 I'm just honored to be able to be with you all for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is it is just remarkable to be in the presence of people who just give and serve. One thing I noticed though is that maybe when you're in a gathering like this, a gathering of people who consistently give and you're someone who consistently gives, there's a number of things we can do. One is we can have that posture of like, yeah, so that's right, I do give, so give to me now. That's kind of a thing. That's like, yeah, or it's either looking on the room and saying, well, I put on retreats. Let's see how you guys do. Like that kind of thing. But there's also, there's also this temptation a lot of times. That temptation that is, as I look around the room, all I can see is my own failure. I just want to start off with this, just, well, this is the first point. There's a couple. The first one is this. Just to kind of get kind of a context, I've had the honor to be able to go to Israel a number of times and one of the things that we'll typically do is we get to Cana and if there's any couples in the group, the couples get to renew their wedding vows. And it's one of those things, and in fact, I just did this recently in my hometown. This couple came up and said, it's our 29th wedding anniversary. Can we renew today? Can we renew our wedding vows? And I'm like, that's great. Yeah, number 29. Very special. But what happened with them was what happens with all these couples in Cana. No, not every couple, but many of them, as they come before each other and they're holding each other's hands and they're repeating their vows. One of the things I've noticed is that it is incredibly rare that they actually look at each other when they say their vows, which is so different because I do a lot of weddings. And at weddings, I mean, they are just right in each other's eyes. I mean, they're like, yes, gazing, like, this is it. I was saying this, I, Jack, take you, Jill, you know, I, Jill, take you, Jack. But then when they're renewing their vows, it's, I, Jack, do this, Jill, to Jill. I, Jill, to the Jack. And that doesn't shock me, and it also doesn't, I don't look, I don't think negatively about that because I just, I guess last month, like a lot of the priests had my ordination anniversary. And when people make a big deal about it, I really, I hate it. I hate when people make a big deal about my anniversary because when it gets brought up, all I can think about is how I failed. They congratulations, the anniversary, all I can think about is all of the times that I've failed to be the priest that I want to be, that I know God called me to be. I think this is the same reason why these couples, as they're holding each other's hands, they don't look each other in the eyes because on their wedding day, it's like, yes, I promise all these things. And now, here we are, five years later, 10 years later, 29 years later. I'm going to say the same words, but you know the truth now. And I want to do the same, I want to honor you and love you and all these things, but you now know the truth. Yes, on our wedding day, you knew that I was a broken person. On our wedding day, I knew you were a broken person, but now we really know in which ways we're broken people. And it's sometimes hard to look each other in the eye and say, okay, I'm still here. So I take all of that and bring it to a place like this, the Bosco Conference, where there's all these people who serve and all these people who like are faithful. I look around and like, oh my gosh, but I try so hard and I just fail so much. And so one of the things we can do is we can focus more on our failure than we can on the Lord. I see a lot of times you say, focus more on our failure than we do on our victories. That's not the point. Focus more on our failures than we do on the Lord. We'll get back around to this in a second, but over last weekend, not this weekend, but before I was able to get this fourth of July weekend and I was able to go home to be with my, my parents and a bunch of my sisters and their husbands and their kids. And my brother was back there with his wife and their kids. And it was so funny because like the age ranges are from, I think 22 down to two of my, my nieces and nephews. And so you can see this development level as it's, they have developed. This is super good. And because the young, oh my gosh, Lucy, Lucy is great. Lucy is of a particular, I think she's five somewhere in there. She's my sister, Sarah's daughter. And Lucy at one point, Lucy had done something with her plate. This is a separate time. Lucy had done something with her plate. And her mom said, because all the kids, this is great. Sorry, I'm going to make a point at some point. So my brothers-in-law are like really good cooks. And so they take care of all the food. I'm like, can I help? Like, no, you're good. I'm like, okay, I'll just have my beer. And then my nieces and nephews are so trained that they clean the dishes. So I'm like, can I help? Like, no, I don't have my beer. I don't have to do anything. It's amazing. Again, that wasn't really a point either, but we're getting back to this because the kids have to do something. So Lucy, five or so, at one point, her mom said, Lucy, put your plate back on the table, you need to clean, clean up. And she did one of these things where she slammed her plate on the table and they had a bunch of, I don't know, like, juices from fruit and stuff. So it was red and it banged off the table and landed on the white carpet. Cause, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How about you put white carpet in your dining room? Good thinking, mom. And, uh, and it flipped over, landed upside down, all this over. And she started walking away like in a half. Like, I don't care about this. She's, I'm leaving and her mom was like, Lucy, you know, it was just really bad. Lucy got back here and she did that kind of like side, like, do I get back? I'm mad, but I'm in trouble. Like, as she's walking away, like, no, I'm not going to walk back in. And I just like this panic that she had because she knows I'm going to, I'm going to keep walking because I am mad, but also I should turn around right now, but mom is mad. I don't know what to do. So I'm going to settle into my, into my mad. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to settle into my mad. I'm going to do my thing because her mom told her no, this is one of those interesting things. When it comes to growing, we have to learn how to do a number of things. One of those is we need to learn how to manage our emotions, obviously. Another thing is we need to learn how to hear the word no and not be crushed by it. We need to learn how to hear the word no, how to be told no, and that doesn't destroy our relationship. And I think about this not only in terms of, you know, as you're, as we're being raised as, as kids of our parents, let's look at this in terms of our relationship with the Lord, a sign of maturity, a sign of maturity is God is able to tell me no and it doesn't break our relationship. A sign of immaturity is God doesn't have my permission to tell me no, that I can hold him hostage because he has to do what I want. But a sign of maturity is that God actually gets to tell me no and it doesn't affect our relationship. Does that make sense? I think a lot of us are in this place where I realized that that's what God's calling me to. He's calling me to a new place in my life. He's calling me to a place where, I mean, it's not like a new place. Like he's going to start saying no from now on. Like, no, he's been saying no a lot, but he's calling us to a place where when he says no, that doesn't even affect our relationship in the slightest. If he can't tell me no, then we don't have a real relationship. If God can't tell me no to a desperate prayer, then we don't have a mature relationship. So we have to ask the question. If I struggle with God telling me no, why? If I still struggle with God telling me no, what am I struggling with? It couldn't be, because I really want this thing and I just really have a lot of desire for whatever that thing is. It could be because I love someone else and I'm really begging God to help them, that can be real. But what is it that I'm really struggling with when God tells me no? You know, in the first reading, it's phenomenal. It also has a lot of names. I don't know if you tracked along with it. Maybe if you had your Magnificat and prayed with it five times this morning, like, okay, I got it. They're talking about three distinct people. They're talking about Ahaz, the king of Judah. Ahaz, by the way, bad king, like one of the worst kings. Just super bad, not super bad, like awesome, but like super terrible. Ahaz, bad. And then you have Resin, the king of Aram, which is basically Syria. And then you have Pika, the king of Israel, right? So the divided kingdom. So Ahaz is the kingdom of Judah, the two tribes in the south. And Pika is the, Pika, true. He is the, he is the king of Israel, the 10 tribes in the north. And so what happens is Syria or, and also a bunch of different names, right? Sometimes they call it Israel, sometimes they call it Ephraim. Like, please, Isaiah, just make it clear. That's my job. Here's so. Um, you have Resin and Pika, again, no, I can't not think of Pikachu. Um, who, who unite to attack the two tribes of Judah. And so here is Isaiah coming to Ahaz, the bad king, horrible king. The best thing that Ahaz does is he, um, has a son who becomes a decent king. That's, that's the best thing he does. But here's Isiah coming to Ahaz and saying, okay, what you're going to do, what you want to do is you want to make an alliance with the Syria, because you think that if you make an alliance with the Syria, then you'll be strong enough to fight against Pika and Resin. But I'm here to tell you this already. He goes, he even goes on to say they went up to attack Jerusalem. They were not able to conquer it. It's for all intents and purposes. To everything that, that Ahaz could see, the kingdom of Syria and the kingdom of Israel, the monstrous kingdoms. I mean monsters in, in, in this site, they, they are, they're overwhelming in, in their force, they're overwhelming in their power, overwhelming in their strength. There's no way that two tribes of Judah, the two tribes down south where Ahaz is the king, there's no way that they could actually fight and defeat these two nations coming against them. But God says, to me, I love this. He says, let not your courage fail before these two stumps of smoldering brands, like to you. Yeah, they're massive kingdoms descending upon Judah. To me, they're just two stumps of smoldering brands. They're, they're nothing. What I'm going to ask you to do is not make an alliance with the Syria, what I'm going to ask you to do is simply trust me. Cause here's, here's, here's what it is, right? Why doesn't God get to tell me no? Because I don't trust him. Why does God not have my permission to tell me no without our, our relationship going into a tailspin? Because I don't trust him. Like if we truly got to that place where we were able to say, Lord, you know the best and you will not abandon me in the worst. So here's what I desire. Here's what my heart longs for. Here's what I think is the best thing for this other person. But if you say no, I'm still yours. That's why it's not a matter of I'm just going to look to my own failures or I'm going to look to my own victories. No, it's, it's instead of looking at my own failures as we look around this room, I'm just going to look to Jesus. I mean, really, truly, we're going to land the plane right now. To be able to begin this day and continue this week with this, this mentality, this, this mindset, this, this view that says this, says I'm not going to measure my failures or my victories against the people around me. I'm not going to even measure my victories or my failures against myself. What I'm going to do is I'm going to learn from my failures and I'll look to the Lord because the thing he wants the most from you is not more service. The thing he wants the most from you is not more work. The thing he wants most from you is not more productivity or more conversions and more disciples that you make. What he wants from you is your heart. The most important thing, most valuable thing you can do for the Lord this week and when you go home with your entire life. It's not giving more disciples. It's not giving more Bible studies. It's not giving him more youth that come to know him. The most important thing you can give him is yourself, is your heart, is your trust. I just hear Jesus' voice as he's speaking to Betsaida and to Coruscine. He says, woe to you Betsaida, woe to you Coruscine. Why? Because if the mighty works done for you had been done inside of Gomorrah, they would have repented. The big question basically you hear Jesus asking is, what more do I need to do to prove to you that you can trust me? And this is the question. We're here today, this week, and every single one of us, every single one of us, struggles with holding onto something. We struggle with looking back into the eyes of our beloved and saying, Jesus, once again, I'm yours. And I promise to love you for the rest of my life, knowing we're going to fail. But what more do we have, what more does he have to do to prove to us that we can trust him? All he wants, all he wants this week and all he wants for the rest of your life is that mature relationship where he can say to us, yes, we say, I trust you, Jesus. And he can say to us, wait, we can say, I trust you, Jesus, and he can say to us, I love you, but no. And we say, I trust you, Jesus.