Memorial of Saint Philip Neri, priest - 5-26-2020
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May 26, 2020Today is a special day for me. It is my 19th anniversary of ordination.
In the Gospel today we hear part of the prayer Jesus prayed at the Last Supper. In this part of the prayer, Jesus is focusing on finishing. He says to the Father: "I have given You glory on earth by finishing the work You gave Me to do” Also, Paul in the first reading from Acts, is doing the same. He says, ”I give no thought to what lies behind but push on to what is ahead. He is also focused on finishing the work he was to do for God.
Paul continues, My entire attention is on the finish line as I run toward the prize to which God calls me — life on high in Christ Jesus.
This concept is the attitude we, all Christians, should live, with our eyes only focused on the finish line. As we spoke in length about it on Sunday, we need to get to the finish line by the work we do. It is so easy to become complacent. It is easy to give up, especially since our lives have changed during the Coronavirus.
It is also easy without the virus when we feel life is mundane, or we are tired of situations we have to face. We have to push to the finish line, committed prayer, committed no matter how we feel, always pursuing a deeper relationship with God.
We have to push to the finish line with the works of love, placing our spouse as more important than ourself, our children as more important, then after these closest people in our lives, to place peoples feeling as more important than our own.
We have to push on to the finish line with the rest of the commandments especially, honoring life and doing what we can to stand against abortion, whether in prayer and / or action. We have to live the beatitudes of being humble, concerned over the sins of the world, pure of heart, and peaceful.
Like I mentioned on Sunday, when we keep our eyes on the finished line, we Glorify God and as Paul reminds us, we receive eternal life, because our work towards the finish line has built a kingdom of God on earth and instilled the same Spirit in others.