 So my father works at the railroad, so a blue collar job that kind of grew up in that culture, and there's something that's unique about blue collar workers that you don't really see in a lot of the circles that we end up running in more of the white collar stuff, because they just kind of say what's on their mind. It's less veiled, and honestly there's some integrity there, it might not be nice, it might be less polite, but it's honest. And my dad has these couple of interactions. It's really, really interesting and highly disappointing actually. So he's kind of open about the fact that I'm his son and I'm a priest. Comes up in conversation, he's candid about his Catholic faith, and he talks about it, especially whenever guys come to him for advice. But word gets out, and there are some of these other guys, and they're not so open to it. In fact, they go to such extremes as to adopt what the secular world has come to widely believe that we're all a bunch of child molesters. It's what they believe, and they'll tease, and they'll poke, and they'll prod, and they'll harass, and so my dad has to deal with that. And there's another guy that he works with whose son is also a priest. But my dad and this guy have two different ways of dealing with it, because they both face the same trial. Well this other guy, he responds with anger and threats of violence. It stops the harassment. It's effective. However, he's angry then. He's wound up, and he's upset, and it demeans him. My father, on the other hand, takes this very interesting approach, and they don't know what to do with it. He comes along and he says, you don't know what you're talking about. Just go away. Just go away. But he says, I'll pray for you. And they get all flustered about that. Whenever he says, I will pray for you. They don't know what to do with it. They actually get upset themselves. And then they go away, and it's over. But to that point is the gospel for today, where Jesus says, pray for your enemies. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. It's counterintuitive. It doesn't make sense, because everything in our being, from the natural point of view, from our fallen nature wants to freak out and become angry. And there's so many reasons. There's so many reasons to become angry. Whether it's the secular media, whether it's corruption, whether it's our own brothers who have maligned our good name by their actions. We could get angry. YouTube theological commentators who undermine the church. And the list goes on and on and on, or just difficult parishioners. All these various aspects of our life, reasons we could choose to become angry. And in some sense, maybe rightfully so. But the challenge of the gospel is to live differently. The challenge that Jesus lays before us today is to live differently. Because, as he says, well, the tax collectors and the sinners, they do the same. The Gentiles do the same. They only care for those whom they're close to and like. But we have the example of the early church, the martyrs. And onward, in the face of persecution, rather than reviling, rather than getting angry, rather than being resentful and bitter and spiteful, they turn with love. To pray for their persecutors. To pray for those who are going to kill them in a few minutes. And it's that witness that brought about so many conversions. The witness that, although we, in their minds, should respond with anger at the injustice that we see and that we experience, when we don't, there's a difference. People see the gospel, they see Jesus in us. He who was accused falsely. He who was reviled and persecuted and opened not his mouth. He who suffered death to take the sin upon himself and it changed everything. Now, easier said than done, obviously. Obviously. Because of our own strength, I can't do it. You can't do it. None of us are capable of our own strength to take on this burden, to live out this call, to love our enemies, to be patient enough to pray genuinely from our hearts for our persecutors. From those who accuse us falsely. But we don't have to do it alone. Peter was speaking early about how difficult and how dark and how the powers of darkness are rising up. And we see it. In and out, I was talking to someone last night about the exorcist, chief exorcist of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. He made a comment. He's a blog that he writes. And he said, you know, there's a saying that exorcist or that possession is rare. And at the end he said, I'm not so sure that's true. And this is a man with experience. But the point is not to despair, but the point is to rejoice because when sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. That we are given the authority and the power to deal with it by the grace of God. That we are given the inroads into people's lives that they can entrust themselves to us to seek our assistance. And we can provide it to give them that care, to walk with them, to bring them into the life of the church once again. Through the sacraments, through those extra sacramental inroads. But again, we can't do it on our own strength. I've tried it. It doesn't work. Okay, I'm sure many of us have tried it. And we end up burned out, tired, exhausted, seeking the wrong things, worn out, and just frustrated. Because we run out of ideas. We run out of energy. We run out of everything that it takes. But it's only, it's only whenever we seek that friendship, that brotherhood with Jesus, daily prayer, every day. When we seek that brotherhood with our other brothers, brother priests, brother deacons, if you're seminarians, brother seminarians, to seek that fraternity. But ultimately it's the Lord who has to inspire it in us. And so where sin abounds all the more, grace abounds more than that. So there's a great darkness, but it's a time of grace all the more. Gifts, I'm sure, gifts of the Holy Spirit that we haven't yet seen. Gifts for evangelization, gifts for healing, gifts for deliverance, gifts for perseverance in the midst of trial and affliction. But we have to ask the Lord. We have to seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So we're speaking of baptism of the Holy Spirit earlier. If you haven't experienced it, go for it. It'll change your life, all for the better. And you lose a little bit of control. You don't know what the Lord's gonna do. But it's good. It is good. Because then we lose, we begin to lose track of our own ego and focus on the Lord. It becomes about serving him and him alone. Now I've only been a priest two and a half years. A lot of you have a whole lot more experience than me, so maybe I'm preaching to the choir here. But we all need a good word. We all need the encouragement. And so we, through this week, I really want to, again, encourage, hammer that point home, again and again and again. It seems to be a grace that the Lord wants to pour out. That through this last year, the dead branches have shaken and they've broken off. And the weak ones need to be strengthened. But when we rely on the Lord, when we draw upon his strength, when we turn to him in this Eucharist and offer him those struggles and offer him those joys that we have too, the ways that we've seen growth. And we'll receive that grace to love as he loved, the grace to persevere as he did, to forgive his offenders, to forgive his persecutors, to forgive and to bless them, to give them that grace that they may always seek then to serve the Lord when their hearts have turned to him.