Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Prayer

  • The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When a couple comes to me for marriage, one of the things I have them do is to write me letters, individually, asking to be married. I ask them to reflect on their relationship and to say something about their faith. Over the years I’ve received a lot of letters and some are very deep, some are very emotional, some are kind of surface-level. I usually find something in every letter to quote in my wedding homily. Some years ago, I celebrated the wedding of a couple that was very faith-filled. They had been raised by strong Catholic families, had gone to Catholic schools, and faith was and continued to be a big part of their lives. One of the most quotable lines in their letters came from the groom. He said, “Many people want to think of God only in times of trouble or sadness; (my fiancé) and I want to think of God all the time.”

    I think he got at what our Liturgy of the Word is teaching us today. In the Gospel, the Pharisees are at it again: they want to trap Jesus in speech so that they’ll be able to bring him to justice. And so they decide to ask him if it’s lawful to pay the census tax or not. It was a no-win argument: if he said it was not lawful, then he’s a revolutionary and should be put to death; if he said it was lawful, then he’s an idolater – putting the government over God – and should be put to death. But, as usual, Jesus answers their question with a question. “Whose image is this (on the coin) and whose inscription?” Since it was Caesar’s, his instruction is to give Caesar his due, but then, to give God what he is due.

    This then becomes a reflection on the first commandment of the Decalogue: “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.” This is echoed by the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading: “I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other.”

    There’s a reason that this is the first commandment: it is foundational to all the others. If we get the first commandment right, the others should follow pretty easily. If we know and live that God is in charge, that God is God and we are not, then we will easily live the other nine commandments dealing with love of God and love of neighbor. The trouble is, even though it’s easy to say, it’s difficult to do.

    Modern life does everything it can to distract us. It’s hard to get to Mass because the kids have sports or dance or studies or whatever. And as wonderful as those things are, they don’t lead the children to God, so they can’t take precedence over Mass. It’s hard to take time for prayer because we are busy – we work and we have family commitments and we have things we want to do in the community. And as great as all that is, it doesn’t lead us to God, so they can’t take precedence over our prayer. It’s hard to be of service because we’re busy people, and that’s a shame because service – stemming from a love of neighbor – leads us to love of God, and we’ve said no to it again. Just like those Pharisees, we have too often allowed ourselves to be distracted from what’s really important, we’ve said no to a relationship with our God, and we have put him out of our lives and our families’ lives time and time again.

    Giving to God what belongs to God is foundational. Failure to do that leads to all other kinds of sin. Today, we have in our Scriptures an examination of conscience. Have we been zealous to give to God what belongs to God? Have we taken time for prayer? Have we been of service to our brothers and sisters in need? Have we made teaching the faith to our children our primary priority? Have we been vigilant to prevent anything from getting in the way of celebrating Mass as a family? If we have fallen short in any of those ways, this is the time to reverse the course and get it right. Caesar gets what’s his one way or the other. We have to be the ones who are on fire to give to God what belongs to God.

    The whole point of our life on this earth is to travel through it and become perfected so that we can go to heaven. A huge first step in that is putting God first, giving to God what belongs to God. And he wants all of us: our hearts, our souls, our lives. He made us for himself, and as Saint Augustine said, we will be restless until we rest in him. What step do we need to make to give to God what belongs to God this week?

  • Saturday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time/Make a Difference Day

    Saturday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time/Make a Difference Day

    Today’s readings

    Anything worthwhile costs us something, most especially our faith.  If we are serious about it, if we love God and want to be caught up in his life, we’re going to have to pay for it in some way.  Jesus speaks to that in today’s Gospel.  One of the biggest costs to us, I think, is our comfort zone.  To really live the faith, we have to get out of that comfort and do what God wants of us.  In the Gospel, Jesus was telling his disciples that they would have to give witness to him.  And they understood that that would cost them something – perhaps cost them their lives.

    We disciples are also going to have to pay some price for living our faith.  Probably not something as drastic as getting dragged before synagogues, rulers and authorities, but something fairly costly for us.  For us today, perhaps that cost is giving up a Saturday to clean church pews, or make rosaries, or cleaning up the grounds on Renwick Road.

    Today, on our Make a Difference Day, we take our give strong witness to our faith in our work. As we come together to pack meals at Feed My Starving Children, spend time in adoration praying for our community, or clean up our parish grounds, our presence and concern may be the way God is using us to get someone’s attention and see his presence in her or his life.  As Saint Therese of Liseaux used to encourage her sisters, we can make a big difference by doing little things with great love.

    Jesus tells us that we will receive gifts of the Holy Spirit that enable us to speak on behalf of our faith. As we engage in whatever we have signed up to do today, that same Spirit may give us gifts that answer prayers we didn’t even know we had in our hearts, and definitely answer the prayers of others. Our work gives witness to who Christ is in our lives; Christ who loves us first and loves us best.  Sharing that love in the work we do today is a powerful way to help others know the presence of Christ in their lives.

    Living our faith is always going to cost us something and that something could well be status or popularity, or at least the wondering glance from people who aren’t ready to accept the faith.  But the volumes that we speak by living our faith anyway might just lay the groundwork for conversion and become a conduit of grace.  We are told that we don’t have to hammer out all the words we want to say; that the Holy Spirit will give us eloquence that we can only dream of.  And it’s true, if we trust God, if we live our faith when it’s popular or unpopular, we will have the Spirit and the words.  God only knows what can be accomplished in those grace-filled moments!  I pray that you see Christ everywhere as you witness today.

  • The Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    I love it when the Gospel has a curious story in it because it’s fun then to peel back the layers of the story, kind of like an onion, and get at what’s inside.  Today’s Gospel story is just like that.

    When our modern ears hear this parable, there are surely things that seem odd about it, aren’t there?  First of all, as the wedding banquet is finished, the guests have to be summoned to the feast.  But in those days, they probably had received a formal invitation previously, and then had to be let know when the feast was ready.  But then we come to this very curious issue of the invited guests not wishing to attend.  What could possibly be keeping them away?  Even if they weren’t thrilled by the invitation and honored to attend, you’d think they would show up anyway because of who it is that is inviting them.  You would think they would want to keep the king happy.

    But they don’t respond that way, and so now the banquet is ready and the guests are well, unavailable shall we say…  So the king sends the messengers out to all the public places in order to invite whomever they find.  And who are they going to find?  Well, probably pretty much what you’d expect: peddlers, butchers, beggars, prostitutes, tax collectors, shop owners and shop lifters, the physically impaired and sick … in short, not the sort of people you’d expect to find at a king’s wedding banquet.

    So, to me, it’s not all that shocking that one of them is not appropriately dressed for the banquet.  What is shocking is that the rest of them are, right?  Some biblical scholars have suggested that perhaps the king, knowing who was going to show up, may have provided appropriate attire, and that one person refused to put it on.  We don’t know if that’s the case but if it were true, we could all understand the king throwing that person out.

    So what is this story really about?  Putting the parable in context, the banquet is the kingdom of God.  The distinguished invited guests are the people to whom Jesus addressed the parable: the chief priests and the elders of the people.  These have all rejected the invitation numerous times, and would now make that rejection complete by murdering the messenger, the king’s son, Jesus Christ.  Because of this, God would take the kingdom from them, letting them go on to their destruction, and offer the kingdom to everyone that would come, possibly indicating the Gentiles, but certainly including everyone whose way of life would have been looked down upon by the chief priests and elders: prostitutes, criminals, beggars, the blind and lame.  All of these would be ushered into the banquet, being given the new beautiful wedding garment which is baptism, and treated to a wonderful banquet, which is the Eucharist.  Those who further reject the king by refusing to don that pristine garment may indeed be cast out, but to everyone who accepts the grace given them, a sumptuous banquet awaits.

    So guess who are the beggars, prostitutes, criminals, blind and lame?  If you’re thinking they are you and me, you would be right.  Our sinfulness leaves us impoverished, and hardly worthy to attend the Banquet of the Lord.  It would only be just for our God to leave us off the invitation list.  But our God will do no such thing.  He washes us in the waters of baptism, brings us to the Banquet, and feeds us beyond our wildest imaginings with the food of his own precious Body and Blood.

    There are two wonderful little prayers in the Mass that you mostly don’t ever get to hear: they are private prayers of the priest.  I wanted to share them with you because I think they get at what today’s Gospel is all about.  First, after the priest receives the bread and wine from those bringing forward the gifts, he offers them at the altar.  Having finished the offering, the priest bows profoundly, that is, from the waist, and prays:

    With humble spirit and contrite heart
    may we be accepted by you, O Lord,
    and may our sacrifice in your sight this day
    be pleasing to you, Lord God.

    Which is a quote from the book of the prophet Daniel.  The priest then turns to the servers and they wash his hands as he prays the second private prayer:

    Wash me, O Lord, from my iniquity
    and cleanse me from my sin.

    As I said, I thought about these two brief prayers in connection with today’s Gospel reading.  We approach the Lord with “humble spirit and contrite heart” which is exactly what the chief priests and elders did not do in the Gospel.  They thought that they had heaven in their grasp and that no one else did.  They felt like they had no need of repentance, no sins for which to be sorry.

    We can’t be like them, or we’ll never be able to come to the banquet.  The prayers of the Church should always serve to remind us of who we are and why we are here.  We were meant for the banquet, but we weren’t dressed for it.  We have been given that beautiful garment at baptism, which gives us the right to sit at the table.  We just have to be open to receiving it.  We receive it knowing full well that we are in need of forgiveness and mercy.  The most important sacrifice we offer at Mass is always the sacrifice of our lives, of our hearts, giving ourselves completely to our God who gives us everything.  And in return, he gives us everything we need, and salvation besides!

    We are blessed to be able to come to the Supper of the Lamb.  And in the moments during the offering of the gifts, maybe we can take time to be aware of offering ourselves and our hearts, coming before the Lord with humble spirits and contrite hearts.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The Divine Liturgist today is inviting us to find our hope in God, and inviting us to turn over our lives to God in hopeful anticipation that God will answer our needs. Sometimes I wonder how willing we are to actually do that. It’s almost like we want to pray to God just in case I can’t fix things on our own or work out our needs by ourselves. Kind of like a divine insurance policy.

    But that can’t be the way that the Christian disciple prays. We have to trust that God will give us what we really need. He certainly won’t be giving us everything we want. And he probably won’t be answering our prayers in exactly the way we’d like him to. And we will certainly find out that he will answer the prayers of our heart in his own time. But he will answer. He will give to the one who asks. He will be present to the one who seeks. And he will open the door to the one who knocks.

    The Christian disciple must be willing to accept God’s answer in God’s time on God’s terms. When we do that we might even find that when God gives us what we really need, instead of what we want, our lives are so much more blessed than we could ever have imagined. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Try as we might for perfection in our journey of faith, we stumble and fall sometimes.  That’s just the way it is in this fallen world.  But that being the case, we have in our Liturgy of the Word this morning some saints who can accompany us on this precarious journey.

    We will be immersed in Jonah’s story for the next few days.  This story is not at all about the great things Jonah did.  It is more about the journey of discipleship that was Jonah’s life, and about the wonderful things that God did in and through the rather unwilling disciple who was Jonah.  Today’s reading has Jonah finally doing what God asked him to do.  Fresh out of the belly of a big fish, Jonah finally realizes that God’s call in his life is not optional.  So he does what he is told to do, and accomplishes the conversion of the evil city Nineveh.  But Jonah’s story is not done yet, and we’ll see this week the ups and downs he still has to endure.

    And then we have the story of poor Martha in today’s Gospel.  I often think that Martha gets a raw deal in this story.  Someone had to make the food!  But I think the real message of this Gospel story is that neither Martha nor Mary had salvation all wrapped up.  Because there are times when we definitely have to be Mary, sitting at the Lord’s feet in adoration, prayer and praise.  But if we are never Martha, our faith is useless.  There has to be a balance between our spiritual life and our service.

    So for those of us who haven’t yet achieved spiritual perfection, the message is that we have lots of saints in Scripture who are on the journey with us.  The point is to keep moving on the journey, so that we will one day reach perfection in that kingdom that knows no end.  And may God be glorified in the belly of the big fish or in Nineveh; in our Martha days and our Mary days, in our prayer and our work.

  • The Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time: Respect Life

    The Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time: Respect Life

    Today’s readings

    Since this is Respect Life Month, I want to spend some time reflecting on the gift of life and how we should revere it.  I begin this reflection with these beautiful words from today’s second reading: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  We can be so distracted by things that seem good that really aren’t all that good, things that seem important that are really just sweating the small stuff, and God would have us look instead at what is lovely, gracious, excellent and worthy of praise – in short, God would have us reflect on what he has created and know that this is the greatest gift, the most important thing we could be busied about.

    Life is the greatest good we have because it is God who created life, every life, from the tiniest embryo to the elderly person in the final stages of life.  We reverence life, respect life, reaffirm life, because human life is the best thing there is on this whole big earth, the most magnificent of all God’s wonderful creation. The basis for the movement to respect life, of course, is the fifth commandment: You shall not kill (Ex 20:13). The Catechism of the Catholic Church is very specific: “Scripture specifies the prohibition contained in the fifth commandment: ‘Do not slay the innocent and the righteous.’ The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. The law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere.” (CCC 2261) And that would seem simple enough, don’t you think? God said not to kill another human being, and so refraining from doing so reverences his gift of life and obeys his commandment.

    But life isn’t that simple. Life is a deeply complex issue involving a right to life, a quality of life, a reverence for life, and sanctity of life. Jesus himself stirs up the waters of complexity with his own take on the commandment. In Matthew’s Gospel, he tells us: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill: and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.” (Mt 5:21-22)

    Our Savior’s instruction on life calls us to make an examination of conscience. We may proclaim ourselves as exemplary witnesses to the sanctity of life because we have never murdered anyone nor participated in an abortion. And those are absolutely good starts. But if we let it stop there, then the words of Jesus that I just quoted are our condemnation. The church teaches that true respect for life revolves around faithfulness to the spirit of the fifth commandment. The Catechism tells us, “Every human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God.” (CCC 2319)

    The issues that present themselves under the heading of respecting life are many.  We are called to put aside racism and stereotyping, to reach out to the homeless, to advocate for health care for all people, to put an end – once and for all! – to abortion, capital punishment, war, terrorism and genocide, to recognize that euthanasia is not the same thing as mercy, to promote the strength of family life and the education of all young people, to provide food for those who hunger.  We Catholics must accept the totality of the Church’s teaching of respecting life, or we can never hope for a world that is beautiful or grace filled.

    We pro-life Catholics are called to go above and beyond what seems comfortable in order to defend life.  And so we must all ask ourselves, are there lives that we have not treated as sacred? Have we harbored anger in our hearts against our brothers and sisters? What have we done to fight poverty, hunger and homelessness? Have we insisted that those who govern us treat war as morally repugnant, only to be used in the most severe cases and as a last resort? Have we engaged in stereotypes or harbored thoughts based on racism and prejudice? Have we insisted that legislators ban the production of human fetuses to be used as biological material? Have we been horrified that a nation with our resources still regularly executes its citizens as a way of fighting crime? Have we done everything in our power to be certain that no young woman should ever have to think of abortion as her only choice when she is facing hard times? Have we given adequate care to elder members of our family and our society so that they would not face their final days in loneliness, nor come to an early death for the sake of convenience? Have we avoided scandal so as to prevent others from being led to evil? Have we earnestly petitioned our legislators to make adequate health care available for all people, so that the ability to choose life doesn’t come at such disastrous cost?

    Every one of these issues is a life issue, brothers and sisters, and we who would be known to be respecters of life are on for every single one of them, bar none. The Church’s teaching on the right to life is not something that we can approach like we’re in a cafeteria. We must accept and reverence and live the whole of the teaching or be held liable for every breach of it. If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. And the world is definitely watching: are we who we say we are?  Do we really respect life, or do we pick and choose which issues are important to us?  During this month of prayer for the sanctity of life, our prayer must perhaps be first for ourselves that we might live the Church’s teaching with absolute integrity in every moment of our lives.

    Our God has known us and formed us from our mother’s womb, from that very first moment of conception. Our God will be with us and will sustain us until our dying breath. In life and in death, we belong to the Lord … Every part of our lives belongs to the Lord. Our call is a clear one. We must constantly and consistently bear witness to the sanctity of life at every stage. We must be people who lead the world to a whole new reality, in the presence of the One who has made all things new.

    God has planted a vineyard for us, looking for us to produce its fruits.  Our reverence and care for life is the first fruits of that vineyard.

  • Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Pride and presumption are insidious sins. They make any kind of grace impossible, for they even deny that grace is needed or wanted. If we have no need of a Savior, then no relationship with God is even possible. And not having a relationship with God is something we call “hell.” So the disciple doesn’t get to harbor pride and doesn’t get to presume that God will take care of her or him. Instead the disciple must be very mindful of God, and must constantly nurture the relationship in such a way that they are caught up in the very life of God.

    In our first reading, the Hebrew exiles in Babylon realized how far they were from this kind of relationship, and with the prophet Baruch, they pray a prayer of repentance. Too bad the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida, in our Gospel reading, didn’t do the same. They needed to. They were totally unmindful of God, and they refused to repent. Which is inconceivable given the mighty deeds Jesus had been doing among them. Jesus calls them to task on it. We don’t know if that had an effect on them. But we can be like that too.  Sometimes we are so presumptuous of God’s mercy and favor that we refuse to repent of the things that separate us from Him. We need to be open to change.

    The disciple is called to humbly place himself or herself in God’s mercy, acknowledging dependence on a Savior who has loved us into existence and sustains those who follow him. The disciple shuns pride and presumption, and humbly prays with the Psalmist, “For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.”

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading, the prophet Zechariah proposes a very hopeful outcome for efforts at evangelization, if we take up that ministry with zeal.  Many cities, many peoples, powerful nations will look to Jerusalem and God’s people because they know God is with them.  That’s what we would want too, wouldn’t we?  We would want all people to turn away from whatever philosophy or false god they worship and come to the Lord, who is the Way to eternal life.

    Interestingly, the apostles take a different approach to evangelization.  When the people of the Samaritan village would not welcome him, because he was on the way to Jerusalem, they want to call down fire on the village.  As if they could; really it’s a rather humorous exchange.  Jesus instead decides to continue the way to Jerusalem and let them be.  He continues to foster the hope that even the Samaritans will see the truth and turn to the Lord.

    So we have to be careful about our own approach to evangelization.  We are all called to evangelize according to our vocation and state in life.  We are called to witness to the Gospel by the way we live our lives, by the words we speak, and the deeds we do.  People have to see authenticity in us so that they will be intrigued to follow Jesus and have hope of eternal life.

    Today, may we have the confidence of the Psalmist who sings, “God is with us.”  May we live that conviction so boldly that others will want to take hold of our garments and follow the Lord with us.

  • The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Sometimes it’s hard to accept that something is in our best interest when we first hear of it.  I can remember often growing up not wanting to do something like go on a retreat or join the youth group, but my parents giving me that gentle nudge to do it anyway.  And then of course, when I went, I’d always have a really great experience.

    I always think of that when I hear this week’s Gospel reading.  I think it’s a pretty human thing to resist what’s good for us, especially when it means extending ourselves into a new experience, or when it means having to inconvenience ourselves or disrupt our usual schedule.  We don’t want to go out into the field and work today, or go help at the soup kitchen, or go teach religious education, or go to the parish mission, or get involved in a ministry at the church, or join a Bible Study, or whatever it may be that’s in front of us.

    I remember specifically an experience I had when I first started in seminary.  I became aware that some of the guys, as their field education, were serving as fire chaplains.  That scared the life out of me, and I said to myself that I’d never be able to do that.  Two and a half years later, one of my friends at seminary asked me to join him as a fire chaplain.  God has a terrific sense of humor!  I told him I didn’t think I had the ability to do that, but he persuaded me to pray about it.  Well, when I prayed about it, of course the answer was yes, do it.  And so I did, and found it one of the most rewarding spiritual experiences of my time in seminary.

    People involved in ministries here at the Church can probably tell you the same kinds of stories.  Times when they have been persuaded to do something they didn’t want to.  They could probably tell you how much they grew as people, how much they enjoyed the experience.  When we extend ourselves beyond our own comfort level for the glory of God, we are always rewarded beyond what we deserve.  And that’s grace; that’s the work of God in our lives.

    What’s important for us to see here is this: God extends his mercy and forgiveness and grace and calling to us all the time. We may respond, I think, in one of four ways. First, we may say no, and never change, never become what God created us to be. This happens all the time because we as a people tend to love our sins and love our comfort more than we love God. We would rather not be inconvenienced or challenged to grow.

    We might also say no, but later be converted. That’s a little better. Let’s be clear: there is no time like the present, and we never know if we have tomorrow. But God’s grace doesn’t stop working on us until the very end. So we can have hope because God does not give up on us.

    We might say yes, with all good intentions of following God, being in relationship with him, and doing what he asks of us. But perhaps we get distracted by life, by work, by our sins, by relationships that are impure, or whatever. And then we never actually become what we’re supposed to be.

    Or we might actually say yes and do it, with God’s grace. We might be people who are always open to grace and work on our relationship with God. Then that grace can lead to a life of having become what God wanted of us, and that puts us on the path to sainthood, which is where we are all supposed to be.  The model for that, of course, would be the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was able to say “yes” to God’s plan for her and the world right away.

    Today’s Gospel is a good occasion for a deep examination of conscience. Where are we on the spectrum? Have we nurtured our relationship with God and said yes to his call, or are we somewhere else? And if we’re somewhere else, what is it that we love more than God? What do we have to do to get us on the right path? We know the way of righteousness. We know the path to heaven. We just have to change our minds and change our hearts so that we might follow Jesus Christ, our way to eternal life.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Is it time for you to dwell in your own paneled houses,
    while this house lies in ruins?

    During this week, we have been hearing about the desire to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem after the people returned from exile.  The Persian Empire with its kings Cyrus and Darius, was favorable to encouraging and even funding some of the building of the temple.  But in today’s first reading, we hear that the people are less excited to do that than the pagan kings of the Persian Empire!

    The prophet Haggai takes them to task for being comfortable in their own houses and rebuilding their own lives and saying “It’s not time to rebuild the Temple.”  This sentiment shows the underlying spiritual malaise of the people.  Now that they are out of exile and things are good, they don’t really need God for anything right now and are not giving him his due.

    Would that that kind of thing was limited to the people of Haggai’s time.  But we know it’s not.  We know how quickly we turn to God in times of trouble, but when things are going well, we ignore our spiritual lives and don’t give God much thought. 

    If we are to be true disciples, we have to be in relationship with God, in bad times and in good.  We need to constantly rebuild his house, to make that home for him in our hearts, to live with him in our homes and proclaim him in our community by the way we live our lives. 

    Friends, it’s always time to rebuild God’s house.