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Text Box: glorifying ourselves or giving ourselves accolades. Each of us has talents or abilities which we are able to exercise. Some of these talents are wearisome to us when we exercise them. Perhaps they are wearisome because we are exercising them in a venue not inductive to focus on Godly things. We should be able to ascertain a method of utilizing some if not most or all of our talents in a manner which will serve for the glorification of God and the salvation of souls. There was a man named Dominick who lived bed-bound for many years with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS). Before the illness made its presence known to him, he was a successful driving force in the business world. After the diagnosis he rapidly became incapacitated. And after his incapacitation he did more to live and thereby to teach the Peace of Christ through his restricted life than he had during all of his healthy life. He did more than most healthy people do. And he did it by simply being nice. He could not preach from the street corners. He could not give money alms. He could only rarely attend Divine Liturgy, and was unable to attend Divine Liturgy for many years even on those rare occasions when it was prayed in the nursing home where he resided because of his inability to be moved - his skin was very fragile, easily broken, and almost transparent. He only received the Sacred Eucharist when it was brought to him. But his attitude was in concert with God and the will of God. Thus he taught The Way of Christ, and did more than most to present an example of the living Word of God. Surely if a person with Lou Gehrig’s Disease can spread the Gospel, so also can each of us. Ref: James 1:22-27; John 16:23-30 +

Text Box: LORD JESUS, MAY WE, YOU AND I, MAKE ME WHOLLY THINE Towards the end of the liturgy of the Stations or Way of The Cross, a prayer states: “Let not Thy bitter agony and death be fruitless in my soul, but may they make me wholly Thine.” Considering what we know Christ to have endured solely out of or in His Divine Love for each of us, and solely for our benefit, we should fervently attempt to really mean and put this prayer into practice, to make it reality. That prayer, again, is “Let not Thy bitter agony and death be fruitless in my soul, but may they make me wholly Thine.” Under the Law of the Old Testament blood sacrifices were lavishly used to cleanse everything from defilement and from sin. The Israelites as a people as well as individuals were cleansed from their sins annually and more often through the blood of the sacrificial animals which generally were immolated after being slain. There were also offerings of crops and other items, but the blood sacrifices were the major ones. Circumcision itself, the outward sign of God’s chosen people, was a bloodletting, and the first born was redeemed with a bloody sacrifice. By the time of Christ the sacrificial bloodletting had disintegrated into a form of excessive debauchery so that what once had been a series of sacrifices sparsely spread out through each year, with an annual large sacrifice for the sins of the people, had turned into almost continual sacrifices so that the bloody stench around the Temple must have been horrible. By that time, for all practical purposes it was impossible for an individual to bring his or her own animal to be sacrificed, for the priests would find something wrong with the animal and the person wishing to have a sacrifice made would have to purchase one from the herds maintained by the priests. It is not unlikely that an animal rejected by the priests because of a blemish would be sold to someone else for use as a sacrificial animal by

Text Box: the priests later that day. The Old Testament was prophetic, and in Christ the permanent, perfect, prophetic sacrificial victim was incarnate. The Jews, concerned with the outward, physical world, ignored the Old Testament Prophets and the few Holy Kings who attempted to lead the people into internal conversion, which is the prerequisite for entry into the eternal kingdom. Christ preached the necessity of this internal conversion, taught how to accomplish it - knowing and showing it is a struggle but one which may be accomplished with persistent application, effort, and prayer - and explained the mercy of God to mankind as had never before been explained. Christ clearly and plainly stated the eternal kingdom of God is spiritual; when accessed by man is accessed interiorly; and of extreme importance, He taught that only the Blessed of the Sermon on the Mount will have access to that kingdom. He stressed the reality of the necessity of bloody sacrifice from a sacrificial victim. He taught and reinforced the Old Testament teaching that the perfect sacrificial victim who would once and forever make atonement for the sins of the repentant by redeeming them through that Sacrifice’s own blood must be God and man voluntarily offering Himself, for no other was capable of being an effective such sacrifice. It therefore was imperative that Christ not only clearly state His true identity as the unique God man, but also prove it, which He did in part through His numerous miracles. Christ’s resurrection from the dead not only was the ultimate proof of His Divinity, but also the proof of His teachings, and a statement as to the future resurrection of every human being: some to eternal joy, some to eternal damnation; based on the individual’s following of Christ’s teachings and acceptance of that which Christ provided - prior to their own death.

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