The story of Holy Scripture is the story of how Our Lord wants to save our souls and direct our lives according to His plan. To facilitate the transmission of Scripture’s message, and indeed the Catholic Faith as a whole, God selects certain persons through history to serve as priests and religious in the Church. These designated persons are the ones who keep the Church alive and growing through their dedication, prayer, and sacrifice.

Our Lord came to earth to save mankind from damnation. While Christ is primarily concerns with our souls, He is not indifferent to our physical and psychological maladies. He heals our souls through the seven sacraments. However, He also allows the Church to identify physical things and even words that can help sanctify our souls, which we call sacramentals.

Everything we are has been given to us by God. This extends far beyond our material goods. Our very life, that is, our talents, abilities, qualities, and graces all come from Our Lord. And so when we dispense what God has given to us, we do it not only for the benefit of others, but to ensure our eternal reward with Him in heaven.

We must trust that God will take care of us no matter what during our journey on this earth. Trusting in God’s providence is not always easy, particularly when we know we have to raise a good family and save our souls while confronting an increasingly godless world. But we should never lose that God in Heaven is our Father: capable, loving, and good.

By their fruits you shall know them. This is the criterion given by Our Lord to discern false prophets and others who claim to carry out works or spread messages through divine guidance, yet the results are far from what Scripture and Tradition tell us are good and true. But we also must be on guard against those false prophets that lie within us who continually tempt us to pursue base and false ends under the guise that it would be pleasing to God to do so.

St. Anne is a model for all mothers. She demonstrates what it means to make children into living tabernacles of the Holy Spirit. The degree of dedication it takes a carpenter or other craftsman to build a tabernacle is radically less than the commitment, care, and charity that all mothers are called upon to shape genuinely Catholic children. She is also a model of prayer and a witness to how God works in our lives to form our children with genuine Catholic virtues.

Every day presents an opportunity for us to draw closer to God. In this sermon, we hear a hypothetical tale of a man who commits himself daily to strengthen himself in Christ. It is a reminder that we are called to order our lives well and draw our strength from God to live an authentically Catholic life.

Forgiveness is not a recommendation. Our Lord commands it. We are directed to offer it without regard for the response. As Christians, we are not called upon to forgive in hopes of attaining a reward or another earthly benefit. We forgive because it is what God commands us to do, without regard to any personal benefit.

As our devotion increases, so too does our hunger for spiritual gifts. Yet for many of us, there are disorders present in our spiritual life, be it a lack of devotion to Our Lady or an overly rationalistic approach to the Faith. We see that the spiritual life demands mortification and renunciation, so we shrink from it. The solution, however, is not to give up, but rather to focus on our hunger, that is, our need for God so that we may pursue holiness with greater zeal.

The state of the world often instills in us a sense that God has abandoned us; we begin to lose hope. Yet the message of the Gospel is that Our Lord cares deeply for us, as evidenced in both the small signs of His compassion such as the feeding of the multitudes and the great sacrifice He made for us on Calvary. Reflecting on our own lives, we can see daily how God provides for us not just materially, but above all spiritually.