It is impossible to be obedient to God without loving Him, and it is impossible to love God without being obedient to Him. Yet, it is when grace works in us to knit the two together that the work of God conforming us to the image of His Son becomes more evident to us and to others.

The call of today’s Gospel is for us to continue to work to examine self and environment along the simple boundary that Christ Jesus gave us to do so – ‘Have you loved others, as I loved you?’

I woke up on the morning of October 31, 2003 as the same agnostic/deist that I had been for most of my adult life, but by the end of that day I would actually end up praying to the God who I was unsure even existed.

Christ Jesus bestowed upon the Apostle Simon Peter a particular ministry, that he and all those who would succeed him as the Vicar of Christ on Earth would carry out. This reflection concerns the Second Confession of Saint Peter. Attached to that confession is the duty for Simon Peter and his successors in the Peterine Ministry to be the servant, slave, and friend of all creatures of God.

The feast of Divine Mercy, as recorded in the diary of Saint Faustina, receives from Jesus himself the promise that the soul that goes to Sacramental Confession (the confession may take place some days before), and receive Holy Eucharistic on that day, shall obtain the total forgiveness of all sins and punishment. Additionally, the Catholic Church grants a plenary indulgence (observing the usual rules) with the recitation of some simple prayers.

After this, Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he could remove the Body of Jesus. And Pilate permitted it. So he came and took His body.

In totality, these Gospel accounts tell us two things, which people often take out of context. The first is that the Lukan version of our Lord’s prophecy held up. The second is that Peter is not the pusillanimous, scared, and bumbling idiot that I grow so weary of hearing so many Christians portray him to be.

Perhaps one of the most powerful sayings of Jesus in all of sacred Scripture was His last words to this woman – “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” The call of today’s Sacrifice of the Mass is to believe that we can and ought to “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”

Those of us who have lived far off from God and have/are paying for the choices we made in opposition to Him can truly relate to how grateful the younger son must have been to become merely a dependent of his father. For, being independent from his father proved to be nothing more than a worthless life.

From the only prayer He taught us, to the Sacraments of the Church He gave us, to His definitive act on the Cross for us; we know that our Lord passionately understands that temptation and sin will be a struggle for us in this life. In response to that knowledge of His what He did was empower us with all of the greatest resources we needed to live this life free from the consequences of sin.

There many other things that can be said about Divine consolations, especially about the reasons why God decides to give them to us in the first place, but I believe that the most essential treatment that needs to be made here concerns how we ought to respond to them. I say that because Divine consolations will come to many us for whatever reason God deigns, but it is how we respond to them is what is most crucial to know.

There are three keys to resisting temptation that Jesus offers us to imitate through His successful refute of Satan’s attack. They are 1. Identify, 2. Filter, and 3. React. These are the three things we must unceasingly do throughout the day, even in the midnight hours.

There comes a point in time during our Life with the Cross when God somehow lets us know how He would like us to use our gifts for His glory. This sign of perfect grace and consolation is usually followed by or proceeds in conjunction with an event, which will forever be imprinted on our heart and in our memory.