Defend us in battle

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Today’s second reading conveys a powerful image:

Brothers and sisters:
Indeed the word of God is living and effective,
sharper than any two-edged sword,
penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow,
and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
No creature is concealed from him,
but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him
to whom we must render an account.

As we near the end of our Church year, we’re looking more and more at the four final things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.

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Show unto us

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Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me — Mark 9:37

Our Blessed Mother Mary received her child, Jesus. And she is the one who helps us to know Him and join our will with His.

The way I originally read Hail Holy Queen is that we ask Mary to do this after our death, after our “exile.” But …

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Serving the Lord

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Our thoughts today are on serving the Lord:

As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” — Joshua 24:15

Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” — John 6:67-68

When we confess that we want God’s will to be done, this is exactly what it means. We will serve God, and we will serve others because that’s God’s will.

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Bread that came down from heaven

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Today we’re ending the readings called the “bread of life discourse” from the book of John. The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, and we’ll spend an entire lifetime learning what this means.

God’s only Son, the ever-eternal Christ, came to us as Jesus of Nazareth. He gave His body, His entire life, to have us join with God.

As an analytic engineer type, my natural question is: So how does THAT work? Well, I’ve decided this is the wrong question.

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