Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Dear brethren, this is one of the first times that our Lord begins to make the first hint regarding His passion. As you can see, His disciples just weren't disposed to understand that yet. Bear in mind that the people of Israel had this idea, for the most part, they believed that the promised Messiah would be kind of a political liberator. In other words, He would bring the people of Israel, bring the nation of Israel back to its previous glory, sort of kick the Romans out and reestablish the glory of the Davidic line. That's what they were expecting in some way.
And so Jesus had to bring them to understand the spiritual, supernatural nature of redemption. A little bit at a time, He brought them to understand also the mode, not a political triumph, but laying down His life, giving up His life in that which externally would seem a failure. That's why you could see, St. Luke points out, they did not understand this saying, "The Son of Man is to be handed over to men." In other words, to their ears, that just didn't coincide with their expectations.
And isn't that like what is so common in our modern society and in the mentality of modern man, just not understanding the mystery of the cross, not understanding the mystery and the real meaning of suffering? That's essentially what our Lord was hinting at here, being handed over to His passion, laying down His life. That's not understood nowadays, you know, where man, even if he has some faith, so often just expects God to dispense goods and eliminate suffering without understanding that if God permits suffering, there's actually a reason behind it.
So in part, we've merited the suffering because of our sins and our unfaithfulness, but there's also that suffering that God permits as a way of purifying us, a way of offering us as an occasion for doing reparation, and above all, a way as an occasion for exercising ourselves in true love. That's the essence of this. Our Lord is hinting at the fact of being handed over where He will lay down His life. He will give the greatest witness of love, the greatest display of perfect love. No one can have greater love, says our Lord, than he who lays down his life for his friends.
Modern man thinks that love is a feeling, kind of an emotion, a feeling, you know, whereas true love is actually a decision of the will. "I want to give myself for the good of this person," so that's going to display itself not so much in feelings, although they can be present, but that's not the substance. The substance is a decision of the will by which I want to give myself, and I display that in time with fidelity, with dedication, with forgetfulness of self, with being ready even to suffer for the other. That's where you begin to display real love, and that's precisely what our Lord is bringing the disciples to understand. It's not about some kind of self-seeking and political glory, which was what they thought. It's about true love, laying down one's life so as to obtain true good for man.
We need to understand this, and we need to remind ourselves of this every time we're visited by some kind of suffering, but not only in suffering. In everything we do, we ought to bear this in mind and know that we need to have an intention in our will to do things for God, to love Him, to want to please Him in the way we act and the way we do things. We can say this as well about our relationship with Our Lady. True love for Our Lady is not a feeling. It can be feelings at times, but that's not the essence. The essence is a decision of the will by which we faithfully give time to Her, give our lives to Her, by which we faithfully seek to honor Her and to be instruments in Her hands, even when that costs. Now, that's where we're actually going to exercise ourselves in a greater love.
Today we celebrate St. Vincent de Paul, and what a perfect example, as we usually find in the lives of the saints, of just forgetting oneself, laying down one's life for the good of others. As we all know, St. Vincent de Paul received the grace of his call to dedicate himself in a special way to the poor. When he was called to the bedside of a dying man, a dying peasant in France, he was called to hear the confession of this man, and he just realized how neglected the spiritual good of the poor was. So with that, he received this call to dedicate himself not only to the material good of the poor, but in a special way to the spiritual good of the poor.
So he founded his institute especially for that, dedicating time to the sanctification of the poor people in the rural areas of France, and then, subsequent to that, he founded also the Daughters of Charity to do the same work. But this reminds us of the necessity of this forgetfulness of self, this charity, this concern for our neighbor, not only as far as material goods goes, but for the spiritual good of our neighbor. That's one of the primary things he was concerned about, whereas it's very easy nowadays, you know, just with hearing of all kinds of things that happen in the world, to think of what's being suffered and what's taking place in the material sphere.
Forgetting the spiritual good of souls, we're talking here about the danger number one, the loss of eternal life, eternal damnation of souls, that is the biggest tragedy. So in everything that happens, when you have this as a key concern, that's why Our Lady has always asked us to say the rosary, that's why she's asked us to bear our cross patiently for love of God, that's why she's asked us to pray for the conversion of sinners. She's actually reminded us of that at Fatima with very strong words, you know, "Many souls go to hell because no one prays and makes sacrifices for them."  It's a call to this charity by which we forget ourselves and, you know, give of ourselves with prayer and penance to obtain a spiritual good for our neighbor. So let us bear all these things in mind and ask Our Blessed Mother for the grace to grow in true charity, which necessarily goes together with, you know, dying to self. That's one of the key obstacles. We love ourselves too much. We are always seeking to please ourselves, and we don't actually know how to give ourselves, forget ourselves, deny ourselves in order to exercise ourselves in that true love, which is, as I said, not self-seeking, but self-giving. So may She obtain this grace for us, She who is the mother of divine love.  Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.