The Privilege Christ Gives Us: Weekly Message for 10-29-2019

Dear Fellow Digital Pilgrim, pax Christi:

When I was a college student, the motor of my life was a search for meaning.  I didn’t want to get to my fifties (where I am now) and suddenly realize that (as one popular writer at the time put it) I had spent my life climbing a ladder of success that was leaning against the wrong wall.  I hungered for meaning.  I yearned to invest the energy of my life in something that would truly last.

That desire was one of the graces God used to lead me along the path of my vocation to the priesthood.  Now, thirty years later, I think I am beginning to realize just how amazing a privilege Jesus gives to every Christian – not just his priests – by giving us all the command to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).

Whenever we help bring another person a step closer to Christ, we are having an eternal impact.  Whenever we help – directly or indirectly – someone move even a tiny bit towards the “truth that will set them free” (cf. John 8:32), we are doing something that will reverberate not only throughout the finite time and space of humanity’s earthly pilgrimage, but even into the infinite horizons of everlasting life.  

Whenever we do something for Christ – whether offering up our own sufferings, obeying his will in little or big things, spreading the Good News he entrusted to his Church, or even just speaking his name with faith and love – we are engaged in helping build up the only Kingdom that will have no end.  What could possibly be more meaningful than that?

In today’s noisy and secularized world, popular culture rarely comments on how amazing it truly is that our words and actions can help build up an eternal Kingdom.  That’s one reason we decided to dedicate our most recent Retreat Guide to the topic. If you haven’t yet had a chance to watch, listen to, or read The Kingdom without End: A Retreat Guide on Christ the King, I strongly encourage you to do so.  

As the liturgical year winds down, the coming Solemnity of Christ the King reminds us that everything merely material, everything merely earthly, will pass away.  But if we plug our hearts and minds into what lasts forever, we will uncover the meaning that satisfies even the hungriest heart. It is our sincere hope that this new Retreat Guide – along with our many other resources – will help you experience afresh that kind of indescribable satisfaction.

Yours in Him,

Fr John Bartunek, LC

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