Happy New Year! I know, it’s not January 1st yet. But in the Church, we begin the new liturgical year on this first week of Advent. In today's readings and the gospel, we find a common theme. Did you catch it? "Stay awake!" This is a good reminder as we begin the new liturgical year. It's time to get up, shake off the spiritual sleepiness, and embrace a fresh start.

Happy Thanksgiving week! Remember to give thanks to God this Thanksgiving Day for all the blessings in your life. Gratitude and thanksgiving are remedies for sadness and hopelessness. They keep us grounded firmly in the truth of God's love for us and His grace abiding with us through all life's circumstances. As I like to say, you can't grumble if you're grateful! So be grateful and give thanks to God at all times.

As we come to the second-to-last Sunday of the Church’s liturgical year, our readings take on a more serious, reflective tone. Next Sunday, we will celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, which closes the liturgical year and leads us into a new beginning with Advent, the season of waiting and hope for the coming of Christ.

We celebrate the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome this Sunday. If we consider that every Diocese has a Cathedral, and that the Lateran Basilica is the Cathedral of Rome, then we can see that the Lateran Basilica is the "Mother Church" of the whole Catholic Church. It is the spiritual home for all Catholics throughout the world, and the place where the Pope has proclaimed the infallible doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. We are grateful for the gift of the Lateran Basilica where God's truth is proclaimed which unites us as one Body in Christ.

This weekend, we celebrate All Souls Day at our Masses. All Souls, or the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, dates back to the first centuries of the Church where prayers were offered for all the baptized who died in Christ in the hope of His resurrection. All Souls Day is celebrated the day after All Saints Day where we venerate the communion of saints to whose number we hope to belong in the Kingdom of Heaven. These feasts remind us of the eternal desire in our hearts for heaven and for the perfect life of love, grace, and peace to radiate fully within our spiritualized bodies through Christ.

Jesus addresses His parable today "to those who are convinced of their own righteousness and despise everyone else." If you or I received a letter in the mail addressed to us in this way, I wonder how that might set us up to read what comes next (or rip up the letter right away)! Of course, no reasonable person likes to admit they are self-righteous or that they despise others, and yet each of us needs to be honest with ourselves to root out unhealthy self-love that interferes with our love of God and our neighbor. Imagine for a moment that this person addressed in the parable is you (and I will do the same for myself!), and that you and I can learn something valuable from our Lord to actually move us forward in our love of God and neighbor instead of staying stuck in our complacency.

"Jesus told His disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary." The call of all disciples of Jesus to pray is unconditional. Prayer is our dialogue and union with God. Without prayer, we lose our faith. If prayer was always easy, convenient, and consoling then it wouldn't make sense for Jesus to tell us to pray without becoming weary. When we are tired, desolate, impatient, or defeated it can be difficult to persevere in prayer. Yet these hard moments always bring forth the most fruit when we persist in prayer through them.

"Jesus told His disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary." The call of all disciples of Jesus to pray is unconditional. Prayer is our dialogue and union with God. Without prayer, we lose our faith. If prayer was always easy, convenient, and consoling then it wouldn't make sense for Jesus to tell us to pray without becoming weary. When we are tired, desolate, impatient, or defeated it can be difficult to persevere in prayer. Yet these hard moments always bring forth the most fruit when we persist in prayer through them.

In today's Gospel, the apostles ask the Lord for one of the most beautiful and perilous gifts. They say to Jesus, "Increase our faith." Faith indeed is a gift that bestows a beautiful and glorious power to act in God's name, but it also comes with the dangerous but worthwhile cost of putting God first in everything.

Open your eyes to Christ. Our Psalm tells us that the Lord gives sight to the blind, raises up the lowly, and guards those who need protection against evil. God wants to open our eyes to see the image of Christ embodied in ourselves, in others, and in all creation. In Christ are all the seeds of truth that provide the moral foundation of the universe. When we open our eyes to see the truth of Christ embodied in reality, we live out His entrustment given to us as stewards to guard the goodness of creation from all that would jeopardize its integrity.

We hear a lot about "dishonest wealth" in today's Gospel. We need an adequate interpretation of this passage to understand the meaning of Jesus' words about dishonest wealth and true wealth. In short, dishonest wealth, or "mammon" as Jesus also calls it, refers to the riches of this world (wealth, pleasure, power, and honor). True wealth, on the other hand, refers to our relationship with God, our identity in Christ, our fidelity to the mission of the Church and to our particular vocations, and the exercise of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. When we serve God, we appropriate true wealth. When we serve mammon, the acquisition of dishonest wealth becomes the purpose of our lives, and when this happens we can be sure that we have lost the true north in our relationship with and service to God. "You cannot serve both God and mammon."

“Do not forget the works of the Lord!" Psalm 78 calls our attention to the Feast of the Holy Cross which we celebrate today and the most magnificent work of our salvation that God has accomplished through Christ's sacrifice on the Holy Cross.

Our readings this weekend focus our mind on God's way of thinking, which is very different from the thought patterns we are accustomed to in our world. God sees all time and space at once, not from a detached state, but deeply entering into the framework of our human history through the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation of Christ, the Son of the Father. This divine perspective should help us to trust God's providential plans for our lives, and assist us in thinking in terms of an eternal perspective when we deal with temporal issues.

Happy Labor Day weekend! It might seem ironic that we celebrate the gift of labor by taking the day off of work, but the truth is that we need rest from our labors to cherish the gift of our work and to labor for the right reasons. Rest is the natural corollary to labor which allows us to remember the meaning of our work and restore us so that our labors remain fruitful. We don't live to work or work merely to live. Rather, we work to build up God's Kingdom in whatever work we are given, and give thanks to God for entrusting us with the gifts we need to carry out our daily labors.

During Jubilee Years like the one we are in (the Jubilee Year of Hope), there are Holy Doors that pilgrims can pass through as an act of faith and hope in the Lord's mercy and generosity. The Holy Doors for this Jubilee Year are in Rome in the four major basilicas. By the end of the year, millions of pilgrims will have gathered in Rome and passed through these doors, entering these holy basilicas to pray and give thanks to God for all His gifts. Keep the Jubilee doors in mind as you listen to today's Scripture readings.

"Eyes on Christ". This is one of the foundational phrases I pray with often and which I teach frequently to others. It reminds us to lift up our hearts to Jesus whenever we need guidance on the right path to follow. The Letter to Hebrews speaks to this reality when the author tells us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and persevere in our faith. This is especially important when we experience temptation, suffering, and the trials of life. Eyes on Christ.

We belong to the Lord, and He to us. This mutual belonging is an entrustment we have received in faith through Baptism. This entrustment is the effect of the covenant of truth, peace, and justice that God made with His people from generations ago. We carry the torch of the covenant in today's world, to be the light of God's final and definitive covenant in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Be rich in what matters to God. These closing words of Jesus in our Gospel define the blessed life He came to bring us. What matters most to God is setting our heart on heaven and helping others receive what they need in order to do the same. Jesus isn't opposed to us pursuing wealth, pleasure, power, or honor, but shows us that these riches are meant to be received in proportion to our state in life and for God's glory. When anything in life becomes self-serving, we know we have lost our way. On the other hand, when we receive in gratitude the things that better help us love God and our neighbor, we begin to live the blessed life.

In this weekend’s gospel, one of Jesus’ disciples says to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” It’s such a simple request, but deep. Because they had seen Jesus pray many times. They noticed something different about His prayer. Something personal, powerful, full of love and confidence. They were asking Jesus to bring them into the heart of His relationship with God.

This weekend's readings focus on the sacrifice of charitable works. Every genuine act of love and charity on behalf of others is a gift of self. This entails some element of sacrifice. We serve Christ and others by giving of ourselves and our resources. What we find with every act of heartfelt charity is that we end up with more rather than less. It's true that we may sacrifice time, money, emotional or physical capital when we serve others, but these gifts that God has given to us are meant to be used to enrich our lives by enriching the lives of others by helping them come to Christ and live in God's goodness and truth.