[00:00] Praise be Jesus and Mary. Now and forever. One of the virtues we are given today to reflect on is going to be charity. Actually, it is the virtue which is the crowning of all virtues, the crowning of all virtues. Love of God for the sake of God. Particularly if you followed

[00:31] the gospel reading we just heard, you are going to see that is what our Lord was highlighting there. If we do first and foremost what we do for the love of God, that is what is first for him. Our gratitude for him has given us our very lives and given us that possibility to be always forever united with him in paradise if we are faithful. The Lord really highlights

[01:10] that when he speaks of whoever loves father or mother more than me, whoever loves their child more than me, and whoever refuses to take up their cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. In order to say yes to our Lord, whatever call in life we are given is going to require sacrifice, penance. Nobody ever said it would be easy. It is a wholehearted

[01:45] yes first and foremost to God who is giving that call. And out of that yes, that is what will blow them the graces needed. We would ask for them of course, but to be able to carry through exactly what we have said yes to, the call we have been given. And that yes will produce fruits. Our Lord is assuring us of that. But also know what he says. It is going to be penance. Take up your cross. If we are not willing to do that, what does

[02:20] our Lord mean here? Accept, not necessarily to impose them upon ourselves, but to accept those crosses our Lord sends. And he does send them to test us, to try us, to make sure we do really still love him, that it is for him. And what our Lord says, follow, does not follow after me. He doesn't mean simply follow what I'm saying, just simply walk in my footsteps behind him. It can conclude that. But, meaning live the life he lived

[02:58] when he was here on earth. Live that life. What was that life? It was a life of sacrifice. Ultimately carrying his cross through the passion. Death, suffering and death. Interesting enough that St. Paul brings that up with the Romans here. He speaks of, notice how he says, at first he says, he went where? He was baptized in Christ. Now the first thing

[03:29] we think of is, of course, the sacrament, when the water is poured over our heads and the priest pronounces the words of baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. All true, we are receiving the sacrament. That is how we enter into the friendship with God and become children of God. But, the word actually literally means something else, a little bit different. But it's what exactly it is. Because note how St. Paul continues. We were indeed baptized, buried with him and through baptism into death.

[04:02] Buried. The word baptism comes from the Greek word, baptizein, which literally means to bury. Literally means to bury. Bury what? What are we being buried into? When we think of burial, particularly if we are being buried, we think of death. And it is death. There is a death. We're being buried to the darkness and the evil and the death of sin. And we're being raised, because with burial there comes a resurrection as well, particularly for all

[04:37] of us. It was for our Lord to start with, and then for all of us. Raised into the life of grace and the life of union with God, into the friendship with God. That's what baptism does. It erases original sin and any other actual sins there be. We were baptized as adults. As babies, of course, there were no actual sins. But there was original sin, which meant we were not in the friendship of God. But that's removed with baptism. All of it. If we were to die at that instant, it would be straight to heaven. That's why we call

[05:16] it the baptism of my niece. I was her godfather, and I'm holding her in my arms, directly under my Maracas medal, which I was wearing outside. And the priest was a very gruff old man, a wonderful priest, but a very gruff old man, looked down on her, and you would never expect to see it or hear it. It almost broke down, and he said, I wish I were as close to you as God, as you are to God, right now. That's why you are that close to God when you're

[05:50] baptized. But you're buried to the life of darkness and evil and sin into the light of grace. The life of grace, the union with God, a beautiful, awesome thing that we have to maintain. And that's what we do with all of our prayer and our sacrifices, all for the love of Him. That's what we are called to do. That's charity. And then, of course, out of that love that must grow, that's the nature of love. It grows, and it grows, until we have to share it with everyone else. That's what God did. His love for himself, in himself,

[06:24] because God is love, as St. John tells us in his first letter, is love, and that love grows. Now it needs to be shared. Result creation, right? God created first the angels. They too had to pass the test. There are those that did, those that didn't, right? But in order to gain the beatific vision, they had to pass the test too. And then all of us, we too, have that possibility. Remember what God said at creation, let us, do it in the

[07:03] plural, create man in our image and likeness. Now how so in his image and likeness? In the fact that we have an intellect and a will. God is pure intellect and will, pure spirit, pure spirit. The angels are pure spirits too, but not perfect. God is perfect. We also have an intellect and will. We have a spirit, our soul. You see? And therefore we are created in the image and likeness of God. We can know, we can come to know what is good and what

[07:37] isn't. We can know the truth, and we can choose to accept it or reject it. We can choose to love God. That's the will. We can choose to love God or reject him. So what is God calling us to do? To accept him, love him. You see? He has given us our very lives, and he maintains us in existence. If he would stop to think of us for one instant, we would

[08:09] cease to exist. We depend on God to continue. It cannot be otherwise. Let us accept him, give ourselves to him. All we do, including raising our children, including caring for other souls, which we priests have to do, but all for the love of God, including whatever difficulties and trials there will be, and there are, whatever sacrifices we have to make, a beautiful thing to offer back to God in reparation, not only for our own actual

[08:40] sins but also for those of others as well, for everyone, all of the offenses against God who so loves us, all right, that he even gave up his own life for us, the Son of God, our Lord, that he remains with us day and night in the Eucharist. He is here, really, living with us. Let us not hesitate to continually love him in return, express our gratitude for all of these graces, and work with these graces that we can be united with him forever

[09:15] in paradise. Praised be Jesus and Mary.