The Greatest of All Human Rights Is a Gift

• In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that in our prayers we should ask for our rights. He says: “Will not God secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night?” So what rights is He talking about? What should we be asking God for in our prayers?
• Usually, we think of our rights in terms of practical items: the right to food, water and shelter. But there are other rights we want also: the right to be understood, to be heard, to be respected, to be listened to, to be successful.
• Although these are all good things, still, our greatest right is something far more amazing, namely: In Jesus, we have become sons and daughters of God. By Christ’s death on the Cross, we have been saved from our sins. In Jesus we see the love of God made visible. And so, as Christians, our greatest “right” is actually a gift: being a part of God’s family.
• We now have the right to be with Jesus in his sufferings and in his triumphs. We now have the right to possess Him as the greatest love of our souls. Our greatest right is to be able to say with St Paul: “The life I now live is not my own, but it is Christ living in me.” Our greatest right is to let his love for us fill our entire being, and to love Him in return. 

News That Seems Too Good to be True

• Cardinal Timothy Dolan tells the story about when he was a young priest and he was pre-pared a man for baptism. The man was very intelligent and had a lot of questions about the teachings of the Church. But after a year, he said he was ready to be baptized. He did, how-ever, have one last doubt.
• Cardinal Dolan said he figured it was going to be about the divinity of Christ or the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But the man said those weren’t issues for him anymore. “Do you remember,” the man asked, “the first time we spoke, and you told me that when I’m baptized I will receive a new relationship with Jesus and become a child of God? Did you mean that?” “Yes,” Dolan replied, “I did.”
• The man then replied, “Then that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard!” Dolan said that at that moment, he was struck by the incredible reality we so easily take for granted.

 

St Therese ~ “Jesus is my only Love.”

In the late 1960’s the Carmelite nuns in Lisieux were cleaning the room that St Thérèse had used at the end of her life. No one had used it since she died, and they discovered that she had carved these words into the doorframe: Jesus is my only love. She wrote this as she was painfully dying from tuberculosis.

To make matters worse, she began to have serious doubts about the existence of God and the existence of heaven. But in the middle of all this, she still carved the words, Jesus is my only love, as a testament to her faith in Christ.

She shows us that the great treasure of her life was her relationship with Jesus. Everything else found its true value and beauty in the con-text of these five simple words. And this is the greatest right, the greatest privilege, that God wants to give each and every one of us.

 

Where Is Your Love?

Can you say that Jesus is the great love of your life? Most of us would probably answer, “Sort of.” But that’s okay, because Jesus can certainly work with that to help us to grow. And the most powerful way for us to grow in our relationship with Jesus happens right here and now in the Mass when we receive Christ—in Person!—in the Holy Eucharist.

God has given us the right to be called his sons and daughters. What a privilege that is! And what a responsibility! Let’s not squander this great gift of adoption into God’s family. But let this truth be the most amazing thing we’ve ever heard, and let it radically change our lives.