In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Our Lady, Queen of Apostles, St. Joseph, St. Andrew,
and our patron saints and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
St. Andrew, the Apostle we celebrate today, as we know, was the brother of Simon Peter.
And he's known for the one who invited his brother to come and see Jesus,
because they had heard him maybe preaching before.
You know, this isn't the first.
This isn't the first encounter in the Gospel that Simon and them had with Jesus,
but this is the time that our Lord finally, after planting the seed,
comes to make his harvest of those first ones who would become his apostles,
the twelve pillars of the Church,
to be the foundation of the new Israel that he would establish in his Church.
We say that our faith, and we're,
in this year of faith, that our faith rests upon the apostolic tradition,
or that our faith rests upon the apostles.
The reason why our faith rests upon the apostles,
because they are the ones who went out and spread the faith throughout the four corners of the world.
After the resurrection of our Lord, and after they had experienced that great event,
and that witness of Christ risen from the dead, they went,
as our Lord, or as Paul says about, you know, that, about faith,
how can they believe in him whom they have not heard,
and how can they hear without someone to preach,
and how can people preach unless they are sent?
And they were sent, the apostles.
That's what it means, apostle, means to be one who is sent.
Our Lord told them, go out to all the world,
and tell the good news.
And without this good news, we know it is impossible for us to be pleasing to God,
because it's through the preaching of the gospel that we receive the gift of faith.
And the gift of faith, of course, is that which makes us pleasing to God.
As our Lord even says, it's impossible for us to please God without faith.
And so therefore that's why it says in the,
the Responsorial Psalm. Your words, Lord, are spirit and life. Because the faith that we have
embraced, the faith that Andrew preached, Peter preached, Paul preached, is really the words of
spirit and life. They're the words of Christ. They are what Christ wanted us to know so that we could
be truly alive. And maybe we can see that the reason why the culture of death has become so
prevalent in our time is because the spirit of life and the words of life, meaning the faith,
are not maybe being preached, but certainly have not been embraced in many quarters. Because
with the crisis of catechesis that we were in for the last 40 years, in many cases,
it's been a crisis of faith. Because our faith is based on doctrines. And when those
doctrines aren't preached, people can't believe in them. And if they can't believe in them,
then they won't live them. And therefore, we can see how much that many people today are
only Catholic in name because they received baptism, they received the seed was planted in
them. But because of the lack of catechesis, the lack of proper instruction,
that seed did not mature. It did not reach its full fruit and blossom. We need to once again see
the importance of catechesis. And that is why our Holy Father has reminded us that one of the
things we need to do is go back to the catechism and read it and understand what is the faith.
The faith is something very tangible in one sense. Of course, it's believing in that which is not
seen yet. Yet, it's very tangible in that we know what we have to place our faith in. It's faith in
Christ and all that he has said and promised. And the other thing that we can look to is say that,
you know, the porta fide, the doorway of faith, is in many sense apostolic in flavor. And that
we have to understand that our faith has been preached,
and has been given to us through the Apostles. But the porta fide, the doorway of faith, also is
Marian because those Apostles, their faith, as we know, waned. They were very much disheartened after
our Lord's persecution. And the only one who remained faithful was Our Lady. And for us even
today, in order for us to step through the doorway of faith and to bring people to the doorway of
faith, we have to be faithful. And we have to be faithful. And we have to be faithful. And we have
to be faithful. And we have to be faithful. And we have to be faithful. And we have to be faithful.
And we have to be faithful. And we have to be faithful. And we have to do it with and through Our Lady,
for she is the Mediatrix of all graces. And in this time in which we're praying the Novena of the
Immaculate Conception, it reminds us that, you know, how much importance Our Lady plays in the
dispersing of that grace to believe in Christ as the Son of God. Her faith never once diminished,
even in the most darkest,
period of Christianity, in those three days that Our Lord lay in the tomb. We just have to call to
mind even today, as we look around and we see, oh, it's pretty dark sometimes in the sense that
the faith is being attacked or the faith is not being lived. And it's an opportunity for us
just to remind ourselves that Our Lady is there to assist us, just as Andrew and
Peter and all the Apostles, after they were sent out into the world by Our Lord, you know,
they had a daunting task ahead of them. They were the first ones to believe. And they had to go out
and convince others of the truth of the faith. And they knew that they had God on their side.
They knew they had the power and the wisdom of God, as St. Paul tells us,
to preach Christ and him crucified to a world that was unbelieving or had not yet heard this good news.
Yet they were not discouraged, and they set the world on fire with the wisdom and the power of God
that they preached. And two, today we are looking to Andrew and to all the Apostles as our inspiration,
and today we too are sent. We are also Apostles, little by little, today, and not capital A.
But we are to be, we have been sent by our baptism. And every time we come to Mass, we're even sent again.
Because at the end of Mass, it's Ite Misa Es, go, the Mass is. It's not ended, it's continuing.
And we're to go out and bring the good news.
Bring the life of Christ that we have received in our hearts to those around us.
Andrew, St. Andrew today, and all the Apostles, are our example and our encouragement to us.
That we too can achieve great things if we allow this gift of faith to be put into practice.
If we act upon it. It is spirit and life. Everybody is created with a little bit of a hole in their soul, you might say.
Something is lacking. And without faith, without the grace of God, that hole cannot be filled.
There are a lot of people running around today trying to fill that hole with all kinds of isms.
Hedonism. Materialism. Feminism. Communism. Socialism.
Whatever ism it is, the only hole, the only thing that's going to fill that hole completely and fully is Catholicism.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.