Reflections of a beloved son

“‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest.’” Matthew 13:28b-30a We can see that in this world of ours there is evil. Bad things happen. Bad choices are seemingly glorified. We want to see good people thrive and evil people punished for their actions and decisions, but very often we see good people suffer and those who do evil thrive and continue to grow strong. We may be tempted to be the judge and take matters into our own hands. But we must be careful. We are not the judge, for there is only one judge. We are however called to stand up for Truth and to love. To love includes instructing those who are wandering down a wrong path. And this takes a huge amount of patience. To live in this world, we must always remember who we are and what we are called to do. We must learn to live in the world but never become of it. As long as we live in the world, there will b...

"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now" (Jn. 16:12).  Jesus had much more to tell His disciples, but He knew they would be unable to hear it then.  The setting in which Jesus said that was at the last time He would be with them before He would be arrested and crucified.  Even at this time Jesus thought of His disciples.  Jesus knows His disciples well like a "shepherd who knows his sheep."  God is the same with us. There are times when we wish we knew certain pieces of information or had access to certain things, and we become frustrated and even upset with God for not giving to us what we thought we needed.  The truth is that God always know what we need .  What we think we may need, we may not be able to receive it at that time.   Sometimes there are just things that if we knew at that time we wouldn't be able to handle it then.  Perhaps our hearts were not ready, or maybe we just did not have a strong enough foundation...

"Be patient with me."  Those were the words the servant used to plead with his king when he was about to be sold along with his family and possessions in this morning's Gospel reading .  We are told that "moved with compassion  the master of that servant let him go  and forgave  him."  Compassion.  Patience.  Forgiveness.   Both the words compassion  and patience  find their roots in Latin meaning to "suffer."  To be compassionate  is to "suffer with" and to be patient is to "suffer" in some way in our own person.  Someone who is compassionate is able to empathize and sympathize with others, and someone who is patient is able to recognize the shortcomings of one's self and of others and so act and make decisions with that knowledge.  Forgiveness  occurs when that recognition and realization propels us to reflect on how we have been shown compassion and the times when we have been treated with patience...