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I referenced that story from the movie called Lincoln by Spielberg, a story that Lincoln told which is representative of the kinds of stories he would tell. And it's about the parrot that belongs to the Jefferson lawyer. The parrot who in his cage every day says, today is the day the world shall end, as scripture has foretold. He says it every day over and over to the point where the lawyer gets so tired of hearing it that he shoots the bird. And then Lincoln says, thus fulfilling for the bird at least his prophecy, Which I think is a great, funny, anecdotal story about this man Lincoln, but also about the way we are. When we look toward the future with fear and anxiety, we tend to sabotage our relationship to the future. We bring about a kind of self fulfilling prophecy of doom when we look to the future with that sense of doom, you know, and I as a priest, you know, whenever I talk about the end times or what it might be like when Christ comes again in glory, I realize that it's not easy. And sometimes there's a temptation in me also to kind of sabotage my relationship to you so that if you do just go away and I don't have to talk to you about it anymore, like what it might be like to get ready for the end times, then maybe I can say, well, you know, the people don't want to hear about it anyway. Or the church has really nothing to say to this anyway, who knows? You sabotage it to escape the difficulty of looking to the uncertain future. But then you end up just bringing about the end, you know, like there's the way I used to break up with girlfriends when I was younger. Sometimes if I couldn't muster up the courage or the maturity or the manhood to break up with the girl because I didn't see us as getting married, I would sometimes just be maybe a little callous, maybe even a little cold for a couple of weeks until the girlfriend would say she didn't want to be with me anymore. And I would say, well, if that's what you want. It was a way of sabotaging the relationship. I think we do this sometimes with Christ when we allow our fears to get the better of us. You know, this self help culture which tends to hold so tightly to life, ends up a lot of times bringing about a self fulfillment prophecy of the very thing that we're afraid of. You know, people I think use the expression these days of, you know, manifesting their own reality and there's something to be said for that. So I wanted to hold out to you this weekend and again today. That peace, I think comes from conceiving of our lives by the Holy Spirit, by the Spirit of God, so that we move beyond merely a self help approach to life and to the future and allow God to help us. You know, the Holy Spirit is meant to be our advocate who helps us, as Christ called Him also a paraclete, a word that comes from the world of military, that the Holy Spirit might fight for us, defend us, accomplish for us the victory. It's the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit. And he wants us to look forward to what is to come with him so we can look forward with hope. With hope. So if you ask, is it rational to look forward to the future with, with hope or are we just guilty of wishful thinking? I would say to look forward and just to presume it will naturally get better is a little naive. If we move into the future without God, we're very susceptible to the despair that comes from the fear and the anxiety and then easily susceptible to deception, the deception of the evil one. But if we look forward with Christ by His Holy Spirit or the conception of our thoughts about ourselves and our future by the Holy Spirit, to conceive by the Holy Spirit, then yeah, I think it's rational to look forward with hope. Because. Because, and this is my favorite definition of hope. Hope is described by Pope Benedict and the Pope Francis as looking forward to the fulfillment of a promise made to us in the past. So it is rational, reasonable to look forward to the future with hope. If we are holding on to the promise that God has made to us in the past, the promise of his victory, of our salvation, of his having prepared a place for us in the Father's house where we can dwell with him and be with him forever. If we look forward to the future by that promise, yeah, I think we can look forward with hope. And it can bring light to our days to know that the story is good, even though it has some tough chapters. Is it rational or reasonable to look forward to the future with hope based on what we know about man and what he does without God? No, I mean, I don't, you know, what are we going to base that hope on? I mean, we seem to repeat over and over again in every age the evils that we all, you know, regret. And you can see the problem that arises and what Christ has come to help us with. When we look to our past, whether personally or like, as a people, we see a lot of sins and failures. We see errors, mistakes. We start to think of ourselves as hopeless because we lose sight of the promises made to us in the past. And without those promises, we have nothing to ground our hope on for the future. So Christ comes to restore that hope, and he does it by inviting us to share in his prayer. I say it that way because one of you asked me last week. So why should I pray if nothing ever changes, right? If I still sin, if history is still full of sins and failures, even Christian history, and if it doesn't change God, and if God's just going to do what he wants to do anyway, why should I pray? And that's a good question. It's only understandable or it only makes sense if we see it as Christ inviting us into his prayer. And his prayer is, father, thy will be done, that you may use even the sins of the world, as Christ has come to take upon himself the sins of the world, even the sins of the world, to redeem the world, that you can use all of the mistakes and the failures and the sins and my life as an offering to redeem the world. So to die with Christ so as to reign with Him. But it's an invitation to the Christian to share in Christ's own prayer. So we're not praying with carefully worded formulas that we've discovered can manipulate the divine will or even simply to escape suffering or hardship, but rather to unite ourselves with the one who says, father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, but nevertheless not my will, but your will be done. Actually, we said this Sunday in the opening prayer of the Mass, just remembering this almighty ever living God, that's the Father, grant that we may always conform our will to yours through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit. So that's I'm going to talk now about, like as we said this weekend, conceiving of our lives by the Holy Spirit. Because Christ lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and that's what he's inviting us to do. So our prayer is really best thought of as Christ inviting us into his prayer. If we think of it that way, perhaps we can see, quote, unquote, like, why we should pray. You know, it's not about changing God's will, but about conforming our will to his, entering into his will, living in his divine will. And this changes everything. Now, no matter what I'm doing, however little, however grand, I believe the Father sees me and is pleased with me and that that experience is like being with Christ in the Jordan when The Father said over him, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased to experience that. That the Father sees us wherever we are, knowing that we are trying to live in such a way as to give him glory and that he is pleased with us. This is what it means to enter the kingdom of heaven, right? Thy will be done. Thy kingdom come. When thy will is done, thy kingdom has come. The reason I'm saying that is because when Jesus asks this question in the Gospel, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth? He's referring to his coming again in glory. And the faith he's talking about is will I find people who live by the promise and live by my Spirit, the Holy Spirit? Will I find people who not only have beliefs about God, but actually have faith? Faith in God, who step out boldly into life as an adventure by trusting the promises of God. This is why St. Paul said to us in the second reading to pray in particular with scripture. With scripture. Did you hear that? In the second reading this weekend? The reference to scriptures is a reference to the promises that God makes to us. They are what embodies to move toward the future with trust. And he says to do this whether it's convenient or inconvenient. But he mentions the scripture because of course that's, this is the word of God which contains promises that he will be with us even until the end of time. That's why the psalm this weekend was our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth. This is conceiving by the Holy Spirit transcends a self help culture. Our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth. You know, and we heard in the first reading that as the Israelites making their way through the desert are nearing the promised land of entering into the end of their journey. They're right before the end of the journey because this is when Joshua comes into the picture. Remember Moses is going to die and then Joshua leads them in after 40 years of the desert. So Joshua's in the picture, which means it's the end, the end of the journey through the desert. And we're told that Moses arms are being held up in prayer. And as long as his arms were held up in prayer to the father, Joshua had the better of the fight. But if Moses arms would fall from the prayer, Joshua would begin to lose the battle. Moses arms are lifted up again and Joshua would again be able to be victorious on the battlefield. And Joshua's name, Yeshua is the Old Testament name for Jesus, which means God saves as we said in the psalm, our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. And Joshua in the Old Testament goes forth from Moses with his authority. Moses, a patriarchy, a patrimony, right? He is the pater, the Father, and he represents, in this case, God the Father, who sends forth a son, Jesus, who is also named Yeshua or Joshua. And Joshua leads the people into the Promised Land. So that's why the Church would give us these, these readings, especially this first one, which is about the end of the journey of the Israelites. We too, as Catholic Christians living in this life, are making a journey or a pilgrimage through this life, but then hope to be led by the new and eternal Yeshua, Jesus of Nazareth, into the Promised Land of the Father's house. You see? So you notice, it's called the Promised Land. The Promised Land. It was promised to them and then acquired and known by them. And this is not Zionism. I know it's tough to talk about the Israelites today because of Israeli Jewish political policy, but nonetheless, that land is part of God's story in a unique way. The story that is at the very heart of what we call history, which is his story, God's story, the favor that he showed to the people of Israel before the birth of Christ is meant to be a sign to all of us of his particular fatherly affection for each and every one of us. And then the Church goes out into the world on mission, like Columbus, to offer this relationship to all the nations. So it's not an imposition to hold out the faith to someone. It's an invitation. So I don't want to say too much more here, because I've already said a lot, but what I want for us is that we would conceive of our lives by the Holy Spirit. Conception overcomes deception. Deception is what brought about the Fall in the first place. When the Devil used man's intelligence against him, he convinced Adam and Eve that they could use their intelligence to become like God. And I think also when it comes to what the end of times will look like, it will again be deception. The Evil One will again try to use our intelligence against us, whether it be through artificial intelligence or some other grave and imposing deception. How the Evil one is poised to devour the one who has conceived by the Holy Spirit. Obviously that is a reference to how he is trying to take us away from Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The word deception actually means to take away. Conception means to take with. So Christ comes that we would be conceived by the Holy Spirit so we could be taken with him to the Father. Deception comes from the evil one, so that we would be taken away from God, right? So what I want for us is when we look to the future, we would conceive of the future by the Holy Spirit, which would be by the promises made to us in the past that give us hope for the future. We look forward to the fulfillment of a promise made to us in the past. This is hope. And then also to look at the person in the mirror by the Holy Spirit. Look at yourself with Christ and you will see the way he has hope for you. And he looks at you mercifully and sees what you may yet become, Right? So to conceive of yourself by the Holy Spirit, and then of course, to conceive of our neighbor by the Holy Spirit. Now, my circumstances by the Holy Spirit. I think if we stay in prayer or try to persevere in prayer, especially with Scripture, which contains the promises made to us by God, then we would actually be conceiving by the Holy Spirit and we would be able to overcome deception. You know, because conception always overcomes deception. It's like a Seinfeld joke. When he says, when you go to the the doctor's office and they always tell you, take your pants off, he says, because pants always beats no pants. I love that. Pants always beats no pants. And he says one time, I just want to say to the doctor, you know what, doc? You take your pants off. I love that. But conception always beats deception. So should we be afraid of the future? Well, only if we forget the promises made to us by God about how he will be with us even until the end of time. And that Christ has gone to the Father to prepare a place for us. And that if he has gone to prepare a place for us, he will come back again and take us to Himself. So that where he is, we also may be. And that he said to us, everything that the Father gives to me will come to me. And I will not reject anyone who comes to me. Because I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of the One who sent sent me. And this is the will of the One who sent me. That I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life. And I will raise him on the last day. These promises. These promises.