What are we to make of this? This Gospel reminds us of the shocking, scandalous truth that far more than we desire God, God desires us! Not out of need, not out of lack, not because He doesn’t know what to do now that football is over and March Madness hasn’t started yet. Because He is Love. This wasn’t just true for that woman. It’s true for you and for me. God, the Creator of the universe, desires you! That’s why He created you. That’s why He became a man for you. That’s why He went to the cross for you. That’s why He gives Himself to you and me in the Eucharist. And on and on. How desperately most of us need to know this. Not intellectually. Experientially. In an increasingly anxious, lonely, isolated world, most people long to know they matter, that they’re seen, that they’re loved. And here’s the reality: you are! I am!

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"Family. That one word is perhaps the simplest way to get our heads around why God created us. He created us to be His family, His sons and daughters, brothers and sisters all. Given that, in these initial weeks of Lent, perhaps it might especially be worth asking the Father to help us better see both ourselves and all those we encounter as He does. There are no unimportant people to God. There is no one our Father doesn’t want to know His reckless love. There is no one who is not supposed to be here. There is no one for whom God did not become a man, go to the cross, and do battle against our ancient foe. There is no one I will meet today who is not my brother or sister and His son or daughter. No one. I, for one, can easily forget that."

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How might we best enter into this season of grace, especially the first half, which is something like an extended examination of conscience, before we start to focus on preparing for the celebration of Jesus’ triumphal Passion, Death and Resurrection?

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Jesus’ prayer for the unity of all those who believe in Him is one that I fear many of us — myself very much included — do not usually take anywhere seriously enough. In His farewell discourses in John, the Lord’s motive for this unity is twofold: that the world will believe the Father sent Him and that the world may know that God loves them even as He does His Son (cf. John 17:11-23).

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...the peace God and God alone can give and does give is able to calm our hearts and minds even when things all around us are on fire, whether literally or figuratively. The peace of Jesus can reign in us regardless of whether or not the circumstances of life or up or down.

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As we turn the calendar and continue to read and watch stories of ongoing violence, wars, and division, let us call upon the intercession of Peter and Paul, and invoke the power of the Holy Spirit to fall upon us, that we may somehow further and advance the peace that only God can give and bring to the creature made in His image and likeness whom He so loves.

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As we enter into this new year, mindful of the division, resentment, anger, enmity and more that are tearing apart the human race, let us call upon the intercession of St. Stephen and his friend and brother, St. Paul. May their powerful prayers help us to see one another as we should, as brothers and sisters.

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Emmanuel doesn’t merely mean “God is with us,” as in “God is in our midst.” It means, “God is on our side.” He has come for us. Because for some unimaginable and unexplainable reason, the Creator of all that is is passionately in love with us! May the Holy Spirit overwhelm us anew in these holy days we are about to enter.

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