​As Christians, we are called to different standards of behavior; standards that are not of this world. We are not called to be focused on our wealth and outwardly appearance but on our growing relationship with Christ. We are called to have the fruits of the Spirit and Christ in our hearts. We are walking testimonies of Christ’s love and each and every story is unique.

Every single person on this planet has a testimony as unique as their DNA. While the hills are high, the valleys remind us of where we were and where we are going. I struggle like all Christians to remind myself that I am created in the likeness of Christ. I must be kind because every negative thought or comment towards myself or others is an insult to our creator. 

I have homework for you today. Write down three personal praises to God in thanks for your gifts, talents, and vast opportunities. These compliments must be purely internal and not based on wealth, status, or physical attributes. As for me, I find this task to be very difficult.  Satan knows where his screams are heard the most, and I hear the screams when it comes to feeling worthless. Satan’s scream is different for everyone, but today pray, listen to God’s whispers and hear the truth.
 
Prayer:
Lord, I have been struggling to hear your voice. Satan’s screams have begun to overpower my heart and I desire for your whispers to be heard through the chaos. You are the bread of life and through you I become whole. I ask for healing, I seek the truth, and I am knocking for permission to enter under your roof. Hear my prayer Lord and reveal to me the gifts, talents, and unique qualities that you have provided me for the use in your kingdom. Amen.
 
My 3 Compliments:
1.  I am a Child of God: I have been chosen by God and play a part in his grand plan.
2.  I am full of life: I have energy, and I am able to show Christ’s love to all those I encounter.
3.  I am selfless: I have been given the capacity to place others’ needs before my own and desire to make everyone feel significant.
 
You are enough. You are important. You are worthy. You are beautiful and handsome and desired. You matter to God, and you matter to all those around you. You are full of so many amazing gifts and talents.   Do not let Satan’s screams tell you otherwise. Share the love God has given you with the world today. Spend some time in prayer. Who else in your life are you thankful for? For their gifts, talents and dedication to Christ? Physically write down three genuine compliments about someone else and hand your work to them.

​Be salt and light in someone’s life today and remember:  Take time to hear and trust in the whispers of God.
 
Go out into the world and do work for the kingdom of God!
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A few years ago, I volunteered on my days off at a Head Start center just outside of San Antonio, Texas, working with children ages three to five. There were two classrooms, one consisting of slightly older children, with the younger children in the other class. I would typically spend my morning in the east classroom with the older children, and they would lay down for a nap at around 10:30 a.m. After the rest, their school day would be over, and they would be dispatched home, leaving the classroom vacant for the afternoon class. It was my habit to leave the classroom after the children laid down for their nap, either to take a break before the afternoon session or to head right next door to help with the younger children.

But there was one little girl, we’ll call her Adelaide, though that was not her real name. She often wore her dark hair in a long braid, and she had slightly brown skin that, while dark by the standards of my monochromatic Midwestern home, would have been considered practically anemic by South Texas standards. She was one of the meeker children, possessing a soft, winsome voice, and a disposition pleasant enough that even adults who can’t stand kids would have found her tolerable. As Adelaide laid down for her morning nap, I’m not sure what wild currents of unease circled about just underneath the surface of her soul, but she would often look at me with pleading eyes and make this request: “Mister Jack, can you sit here for a few minutes?”

Sitting around on hard plastic chairs that are made for children is something I’d gotten used to, and I was happy to oblige her request. Indeed, in a complex world in which human beings can be seemingly impossible to please, it’s incredible to think that my mere presence could somehow help to bring peace to the heart of a little four-year-old girl. I would sit there for several minutes, not too close to her, but where she could see me, humbled that I could bring such comfort to another human being by such a simple action—and not really much of an action, really. She just wanted me to be present, to be visible. That’s all.

God’s grace was operating there, and I was an undeserving mediator of that grace. During that time, though I was volunteering with children, I was not really walking in the grace of God and had succumbed to sin in many areas of my life. I think that part of the reason God sent me to those children, or perhaps sent them to me, was to soften my heart and help me become more like a child.

When I think of Adelaide today, she’s one of many people I’ll never see again in this life. Perchance we’ll meet in Heaven. But little Adelaide, I want to be more like you. Not that I want to relinquish my adult responsibilities, or to return the affairs of my life to a youthful state of simplicity. But I want to realize that I have no strength, no grit, no toughness of my own to brave the storms of life. I need the Presence of another to see me through.

The Catholic faith—which I would not come around to until a few years later—taught me that not only did God make His divinity present to us in the Person of Christ, but He left us that Presence to abide with us until He returns again. As a Protestant Christian, I could believe that God heard us when we prayed; I could even comprehend and accept that God was present everywhere, as Scripture teaches us. But I didn’t yet believe in this truth that now sets me free, that in the Most Holy Eucharist, the Lord Jesus Christ is truly present for us; His Soul and Body, Humanity and Divinity, are entirely, truly, and physically present under the appearance of bread. 

The Eucharist reveals to us several things about God, things that had been foreshadowed to me in my experience with Adelaide. First, His humility, that He is willing to make Himself present to us at the words of the priest, whether the priest is worthy or not, whether the people are reverential or not, he still makes Himself present to us, day after day, in all Churches with Apostolic Succession where the Mass or Divine Liturgy is said. Just as I was willing to make myself present to Adelaide in the other children when I could have been anywhere else on a day off, Christ condescends a million times more to make Himself present to us, even though mostly the result is that most of us Catholics are cold towards Him and respond to His love with, at best, an ephemeral, circumscribed zeal.

Secondly, the Eucharist reveals Christ’s selfless love for us. The First Vatican Council teaches that God has no need of us. Thus, we add nothing to His majesty by worshiping Him. Similarly, Jesus gains nothing from being present in the Eucharist. In the Eucharistic elements, He does not maintain the physical senses He had in His human body. He does not suffer pain when His body is broken and eaten, but He is not able to gaze back with human eyes when we look at Him in the monstrance in adoration. He offers us such grace with His Divine Presence, yet in return, He receives no benefits at all and is often treated with cold indifference.

If I’m to become a child again, like Adelaide, this is my path: Through adoration of Christ in the Eucharist. He had always been there.  He was there at Church, I drove by every day, and in Catholic Churches all across the globe. Even now, Jesus waits for me. He came to this earth before I could also ask for him, and he’s waiting for me. When I come to Him, and gaze on my Creator, the one for Whom my soul was made, whatever weight of sin or anxiety that I bring into His Divine Presence is swallowed up by His Infinite Greatness. I get a sort of comfort from being near other human beings I love, just like Adelaide was comforted by my presence, but I must admit that it’s hard to be in the presence of a mere human being for very long without feeling the need to speak. But when we are in the presence of Christ, in the Most Holy Eucharist, we remember that not only is He God, He is God the Word; He is the spoken Word of the Father, who reveals the Father’s Nature and the Father’s Love for the world. Though we can pray any sort of prayer in His presence, such as the Divine Office, the Rosary, or any number of extemporaneous prayers, it’s best to just start out with silence. If I’m honest, silence in prayer is a discipline that I seldom practice, but when I do, I am quite humbled by Him. I’ll never hear Christ unless I make a better habit of listening. Little Adelaide and I were mostly silent during naptime during these naptime overlays, yet words of comfort were somehow spoken to that child’s heart. How much more will our Creator, the Second Person of the Trinity, who is True God from True God, be for us the Word of comfort from God, speaking most clearly and most profoundly in His silence.  

​Holy Scripture says, “And [Jesus] calling to himself a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:2-4). As young-adults trying to be childlike, we must make a choice. We must choose to have faith, we must offer to trust, we must ask for the desire to pray. Daily we can turn, turn back to God when we fail to be “childlike.” We repent.  We take up our desire for purity of heart and strive anew. We can see the examples of children in our own families and learn from them about wonder and living in the present moment. Typically, they are not worried about the future, but instead are amazed at the flutter of the butterfly or new pair of light-up shoes! As a child, I do not believe Mary concerned herself with anxieties regarding her future. She would have enjoyed Anne’s cooking and Joachim’s hugs. Her birth changes everything. It is from Her we see the most exceptional example of “yes” resulting in the birth of Our Savior. If we want to obtain a childlike Faith, the Blessed Mother is one of the best examples we as Christians have. Her adult life was lived for ONLY for God and comes from the foundation of a humble childhood.

While performing my work at St. Joseph University Parish, I almost daily see the statue of St. Anne with the child  Mary. It looks as though Saint Anne was teaching, but by Mary’s gaze heavenward with her right-hand open and her left hand on her heart, she seems to be listening intently to the voice of God. St. Anne has a comforting, maternal arm around her daughter’s shoulder and in her other hand, a scroll of which is written in Latin.  The scroll reads “Egredietur Virga de Radice Jesse” which means, “And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root (Isaiah 11:1). Blessed Albert the Great remarks on these words, that the divine flower, that is to say, the Only-Begotten Son of God, was to be born, not from the summit, nor from the trunk of the tree of Jesse, but from the root, precisely to denote the humility of the Mother: by the root, humility of heart is understood” (Liguori, 307).   Mary body and soul has forever maintained her childlike faith and trust. Her humility and meekness are her greatest virtues, and it is from this childlike innocence that all other virtues spring forth. May each of us pray for the Grace of childlike faith and disposition toward God and neighbor. Living by the example of Mary our Mother, and with her intercession, may the peace of the Holy Spirit that stems from that indelible, all-encompassing, love of Christ, be with us every day of our lives.


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