 brothers, I just want to say again how much of a blessing it is to be with you and I'm humbled to celebrate this holy mass. I offer the intention, my intention for each of you as priest-eacons and seminarians, for your own intentions and for God's intentions for you that you may not even know of yet. For that mission, that desert that the Lord may be leading into you because He brings forth great flowers, great fruit even in the midst of the desert and the Spirit of the Lord as Father Dave said to us beautifully earlier is upon each of us. I don't know about you but sometimes I find being Catholic quite humorous and this is what I mean by that. We do things like we say St. Lawrence, you know, is the patron saint of firemen because he was martyred on basically being burned or we talk about the saints or experiences and one of those is today we hear the readings that are actually from Ash Wednesday. I don't know about you but I always find this kind of humorous that we hear this gospel about being hidden and then we put ashes on our heads. I just think that's being Catholic. There's some funny things that are a part of our faith but what do we make of this this passage in the gospel from the Sermon on the Mount? I mean I think we can we can take many many things from this but as I was praying about it I was thinking these practices of the church, these precepts of the church, almsgiving, fasting, prayer, these are practices of what we might call piety and sometimes we resist that word because piety is seen as saccharine or sort of I don't know like just archaic but we are called to be pious men in the sense that we have a heart of devotion for the Lord and the commandments of the Lord and the practices of the Lord. Even as I was noticing in morning prayer today it caught my attention we prayed Isaiah 33 the canticle and part of it says Anzion sinners are in dread trembling grips the impious and it goes on to say he who practices virtue and speaks honestly so I think even the scriptures are extolling a certain piety, a righteousness, a desire for virtue but our intention in the way we live that piety in the way we show it forth I think is what our Lord is inviting us to examine today why do we do what we do how do we do what we do who are we seeking to please and sometimes perhaps we are seeking to please other people to please the friars to please the students to please the parents who send students here to please your parishioners to please your formator and it's not all of bad thing you know some of that is important we need to be faithful to that but ultimately is our desire by the way we live our life by the way we pray when we pray when we fast when we give is that for the Lord is that for the Lord and how do we do that how do we live that in our lives how do we share that that phrase do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing I'm not exactly sure what that means maybe you are but as I'm thinking about it I'm praying about it even ourselves are we are we is there a certain amount of guardedness in recognizing our own works our own call is there a certain amount of self-awareness and how am I responding to the praise that I receive from others am I returning it to the Lord false humility would be to say to that parishioner when they say thank you for your homily Lord it really blessed me oh no it really was nothing maybe it's just well thank you for acknowledging that praise God for for the way that my homily blessed you how do we return the glory to the Lord for every good work that he does through us how do we do works of piety when no one is watching when no one will know when perhaps it can be something of a penance because someone else has forgotten something and maybe we do it for them or we cover for someone and they never say thank you or they never know but we trust that the Lord knows it and receives it was thinking about one of our friars and our friars who will hear who are here will remember him father pat george and father pat was just a person that a friar a priest who i just have a great love for he died several years ago his death anniversary is coming up this week and and he was a man who was a simple man very a learned man in his own way very personal man with the friars around him he worked with our postulence for years he worked with our older friars and i think he was assigned to these different positions because he had a deep kindness he was also a pious man he was a man who i knew prayed he was a devotional man you could almost set your clock that he was going to pray the divine mercy chaplet at three o'clock each day and if you came in his room he'd invite you to join him in the chaplet he would be in the chapel praying often and he was unashamed of his prayer but he wasn't showy in his prayer but everyone knew he prayed and there was something beautiful about that and it was something for me as a younger friar and even as a young priest that was inspiring for me you know and i remember one time we were close enough that we had this conversation and he said he said to me you know i i've one thing i'm disappointed about i've i've never prayed in tongues and i was sort of humbled and you know he that he said this to me and all i could think in my internally was you have much more of the holy spirit than i do i have no doubt about that or i have the same amount but you have yielded to the spirit more than i have i said to him father pat i don't know why you haven't received that gift but you are a man of the holy spirit and the lord if he wants to give you that gift will give you that gift and if not then there's a reason that he has he seemed content with that answer but even just him asking me that showed me the kind of man that he was still hungry for the spirit still hungry for more of the lord kind of like an elisha in today's first reading asking boldly audaciously for a double portion of elisha's spirit and even elisha was taken back by that question i think well i'm not sure if you'll get it elisha but he was willing to put that before the lord and elisha did receive that and he went on to take up the mantle of elisha so we should have that boldness to ask for the holy spirit but also that hiddenness in the way that we live the call of the lord in our lives so brothers let us continue to pray for that grace let us continue to pray at the altar of the lord today that when we pray when we fast when we give alms it would be for the pleasure of our lord let us continue to pray that just as the spirit of the lord is resting upon us that in a new way at this mass in a new way that our vocations will be deepened that the holy spirit will be poured forth in a new way this day so that we can simply be the men of god that he enables us to be and may god give you peace