrection.

       Thinking about Lent and Easter, I saw a podcast the other day from two laymen, canon lawyers, whom I respect. Both are good Catholic men, husbands and fathers; the one of them is a hopeless baseball fanatic. In his commentary he compared Lent to spring training for a baseball team. It’s not all wrong as a description, or as the old adage goes: No pain, no gain! Being at the top of your game demands diligent and thorough preparation and from a Catholic point of view that translates into a demand for doing penance, asceticism, or self-denial.

       My generation, older folks, all had their stories to tell about their childhood experiences of Lenten penance. Abstinence, giving up meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent, was nothing exceptional back then, because that was what we did all year round on Fridays in remembrance of the Lord’s Passion. Nowadays depending on how you live Fridays as a Catholic, it might be more of a big thing to watch your Friday eating habits. Different back then, not abstinence but fasting was what caught our attention because other than not eating in preparation for receiving Holy Communion, from midnight on when I made my first Communion and shortly thereafter for three hours before Communion and more recently then the present one hour fast from everything but water in preparation for receiving Our Lord, fasting was really what made Lent for us. Different than the Communion fast, what fasting meant was not eating between meals and generally reducing our food intake to one modest meal, with two other meals which when taken together should not equal that principal meal. Small children and the elderly were not obliged to fast, nor were the sick or people of a weak constitution.

       Spring training! Think about it for a moment. My now adult nieces are probably the first generation of girls in high school to do weight training for sports… and why? To enhance performance, yes, but most particularly to reduce injuries. Conversely, in the spiritual life penance plays or can be explained as playing an analogous role and that since forever. From earliest times in the Church, the hermits, the monks and nuns of the desert were our spiritual athletes. These heroes of the Church from earliest times set a pattern for all of the baptized. By disciplining themselves, by depriving themselves of food, among other things, by taking more time for God in prayer, they demonstrated their longing for Christ and His Kingship in their lives. The monastic tradition carried that on year round and the rest of the baptized took time to emulate their example of seeking the Lord through fasting and prayer during the season of Lent.

       Ash Wednesday and Lent! As individuals, yes, but more importantly as a Church, as God’s People, we enter now into our spring training. We begin our quest for the Promised Land, for leaving behind the fleshpots of Egypt so as to set our hearts more firmly on the life of the world to come.

       Ash Wednesday is not a Holy Day of Obligation, but if you have an opportunity to get to Mass that day, make the sacrifice. In every and any case, it’s time to start your spring training, to take on penance for the sake of renewing your heart and mind by joining the Church in disciplining your body. If you don’t have a regular habit of going to confession, start looking now for an opportunity to make a good confession in preparation for more fully entering into the celebration of Easter.

       No doubt some of you are well aware of your duties as a Catholic Christian and know that the Precept binds you to confess only in case of mortal sin, and then to do so as quickly as possible, or otherwise once a year. Pushing the spring training thing a bit, I would urge you to have a better standard of performance. To seek to emulate the heroes of our faith who, by penance and prayer, sought to follow, to run eagerly after the Lord of Life. Happy Lent!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Light for the World

 

SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

17-18 January 2026 – St. Therese Church

 Is 49:3, 5-6

1 Cor 1:1-3

Jn 1:29-34

       It is too little… for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.

       Between the first reading from the prophet Isaiah and our passage today from John’s Gospel for Sunday of this 2^nd Week in Ordinary Time, I think we are given an opportunity to reflect on what it means to be Catholic and hopefully thereby to recover a fuller sense of the mission of the Church for the sake of the life of the world. Ordinary Time, “green time” if you will (as opposed to purple or white, the other dominant seasonal colors), is a good time to do just that, as in Ordinary Time we are not focusing so much on the great mysteries of our faith, as we just did in Advent in preparation for Christmas, or as we will soon be doing during Lent in preparation for Easter. Let us see then for a moment if we can kind of get a glimpse of what Jesus is all about in His Person and Mission and what that means for me as a follower of Christ, as a Catholic Christian.

       Looking then in the Gospel to St. John the Baptist, who professed Jesus as the Lamb of God, what can I say not only about the Lord but about the significance of my baptism into Jesus Christ? What am I called to, who am I called to be by my baptism into Christ? Jesus, the one and only Son of God, Who came into the world, binds me by water and the Holy Spirit into that mission which, as we read in the prophet Isaiah today, was prefigured by Israel and finds its fulfillment in Jesus, as proclaimed in the Law and by all the Prophets.

       I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       Try to imagine yourself as a light to the nations! Not easy as most of us cannot really see ourselves as playing an important role in the life of the world. We’re just ordinary folks, right? We cannot imagine ourselves as a light to the nations in Christ’s place. And yet, if you read the lives of the saints, especially of the early Roman martyrs, it becomes clear that beyond the clergy who suffered martyrdom, we are often talking about girls and young women, who put Christ first in their lives, embracing virginity and refusing marriages, advantageous marriages often with pagans. Lots of early Christians suffered death themselves simply for giving a decent burial to others who had made the supreme sacrifice. Their witness of decency and virtue was undeniable light for the world.

Back in the 1960’s there were official documents out of Rome which referred to the Church, to Catholics, as experts in humanity. Most lay people and clergy were embarrassed by such talk back then and today very few would not reject it as nonsense. I think such talk can lead to a misunderstanding of what it means simply to live the Christian life. Granted from the point of view of reputation, the Church in our day and in our country is pretty well beaten up. An awful lot of dioceses have had to declare bankruptcy to pay off legal claims precisely for their lack of good sense in dealing with frail humanity. But Baptism and the personal witness of heroic virtue is and always was what brought the light of Christ to the world. The truth is that day in and day out we still hear accounts of heroic husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, who sacrifice themselves for their families, live out their vocation heroically, perhaps foregoing chemotherapy to be able to carry a baby to term.

       I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       Where else does or where should this grand calling of being a light to the nations or an expert in humanity play itself out? Where I ask in a political or social world very much dominated by relativism and opportunism, in a world distorted by the pet ideologies of unbelieving people who not only claim to impose their personal preferences on others but refuse to admit consequences for their actions or choices. It is in such a world that the heroic virtue of ordinary Catholics breaks through and scatters the clouds of ambiguity.

       I don’t want to put on any sort of life seminar for you but very simply to invite you to spend time quietly on the Lord’s Day, allowing for a bit of inspiration and recognition of what are the all-important things in life.

       I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

       We are exhorted to let our light shine for all to see. That light is basically the heroic virtue of personal self-sacrifice for the sake of building up Christ’s Kingdom starting from home. Neither material wealth nor power count for much in the grand scheme of things. Rather, may Jesus Christ be praised!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Baptized for Justice Sake

 

THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD

10-11 January 2026 – Christ the King

Is 42:1-4, 6-7

Acts 10:34-38

Mt 3:13-17

       A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, until he establishes justice on the earth…

       With its choice of first reading from the prophet Isaiah the Church today associates the Baptism of the Lord with His establishment of justice upon the earth. The Lord Jesus came to bring justice to our world, and we are baptized into Christ’s Baptism and therefore into His mission for the salvation of the world. As the prophet Isaiah proclaims, Christ our Savior came “to bring light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness”. Justice: how should we define it? It is not so much what is our due, but what God has willed for us from all eternity.

We know from our catechism that unlike us, frail human beings, Jesus as God did not need Baptism to be freed from Adam’s sin, from original sin, but rather Jesus’ Baptism by John in the Jordan points to the other essential aspect of this first of the sacraments by which we are washed clean of sin and united with Christ. Baptism not only opens the gates of heaven for us individually, but it also unites us with Christ in His work of bringing light and life to the world. We are freed from sin so that in and through us, in and through the Church, in Christ all might be saved, A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, until he establishes justice on the earth… Not what is owed to us, but what is willed for us by God.

Today, with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord we bring our celebration of Christmas to its completion. In His birth at Bethlehem Christ was made manifest by the message of a angel to the shepherds and by His birth announced also to the Magi through the appearance of a star, at the wedding feast in Cana Christ showed Himself by turning water into wine, and Jesus when baptized by John in the Jordan, the heavens opened, and the Spirit descended upon Him like a dove, and God spoke from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Church has always taught the urgency of Baptism. That if we truly love our children, we will bring them to the cleansing and life-giving waters of the font of Baptism as soon as possible after their birth. We certainly want to fill them with Christ’s saving light, but we also want to empower them to cooperate in the work of redemption and hence the urgency, that all might be saved, first and foremost those whom we love. For a long period in the history of the Church, Catholics did not even wait until the mother was out of bed after giving birth to bring the baby to church for Baptism, which partly explains the more prominent role played by godparents in the pre-conciliar rite of Baptism. As often Mom wasn’t able to be there. Not even a century ago, when Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) was born on Holy Saturday, April 16, 1927, it was not thought extraordinary that his father carried the baby directly to church that same day to be baptized with the new Easter water blest that very morning. Little Joseph’s parents, like many others back in the day, wasted no time in giving their son to Christ and freeing him from the power of darkness.

Our second reading shows St. Peter in the house of a Gentile, of a Roman named Cornelius. The Book of Acts shows the Holy Spirit at work here as well for the sake of justice, “to bring light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness”. Justice: I repeat not so much what is owed to us, but what God has willed for us from all eternity.

On this feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I would invite you to take time to sit quietly with the wonder really of your own Baptism and of your destiny in Christ. In Baptism, we like Christ are anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power to enlighten our world. Cornelius, against the common wisdom that Christianity was a Jewish thing was inspired to send for St. Peter and have him brought to his home. At the preaching of Peter, the Holy Spirit came down on all those gathered there and Peter understood that he was to baptize them. Let us be attentive to the Spirit Who never stops manifesting God’s will for the Baptism of His people. That God’s will would be manifest in justice, and that all people might know the saving power of God poured out in Baptism in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

The Saving Power of God

 

TWENTY-EIGHTH SUNDAY

IN ORDINARY TIME

Saturday, 11 October 2025, St. Katherine Drexel

2 Kgs 5:14-17

2 Tm 2:8-13

Lk 17:11-19

 

The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.

Don’t mind me, but I have to express my conviction that declarations like this one from the psalms, from our responsorial psalm today don’t really make enough of an impression upon us, when we sing or recite them. The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power. That is especially true in terms of our understanding and profession of how He makes His power known to all the ends of the earth. Let’s take the example of miraculous healings.

       The horrible disease of leprosy figures big in both our first reading from 2 Kings and in the Gospel passage we just read from St. Luke chapter 17. We may not have run into this horrible illness in our own experience, but for most of human history up until very recently, leprosy was considered a death sentence after long suffering and social isolation for those who contracted it. The infection was very much feared. With that in mind, it is fair to ask why the Gospel of Luke doesn’t record a bigger reaction to Jesus healing those 10 lepers.

Even today, we may have heard of leper colonies in southeast Asia or Africa, places where the infected went to die in misery. Perhaps we know of Damien De Veuster, popularly known as Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai (born in Belgium on 3 January 1840 – and died in Hawaii on 15 April 1889). He was a Belgian Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He ministered to a leper colony in Molokai, Kingdom of Hawaii, from 1873 until his death in 1889. After 11 years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, Father De Veuster himself contracted leprosy. He continued with his work despite the infection but finally succumbed to the disease at only 49 years of age. De Veuster was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 11 October 2009.

       On this Sunday the Naaman the Syrian we read about in 2 Kings was a military general, a warlord, who had the confidence of his king and could pretty well write his own ticket. But nothing to do, He was a leper. A little maid of his wife, captured in a raid on Israel offered this tough guy the first hope of healing or cleansing from this malady. But as Sacred Scripture tells us he had to learn from this little slave girl and from his own servants that tough as he was and despite his commanding presence, Naaman could not set the terms for his own healing and salvation. He could not give orders to the one true God. Elisha, the man of God, pointed the way for him which was to be achieved through humble obedience: “Go and dunk yourself in the Jordan River seven times”.

       In the Gospel, we hear that the 10 lepers calling to Jesus on the road had a similar experience. “Go show yourselves to the priests!” All ten were healed, but only the Samaritan recognized that their healing was bound to confession of faith in Christ: your faith has saved you.

       The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power. What should be your Sunday meditations? How should you reflect on God’s power and His action in our world and specifically in your life? Think, if you will, especially about how renouncing stubborn, habitual sin in your life can free you for true happiness in this life and in the next. Spend some quiet time this Sunday considering how through obedience to all of God’s commands and through the humbling experience of making a good and honest confession (“Go and dunk yourself in the Jordan River seven times”) can free you and heal you from what keeps you outside the circle of the fullness of life already now and forever. “Go show yourselves to the priests!” That is Jesus’ command and the pathway to true happiness and holiness.

       Praised be Jesus Christ!

 PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI