Today is All Saints Day, a day when you and I will be remembered – hopefully for our goodness!
I’ve celebrated many funerals in the past 51 years. When I go to the wake I ask the immediate family to tell me about the deceased so I can weave this into my homily the next day.
Often enough the family says wonderful things about the deceased lying in the coffin: “She always thought of others before herself.” “He never had a bad word to say about anyone else.” “He was very caring, considerate and loving. He had a great smile, a wonderful sense of humor.” Sometimes the family says very little about the deceased.
I was visiting a sick parishioner in the hospital one day. He has heard a number of my homilies at funerals. He said to me: “So often I think, what is the priest going to say about me someday?” I bet we have all wondered about that.
You and I possess the most precious gift after life itself – TIME. You and I have TIME to do something beautiful with our lives. In today’s Gospel (Matt 5:1-12) Jesus teaches us the Beatitudes, which we especially need to put into practice during this election time and pandemic.
I once overheard a woman comment on her husband’s bad disposition: “He can be so nice when he wants to be. He just never wants to be.”
Someone once said that God is so special because God creates out of nothing. The person next to them commented, “I think God does something even more wonderful. God makes saints out of sinners.”
Oscar Wilde said it best: “The only difference between a saint and a sinner is – That every saint has a past and every sinner has a future!” What does YOUR future look like?
INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON THE GREAT MEN AND WOMEN OF GOD, I PREFER TO FOCUS ON THE GREAT GOD OF MEN AND WOMEN!
