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Welcome back to the Monday after, which is the name given to this new segment of the Peter's Boat podcast. I hope it's good for those of you who are in the church on Sunday to revisit what we said in the church in the homily, how we spoke about the readings together, so you can continue to live from the readings this week. And then also, especially for those like sons and daughters or loved ones with whom this is being shared by someone here in the parish, that you can also feel a little connected to what happened in the church yesterday, along with any of you who might be just listening in to the podcast. So good to be with all of you. Now, I wanted to say again, we're going to hear about the word paradox or cross or mystery right off the bat in the Gospel yesterday, we heard Jesus say, you want to follow after me? It's going to be renouncing your possessions or what you're attached to. It's going to be like even hating anyone who comes between you and me, even your own self. When you resist me. He says, take up your cross and follow me. He's like, you want to build a tower? Count the cost. If you want to reach the heights, you don't want to lay a foundation that's ultimately going to fail you. So really, he says, just trust yourself so you can trust in me. And then he says, do you want to take on an enemy with more troops than you? You're taking on the devil when it comes to trying to live forever in heaven, you want to overcome evil. I'm warning you, you're taking on a fallen archangel. You won't be able to defeat him or successfully oppose him unless you seriously consider what it will take. So he's saying to us. And again, it sounds like a contradiction, but to be happy, to enter into my joy, he says, you have to renounce anything that would keep you from giving yourself to me. All right, so it's the death that leads to life. It's the death of the Adam in us that enables Christ to be born in us. But why? Again, let's remember, why do we have to put to death something in our why do I have to put to death my natural response to life? Why do I have to put to death my natural response to things? Because my natural response to things is always wounded by that fall of Adam and Eve. It is like I'm wearing sunglasses and everything always looks a little darker until the light of Christ illuminates the way I'm looking at life. Does that make sense. So when Christ says, renounce your possessions or hate yourself, even your own self, he says what he's saying to me and to you what he's saying to us. But I'll just, you know, to me, he's saying, remember, you know, your first perception of things is often wrong. You are pretty accusatory in your initial perception of people. You're quick to judge. You are. You're presumptuous, you know, and you're overly confident in your initial assessment of reality. But take courage, you know, take comfort. You're wrong in your initial assessment of things. That's what the fall is like in your life. You don't know how to judge things well because of the Fall. But I will come to you and help you to judge things well. But please put to death in you that part that is so sure of yourself. So the first rule of the spiritual life, distrust of self. The second rule, though, is complete trust in Christ. Okay, so he's not just saying, you want to be holy. Just distrust yourself. He is saying positively, also trust me. In the first reading. Then yesterday we heard from the author of the Book of Wisdom. Who can know or conceive what the Lord intends? How am I supposed to know the ways of the Lord? I. I, who am a fallen man, he says, whose corruptible body burdens his soul. Right? The experience of the fall even makes my spirit weak, or whose earthen shelter weighs down the mind. I can't think about holy things just naturally. This fall in the experience of my humanity now, it tends to corruption, it tends to disintegration and death. It doesn't tend to life naturally. I don't naturally become holier. I need something to break in that can lift me up out of the dust to heal me from this kind of spiritual gravity that's always weighing me down. I love it, he says. Scarce do we guess the things on earth and what's within our grasp, we find only with difficulty. It's hard enough for us to live in this world, he says. Who could possibly know the world of heaven or the things of heaven? Who could possibly, you know, just figure out God's ways in a world where we hardly understand our own ways? Or the person in the mirror, what is this guy? He's a total mystery to me unless he be revealed to me the truth of who this man is that you have created me to be. And the psalm we heard yesterday, Then teach us to number our days aright that we may gain wisdom of heart. So that's the first word we Heard yesterday. It's like every time the gospel comes to us, it's going to challenge us. Every single time, whether we're young or old or in the prime of life, the gospel will always first put something to death in us before it brings about new life. That's what this is always going to be like. It's always going to be a challenge. Maybe, practically speaking, especially to those of you who are in college, Sunday comes, you're going to go to church. I don't really want to. No, you're not going to want to. Initially, Adam and Eve do not want to. They never want to. But underneath Adam and Eve is who you are and your eye that God gave you. He desires, or she desires to go to God. So put to death the Adam and the Eve that is keeping you from him and go to him. You know, that's what it's like when Jesus said in the gospel, you must hate your mother and father to become my disciple. You don't just think about Mommy and Daddy. Think about Adam and Eve, the mother and father at the helm of this human experience, and say, yeah, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to fall and stay down with you guys. I am fallen. But I'm going to let the Lord pick me up. I'm going to let him redeem me. And then you go to church. But every day, every day, am I going to do everything according to my own will? Or am I going to allow God's Holy Spirit to lead me and guide me? Now, here's the second part of what we said yesterday. When we do allow the Holy Spirit to guide us, the most amazing thing happens. Ordinary bread and wine, if you will, you know, are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Ordinary bread and wine, ordinary life becomes like a bread of life or a chalice of salvation or healing. Right? When we bring forward ordinary bread and wine at Mass and the Holy Spirit falls upon them, what happens? They become the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose command we celebrate these mysteries. Right? And that's what he intends to accomplish in us. In the first reading, we heard, who can conceive what the Lord intends? Well, the one who allows him or herself to conceive by the Holy Spirit. So this is how we become sons and daughters of God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. And how do we become children of God? Right? Because peace is begotten, not made. It's conceived by the Holy Spirit, which is why the world is so full of war, right? Now, because so few people say, come, Holy Spirit. And we try so hard over and over again in so many different ways, with industry and now technology to make peace. But. But peace, like Jesus, is begotten, not made. It's conceived by the Holy Spirit, right? Now, yesterday, something really cool happened. The second reading that the Church gave us is the letter to Philemon, as St. Paul writes from prison to Philemon, Philemon is some place where Paul had visited. And Philemon's the head of a household. And Paul, when he visited that place preaching the Gospel, he turned Philemon's house into a veritable church. Now one day, this guy Onesimus shows up in Paul's prison cell when he's in prison in Rome. And Paul's probably like, onesimus, what are you doing here, Onesimus? Like, you know me. Yeah, I remember you. You were at Philemon's house. Aren't you one of his slaves? And Onesimus was like, yeah, I ran away. And Paul would be like, why'd you come to me? And then Onesimus would say, when you preached Christ in that household, I heard you. And my heart was burning within me while you spoke. And I experienced freedom even in my trying circumstances. And you gave me the hope to believe that if I know this Christ Jesus the way that you do, I could be free even as I lived the life of a servant. True freedom, you see. True freedom of the sons of God. Even as St. Paul was still free, even while in prison. Well, Onesimus spends some time with Paul. Paul becomes like a, he says, a father to Onesimus. So he loves him with the affection of a son. But you can see why, he says, I've become of like a father to him. Because new life was being born in Onesimus as he spent time with Paul. And then the most amazing thing happens. Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon with a letter. And that's the letter to Philemon we're reading in the New Testament. He says, philemon, I'm sending Onesimus back to you. You're going to have your slave back. But do not receive him like a slave. Receive him now back like a brother, a man like you in the Lord, who has become like a son to me. So you know what? Receive him like a son. Isn't that amazing? And can you imagine the amount of trust it took for Onesimus to bring that letter and even to go back to the house of Philemon? He trusts in the Lord, though he came to trust that Christ's spirit could work in the heart of his master, Philemon. And that Philemon would come to see him as a brother in the Lord. And perhaps Onesimus spends his days serving in that house. But he does so with freedom in his heart, no longer under the oppression of slavery, but with the freedom of a son. One who is destined to receive an inheritance. Slaves don't get the inheritance, sons get the inheritance. And what's awaiting us? Eternal life. The inheritance given to Christ, we which he shares with all of us. So then, lastly, a word about how this looks in the lives of the saints. This is why we see the Church raising some people up to the altars. We say they've been raised up to the altars, lifted up for the Church to see they've been raised up or glorified because of the way that they allowed the Holy Spirit to put their pride to death in this life. We mentioned Mother Teresa. Her hands and her feet were gnarled at the end of her life. She so conformed herself to Christ crucified. And by canonizing her, the Church says, see what a woman can do and the freedom she can live in, even in very trying circumstances, if she allows herself to be conceived by the Holy Spirit, life around her, she can even begin to see Christ in the poor. And then, of course, yesterday, the canonization of Pier Giorgio Frasati and Carlo Acutis is a word to all of us to remember that these two young men who, although they were from wealthy families, allowed the spirit of Christ to crucify their pride and their ambition and to live as Christ lived by saying to the world and to the people that they served, this is my body given up for you. My blood poured out for you. And they did so like Mother Teresa, who with great love and affection for Christ in the Eucharist, because what is Christ in the Eucharist to us but the way that he says? See how I say to you, this is my body given up for you, my blood poured out for you. And he says, do this in memory of me, for the forgiveness of sins and peace is made in such ways. And this is how Farsade and Akutis and Mother Teresa like they. They teach us how to live with wisdom in this world by renouncing all their possessions, by moving beyond or hating, if you will, anyone who would come between them and Christ and even their own life, humbling themselves by being outwardly religious in this life. For Saadi was known to say to his friends, playing pool with them, for example, if I win, I'll give you a hundred bucks. If you win, I'll you Give you come to the church with me and do a holy hour. I mean, he put to death his pride and was like, I'm a religious guy. I'm a religious man. I'm a Catholic. What do you want? He didn't care. And then Akutis, he made this website which cataloged eucharistic miracles for people of faith to be confirmed in their belief that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. It's a very religious, even pious thing to do. But he loved the Lord more than he loved himself, you know, and he's a saint. It's awesome. And then truly, lastly, Father Michael Judge, because Thursday is September 11th, right? Father Michael Judge is that fire department chaplain who ran toward the buildings when people were running away and was the first to die at the helm of the many casualties that would follow. Father Michael Judge was being pulled out of the rubble by the EMS workers. And when he was being carried, you may have seen the picture. He looked like Christ being taken down from the cross. For that's exactly what was happening before our very eyes. Behold, a man who lays his life down for his brother. And there's no greater love in this world than a man who lays his life down for his friend. And when we see that, we see Christ or the new Adam, and in those EMS workers who are holding him, we see the Blessed Mother receiving with affection and with deep desire to imitate such sacrifice. We see the Blessed Mother, like receiving Christ as he's taken down from the cross. So the new Adam and the new Eve in that picture, in that memory of Father Michael Judge. And one way to articulate that, and we can end with this, is at one point, St. Paul says, we want to move beyond just our enslavement to the elementary spirits of life, meaning the passions and the appetites and this instinct to self preservation which we have because we're natural creatures. St. Paul's like, we want to move beyond that. Well, how can I move beyond or how can I transcend the elementary spirits of life? You know, aren't these good? Yeah, they are good. But in a fallen world, we wield our passions and appetites and the instinct for self preservation in a selfish way and a lot of times in a violent way. Naturally, in a fallen world, man tends to corruption and division. But if you say, come, Holy Spirit, in all of your decision making, he will guide and enlighten you and enable you to wield your passions and your appetites and even the instinct to self preservation, he can wield them for good and enable you to be zealous in your desire for souls and to serve and even lay your life down in love. Remember, Christ says to us when I said to you, if you want to save your life in this world, you're going to lose it. But if you will lose your life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, you will find it. You will find it. So it is always going to feel like a little death before we enter into the life that Christ wants for us. But as we heard today in the reading today for this feast of the birth of Mary, September 8, we heard from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans that God, before he formed us in the womb, he knew us and he has predestined us. He created us to live with him forever in heaven. So he's got plans for us. Then he calls us, and we, like Our lady, were free to say yes or no. But if we say yes, he will justify us. With the grace of the sacraments and the grace of His Holy Spirit, he will justify us, work and accomplish this holiness in us, and then he will glorify us. And then he will glorify us. But saying yes to that call and allowing him to justify us is always going to feel like a death. But that's how we enter into life.