[00:00] Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever. Today's Gospel is taken from the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 28, on the day of Jesus' Resurrection, when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go to the tomb, they meet the Lord, and then there are the chief priests and the soldiers who come onto the scene. There's mention of the governor, Pontius Pilate, mention of the Jews who are hearing falsified

[00:33] stories about what happened on Easter morning. Our call in life is to be conformed to the image of God's Son, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 8:29, and so in a real, but in a mystical sense, our life will be a reliving of the life of Jesus. I'm at least convinced that this is true for those who really want to follow our Lord and be close to Him and be like Him, that our lives will somehow mirror the life of Christ. A few years ago, I was told by a spiritual directee of mine, someone

[01:10] who I'm convinced is very close to God, she told me that Our Lady had told her that I was her John, that I was a spiritual son that Jesus entrusted to her, just like He entrusted Our Lady to St. John, the beloved apostle, under the cross on Good Friday. That's someone who I'm very close to, and who has taken me into her heart, like Our Lady took St. John into her heart on Calvary. It's not always

[01:41] easy to see who the people are in your life who are like the people that Jesus had in His life, or to see the people in your life that are like Jesus to you, and what role that you play for them. Again, I think that many of us have these people that are like echoes of those who played a role in our Lord's life. If you heard our homily on the Vigil Mass, you'll remember we spoke of the word share, and how many different Greek New Testament words there are for our English word

[02:15] share. One of those Greek words was the word echo, e-c-h-o. In Greek, it means to have, to hold, to possess. Our Lord brings people into our life that are an echo of those who were part of His earthly life, people that we are to have, and to hold, and to possess, but in a loving, in a godly way. Sometimes we need to know, or learn, or be able to love properly in order to hold on to these people

[02:46] in a way that is pleasing to God, and it can be a crash course at times, but life, living the life of Christ, it's a series of crash courses, a series of learning lessons. There's a black and blue learning curve to it. I know that our Lord has given me a spiritual mom like Our Lady to be with me, and assist me, and encourage me. Honestly, I think that He's probably given me a small inner circle of people I can consider friends, like He had with Peter, James, and John. They were the

[03:18] closest of the 12 apostles, so the apostles were the inner circle, Peter, James, and John were the inner, inner circle. I even think that He's given me a Mary Magdalene as well, someone who was once far from God, but who is now drawn close to Him in part through my priestly ministry. So there are people in your life too, or probably like Lazarus, or Mary, or Martha was in Jesus' life, then yes, there are the chief priests, and the soldiers, and other figures whose job it

[03:55] is seemingly to make your life miserable, and my life miserable. They're just, they're always going to be there as well. Everyone plays a part, and this is something that I think if you try to explain it to a therapist, they'll probably think that you and I are crazy, or at least that I'm crazy, they'll probably think that. It does remind me of what the therapist told me when he said that I had a preoccupation with vengeance, and I thought, well, we'll see about that. We'll see about that. Is this microphone on? Is this on?

[04:31] In the friary recently, we finished listening to the life of St. Padre Pio, a very good book on him called Padre Pio, the True Story by Vernon Ruffin. In his life, it's clear that St. Pio lived this out, what we're talking about. He had people who were very close to him, people who loved him, and who he loved, people who didn't understand him, people who thought he was crazy, like one of the counselors thought he was very crazy, people who praised him and revered him. He had people who thought he was a dangerous fraud,

[05:03] people who betrayed him and mistreated him, people who were trustworthy in his life, people who were not trustworthy, people to whom he ministered in a powerful way. It really was a reliving of the life of Jesus for St. Pio. And again, I suspect that if we stop and step back and think about it, we'll be able to recognize at least some of the people in our lives who are either like Jesus to us or who play a biblical echo role in their lives. Or if we put

[05:35] ourselves in Jesus' sandals, people who play roles in our lives similar to the roles that people played in the life of Christ. It's a great gift to be able to see life in this light. It's a great gift to have these people in our life, both the saints and the saint makers. And it's a great gift to be so special to our Lord that He wants to relive His life in you. Let's ask Our Lady for the grace to identify more with her and with her Son, and also to be able to

[06:10] identify the people in our life who are echoes of the persons in Scripture, who are part of the life of our Lord.