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God wants to protect us from evil. He wants to protect us from danger at every moment. The problem begins when we take our attention off God. When we pay attention to the devil and evil, we can’t even see God trying to protect us. The story of the man with legion demons teaches us that no matter how much we have allowed the demons to enter us, we can still approach God and then He will protect us.

It isn’t the easiest thing in a society filled with earthly honors, but being focused on earthly honors shouldn’t be our focus as Christians. Christ says, “Rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.” You should always be thankful for the blessings from God, but all those blessings are nothing as compared to your name being written in heaven.

When we hear the Word of God, the condition of our hearts is critical into accepting the Word and producing fruit for our faith. It is based on our effort through prayer, fasting, almsgiving and the sacramental life of the Church to work the garden of our souls. Our fruit will be a hundred-fold.

When we think of The Golden Rule, we think about how we are going to treat people ‘the way’ they treat us. We never really think about how Christ said that was no different than the world. The REAL Golden Rule is to be like God, loving and living as God loves and lives. God is good to us even when we are not good to Him. Our call as Christians is to treat others like God treats them. That is golden.

Being a disciple of Christ is more than just being a follower of God. Being a disciple is being a student of Christ and His Church. As disciples we learn to trust God more than we trust our own knowledge. We learn to be humble in the presence of God’s many blessings. If we want to attract others to Christ, to be ‘fishers of men’ we must learn to trust God with humility.

Christ invites His follows, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” The first step in following Christ into heaven is to deny ourselves. We must learn to get over ourselves if we want to follow Christ. The entire life of the Church is meant to assist us in learning how to deny ourselves, so that we can take up our cross and follow Christ into heaven.

The Parable of the Wedding Feast (Matthew 22.2-14) expresses what we can expect at the Final Judgment of Christ. It won’t only be those who are violent to the Church who are left out. Those who are indifferent to God’s invitation will be excluded by Him, remaining outside the Kingdom. We must hear God’s invitation and not stop ignoring it. We must change our lives and accept the invitation from God, if we want to be with Him in heaven.

In the Gospel story of the Vineyard, Christ takes the Church away from the servants who didn’t produce fruit for God. The Church was given to us to produce fruit. The Church is more than just the building. God will demand and accounting of us when He returns. How will God see our behavior toward His children? Our hearts must produce fruit for God. We are not guaranteed our salvation. It can be taken away. The Gospel warns us to not waste another day. This is our chance by God to make good on our faith.

When a rich young man asked Christ, “What good thing must I do to inherit eternal life,” Christ called him to a higher expectation. Life is more than just following the rules and commandments. If we really want to accept God’s high calling, we must be willing to love Him more than anything else in the world. That includes our giving. If want to be perfect our giving must first recognize that everything belongs to God. Stop thinking of giving to the Church as a rule. Think of giving to the Church as loving God more than anything so we can be perfect.

When we stand in front of the Judgment Seat of God He will take an account of our life. The only way for us to be forgiven by God will be our ability to forgive even the smallest things that others have done against us. All our begging won’t help if we hold on to what others have done. Only with a clean heart can we approach God for Holy Communion and salvation.

In the most difficult times of our Christian struggle, it isn’t easy to understand why God doesn’t give us what we want. In those most difficult times, we are called to a life of prayer and fasting, not to follow God’s rules, but to train our hearts to understand that God knows what we need better than we know. A life of prayer and fasting heals our hearts when we don’t get what we want from God.

When we are faced with the hard reality of struggle, we can either panic or remain focused on Christ. The storms of life push us back and forth, but when we focus on Christ, He walks with us and keeps our heads above water. When we remember that Christ is in front of us, even the worst storm is bearable.

When we allow God to use us to be His blessing to others, great things can happen. When the Disciples asked Christ to dismiss the crowd, they were acting selfish and wanted to spend their own time with Christ. Christ said, “You give them something to eat.” We are God’s hands and feet to be used for His blessings. When we allow God’s love to work through us, there will be an overabundance of God’s grace us, and for others.

When a community gathers united in Christ, healing takes place. When we bring each other closer to Christ, sins are forgiven. When Christ sees our faith as a united family, He blesses us, forgives us, and heals us.

As humans and especially as American’s we never like to admit that we are not worthy of God’s love. There is nothing we can do to make us worthy of God’s love, mercy and grace. He is the one who makes us worthy through our faith and humility. Instead of pride and arrogance, humility and faith lead us to Christ. If we want to be healed by God, we must accept the humility of our realty and ask God to make us worthy of His love.