Pray for Our Church and Our Country
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
The picture that is on today’s Pastor’s Notes evokes feelings of foreboding with its dark, heavy clouds seeming to engulf Lady Liberty. It is a scary thing to contemplate losing our liberty as a people and as a country, but how many of us think of an even more frightening noDon, namely - losing our souls? All Saints’ Day reminds us that the most important thing about our life on earth is to live in accord with God’s will and save our souls. To paraphrase St. Margaret Mary Alocoque: Let us begin in earnest to work out our salvation, for no one will do it for us; even God Himself, Who made us without our help, will not save us without us helping ourselves. In other words, God has given us “The User’s Manual” and the graces that we need to save our souls, but we have to open that manual, read it, believe it and live it. We have to cooperate with Him! Every decision that we make in this life will put us on a road to our final destination: either heaven or hell. Salvation is offered to all, as we saw in our first reading last weekend from the book of Revelation where those who chose the road leading to eternal life were “from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” St. John went on to tell us in our second reading that those who love and obey Jesus are the true “children of God.”
We were also given a very clear sermon from Jesus in the gospel reading regarding what type of person it is who becomes a saint. When I was young, I used to ponder the last few sentences of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness … Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.” In my young mind, I couldn’t imagine such things like persecution or even martyrdom of Christians happening in this day and age. That was only something that happened in the early days of the Church! Or so I thought.
With each passing day, I see more and more clearly how such things can indeed happen in our modern age. What we as Christians need to be mindful of is that we need to be praying very hard for the grace to have the fortitude needed to stay totally focused on Jesus and heaven. Only by having this kind of singular focus will we be open to the grace of being able to “rejoice and be glad” at our sufferings, if God so ordains us to undergo such trials. We need to come to grips with the fact that we are living in a time like no other.
If you don’t have a prayer life, start one now. If you need to go to confession to cleanse and prepare your soul for what lies ahead, don’t delay! We must be ready to stand up and proclaim our faith in, and willingness to die for, Christ; and this can only be efficacious if we are in a state of grace. If we do this, He promises us that He will give us the graces we need, when we need them, to withstand hardships that we cannot even imagine right now. The time of fence sitting is over. We must choose Christ, for salvation comes through no other. Be courageous in proclaiming Him; be generous in showing His love; humbly embrace your cross … for the very people who may one day persecute you may also be saved by your example. John Henry Neumann once wrote: “God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission.” You, too, have a mission: to run this earthly race well and to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus? In other words, be a saint!
—Fr. Epperson
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