 You know, there's talk even among Catholics, but especially Protestants, but even among Catholics, that as things devolve, things get worse, that there's something really good about it, because that means Jesus is coming back. And that has been the case for a long, long time. On September 5th, 19, excuse me, there was a book called September 5th, 1975, among other predictions, and I went to church for the last time before I began college at my dad's church, and two different people stopped me and said, why are you going to Grove City? Jesus is coming next week, and they were serious. And I said, if Jesus comes next week, he's gonna find me at Grove City College. The good news, whether it's good news or not, is we don't know when Jesus is coming, and so we live today in the light of all that we do know. Okay? And so when we hear the phrase, the battle is the Lord's, it's not, it's his, therefore it's not mine. I can sleep in, I can take it easy, because he's gonna take care of it. The good news is the battle is the Lord's, and therefore the battle is yours. It is mine. And I have three main things I wanna say today about the battle is the Lord's. The first one is, it is ours, and we have been commissioned. The second is, we are to fight in his strength, and with his weapons. And third, we are to fight the way Jesus fought. We'll see if I can do that. So first of all, the battle is the Lord's, and therefore it is ours because we've been commissioned. How have we been commissioned? By virtue of our baptism and our confirmation. By the Holy Spirit in whom we were baptized and in whom we were sealed through confirmation. You know, when we're baptized into Christ, the Catechism in number 14 says we have been baptized into his priesthood, which means that we offer all of our lives in union with Christ, offering in the mass to consecrate the world to the Father. We have been baptized secondly into his prophetic witness. We've been given the ability and the responsibility to accept the gospel in faith and to proclaim it in word indeed. And third, we have been baptized into his kingship. We're to bring Christ's kingship to bear in worldly affairs, administering justice and charity. This is how we sanctify the temporal order. This is huge. I mean, when you go to a baptism, you're not always thinking about all that's happening to this little baby and yet being baptized into Christ is being baptized into his priesthood, his prophetic witness and his kingship. Through our baptism, according to Pope Benedict the 16th, we have entered the door of faith, but then we have to respond to the graces that we have been given. It's not automatic. We haven't been put on a conveyor belt. We have to respond to those graces. And then we're being sealed in the Holy Spirit, by the Holy Spirit in confirmation. I do wish we went back to that old tradition where the bishop would give a little slap to someone being confirmed because the point of it was, in a sense saying, will you suffer for Christ? Will you be a soldier for Jesus Christ? And that's certainly a question more Christians around the world are really facing. Will you die for Jesus Christ? God's grace makes it possible for us to take this journey of faith. And after Jesus' baptism, where did he go? He went into the desert. He was challenged by Satan, Satan twisting and misusing God's word, but Jesus uses the scriptures to refute him. And likewise, we need to be so soaked in scripture in truth that when the evil one attacks, and he will attack, that we will know how to answer him. We will know how to speak to him. We have to remember where we are, okay? We are not on a playground where everything is just for our pleasure. We are in the midst of a battleground and there are snipers in the trees, the evil one in his minions. We're referred to as part of the church militant, okay? We do not need to fear, but we do need to be aware. The outcome is certain, but we do live in this in-between time in our lives. We have a confidence God is at work. Now, if you have your Bibles, I'm gonna give you a bunch of scriptures. So go ahead and get your Bibles out if you want to look with me, where you look first at the Philippians 2. Philippians 2 verses 12 and 13, God is at work. We keep coming back to the fact that our confidence is in the Lord, okay? We recognize we're in a battle, but our confidence is in the Lord. Look at Philippians 2, 12 and 13. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only is in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. He gives us his presence, and he gives us his power. We are to obey, we are to go forth, we're to bring our witness to this world, but we can do it knowing that he is the one working in us and through us. But we also have to be aware that the devil's at work too. Turn to 1 Peter 5.8, be sober and be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. God has a plan for your life, and so does the devil. But only one plan will bring us into eternal glory in Christ. The evil one wants to trap us, to set us back, to say, oh, you were so inspired at that conference and see you're living just the same way it wore off, or you'll never be able to take this home and share it, or whatever the discouragement may be that the evil one wants to say, listen to the Lord. Listen to the Lord tell you who you are and what he has planned for you to do. First John 4.4, just over another chapter. Little children, you are of God and have overcome them for he who is in you is greater than he that is in the world. You can be confident, not because you're super talented or intelligent or spiritual, but because of who God is. And he is the one residing within you. Listen to truth and understand we don't fight alone. We need to harness the host of heaven. Do you believe Mary is your spiritual mother? Then draw close to her. I know that most of our images of Mary are very sweet and gentle and kind and loving, but she crushes a serpent under her foot, okay? Most women, when they see a snake, run. Mary right on the head, okay? So don't put Mary in such a situation that you can't even imagine her being a warrior maiden because I believe that she is that as well. And believe me, when a child feels threatened, a mother may be very meek and mild, but if she feels her child is threatened, it will bring out the lioness in her. And I really do see Mary that way. Turn for a moment to Revelation 12. When I was in the process of conversion, one of my friends called from Milwaukee and he said, well, on your struggle with Mary, do you see her as your spiritual mother? And I said, no, I really don't. And he said, but you're her offspring. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, okay, get your Bible, I'll wait. So I ran and got my Bible. And I'm not sure why, but I don't remember it ever coming up in conversation with Scott. And so he gave me the background of chapter 12, where you've got the woman who's with child being attacked and she goes off in the wilderness and she gives birth and there's this cosmic battle going on. And of course, you can spiritualize it to understand a battle with the church, but you really have to take it for its literal meaning before you jump into the spiritual meanings. And he said, just skip down to the end of the chapter and read verse 17. Then the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. And he said, so are you somebody who keeps the commandments of God and bears testimony to Jesus? Yes, and he said, well then you're her offspring. He's like, okay, I fold, I guess that's true. We're not alone in this battle. When we come to the realization that we are in a pitch battle, that we are soldiers for Jesus Christ. And I'm really sad that a lot of hymnals have dropped the hymn onward Christian soldiers kind of under the guise of pacifism because we are in a pitch battle and we must find our voice and we must foray into the darkness with light, okay? But we don't do it alone. God doesn't ask us to do it alone. Revelation refers to myriads of angels around the throne who are active in spiritual warfare. And they pray with us and they pray for us. The St. Michael prayer is very powerful to pray when you have a sense of spiritual conflict and to call, we're to call on the host of heaven. We're to call on those wonderful saints like St. Bridget, St. Francis to come to our aid, to assist us in our discernment of what's going on. Look at Hebrews 12. And I won't go into the whole story background. I've shared that in Rome's sweet home but when we had a tubal pregnancy, miscarriage and it was just very, very painful, very difficult, full C-section. We had little ones at home so Scott had to leave and in the middle of all this, I was not Catholic, the Lord brought this scripture to my heart. And it's one of the reasons I tease you all about this but Protestants don't have an extra gene to make it easier to memorize scripture. Okay, we need to do that. We need to put God's word in our heart because there are crises where we don't have time to call a priest and say, can you give me a good verse? We need to speak the truth to our hearts and so this came to my heart, Hebrews 12, one and two. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith and then it goes on. What was he saying? Well, first of all, it's present tense which is interesting. It's not something just happened in the past. It's something that's happening right now. Secondly, the scene is like a stadium. It reminded me of the Olympic Stadium but the difference is everyone in the stands has already meddled in the race I'm running. And they're not sitting there watching me. They're cheering me on. They're with me in spirit and they're not criticizing all the ways in which I'm tripping up myself and I'm falling down and the errors and mistakes I'm making, the ways I'm failing, they're just cheering me on and I had such a sense that in that intense loneliness in that hospital room, without Scott, without this baby I had conceived, without my little children, that I was surrounded by a cloud of witnesses and the blessing that was and I just wept for the joy of God breaking through on the communion of saints with that. This world is a saint-making machine and if we can keep the big picture in mind, we can understand that this is our time to become a saint. This is our opportunity that God is giving us. We should not wish to be in another time because this is the time God has given us. Now I have to tell you one little story about my granddaughter Eliza. She was four years old and she kept bounding down the stairs one morning and she said to my daughter-in-law, Sarah, mom, today I wanna be a saint, today I wanna be really holy. And Sarah said, that's nice, Eliza. And she said, so, don't ask me to do anything I don't wanna do, okay? Not you and me. Holy Lord, I wanna just be totally content and then someone pulls out in front of me and I slam on the brakes and I'm like, ah, I forget. Oh, Lord have mercy. The things that triggered some fresh thoughts in my mind Friday night was hearing Peter craved talk about Sotzenitsyn and I'm just gonna pull one quote that has had me thinking about how we need to pray for our priests in this whole spiritual battle. He said, quote, a fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. How do we help to produce muscular young men spiritually who understand the desirability of the priesthood, who are willing to renounce the goods of this world for the life of spiritual fatherhood, to not just a handful of children, but to thousands of people throughout their life. First, we have to produce young men who actually have experienced difficulties, challenges and sufferings. What are the benefits of being open to life? Whether or not you are blessed with many children, okay, and there's a difference here. Being open to life does not always equal a large family, but one of the benefits of being open to life is living this life of generosity in full color in front of your children. They will see the challenges and the difficulties and how much it drives you to your needs. But you may be blessed with many children and a benefit of that is you can't pamper your children as much as you might think you'd like to. You just have to have them share a room, you have to have them share resources, you have to have them serve one another, and it is so good for them. It's so good for them. We are in this credit card debt-driven economy which gives us this possibility of pampering ourselves and pampering our children nonstop. But is that good for our souls? Is that good for their souls? Are we preparing them for the sacrifices that are necessary, whether they're called to single life, alone, consecrated life, priesthood, or marriage? And I think of athletics as one of those ways in which at least in some measure we let them have a challenge, where a coach will really drive them and push them beyond their natural limits. And it's interesting because Paul draws on that analogy in 1 Corinthians 9, 25 to 27. He says, every athlete exercises self-control in all things, and they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I pummel my body and subdue it lest after preaching to others I myself may be disqualified. How are we training our sons and our daughters in self-denial, self-discipline, sacrificial love so they will know how to give themselves sacrificially to whatever vocation God has called them. I'm gonna ask them to just play one little clip of a CD. This has blessed me so much that I wanted to share it. This is made by the Seminarians Up at Sacred Heart Seminary where my son Jeremiah is studying. And I just ask you to close your eyes and pray quietly the three Hail Marys we're gonna pray and just pray for these young men in formation. Okay, if you would play that. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, great cross of sinners, now and in the hour of our death, amen. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, never shortly, world without end. When I turned that on the first time, I just started weeping to hear these men praying from the heart. You know, there were times in the 60s and 70s where Seminarians were literally forbidden to pray the rosary at seminary. My husband was walking around with a rosary at Mundaline Seminary back in the late 80s. And the seminary came up to him and said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm praying the rosary. And he said, are you allowed to? And Scott said, of course I'm allowed to. And he said, we're not. They would have to meet Father Robert Barron who's now gonna be auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles. When he attended seminary there was part of a secret group that met secretly, privately to pray the rosary. Are we praying for our Seminarians? Are we talking to our young men about the desirability of the priesthood? My husband says, if you haven't understood the intrinsic draw to the priesthood, you don't even know how to discern it. You know, when my son shared with his grandparents that he wanted to become a priest, my mother-in-law said, but you're such a good dancer. A Catholic, okay, so they don't get the big picture. But we do, we do. And we pray that someone else's family is blessed by having a priest. We need to pray for our family to be blessed. I wish I had more time to share. I actually shared for the first time as a mother of a seminarian, and I have a whole talk on that, but I have to limit myself today. It is an incredible adventure to imagine a son being in Persona Christi who will birth children into the kingdom of God through baptism, who will perform the miracle of the two becoming one in the sacrament of marriage, who will prepare souls midwifing them into eternity through the last rites, who will raise the dead in confession. Let your heart be captivated by what our priests do. Thank them, bless them, who bring us the very body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. So the battle is the Lord's and therefore we have been conscripted. Number two, the battle is the Lord's. Therefore we fight with his weapons. Turn to Ephesians six, and we're gonna take this in two parts. Ephesians six, we're gonna read 10 verses 10 to 12. Finally, this is St. Paul to the Ephesian people. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Do not imagine that your spiritual life is not important enough to draw down the forces of evil. Every soul is worth it to the devil to disrupt, and every soul is worth it to our Lord to preserve. But no, you are in a battle. The great news is God does not ask us to do this on our own. Now, David proclaims this throughout the Psalms. It's so beautiful. I mean, he was a powerful warrior. He commanded tens of thousands in his armies. He had the weaponry he needed, but he gives the honor and glory to God. For instance, Psalm 18, scattered verses. For who is God but the Lord, and who is a rock except our God? The God who girded me with strength and made my ways safe. For thou didst gird me with strength for the battle. Thou did make my assailants sink under me. Or again, later in Psalm 68, ascribe power to God whose majesty is over Israel and his power is in the skies. Terrible is God in his sanctuary, the God of Israel. He gives power and strength to his people. In Ephesians one, 19 and 20, Paul prays for the Ephesian people, but he's also praying for us. And one of the things he prays for is for us to know that what is quote, the surpassing greatness of his power in us who believe in accord with the exercise of his great might and what did his great might do? Which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seeding him at the right hand in the heavens. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is within you. That's the Holy Spirit. The same power of the Spirit that is poured out at Pentecost is the same Spirit that has been put within you. The same power we see in the lives of the saints has been given to us. The deep inner strength of people who reject what the world says is powerful and instead trust the Lord. How does God strengthen us? In part through thankfulness, thankfulness. Psalm 138, 1 to 3 says, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart when I called you, answered me and you built up strength within me. We need to ask him and then we need to thank him that he's done it. When we encounter circumstances beyond our control, mysteries of sorrow and suffering and hardship and we feel so weak, we cannot imagine being out on the battlefield and yet here we are. Keep your finger in Ephesians but turn to 2 Corinthians 12. It's one of my most favorite passages because it's so easy for us to give God the excuses of why we can't serve him, why we can't be effective in battle. And sometimes it really is a heavy, heavy weight of sorrow or suffering but this is the good news that St. Paul gives us in 2 Corinthians 12, 9, and 10 because Paul had been suffering with something, kept asking God to take it away and God was saying not yet but he said to me, quote, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness. I will all the more gladly boast of my weakness is that the power of Christ may rest upon me for the sake of Christ then. I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for when I am weak, that I am I strong. The question is not, am I strong enough to do this on my own but am I weak enough? How about a jujitsu move like that? God's powers made perfect in weakness and it's such a relief. It's not am I strong enough for God to use me but am I weak enough to depend upon him? St. Paul says in Philippians 4, 13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. He is the one who strengthens us, arming us for spiritual warfare. He prepares us for answering objections to the gospel. He empowers us as a kingdom of priests as we participate in the mass and offer ourselves in sacrifice. He is the one who provides the priests to strategize and organize the troops. He is the one leading us into repentance and equipping us to grow in service to him. His grace is sufficient to empower us to be the soldiers for Christ we need to be. But let's go back to Ephesians 6. What are the weapons that we need to use? Some attacks are obvious and some attacks are very, very subtle but we have to keep our armor on so that we're ready. Picking up in verse 13, therefore take the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth. That's what you're doing here, okay? That's what you're doing with the books and the tapes and things that you're taking home. Keep filling your mind with what is true. Having put on the breastplate of righteousness. Having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace and be high besides all these taking the shield of faith with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one and there will be darts. There will be darts from the evil one but he's given you a shield of faith to protect you and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication and to that end, keep alert with all perseverance making supplication for all the saints. I don't really have time to go into the details of the defensive weaponry, the armor that will help defend us. I think a lot of it is obvious but that would be a study for another time but I wanna share a little bit more specifically about our offensive weapons. There are two, the word of God which is the sword of the spirit and prayer. Second Timothy 2, 15. St. Paul challenges St. Timothy to be prepared. Quote, do your best to present yourself to God and I just wanna prove to a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Brothers and sisters, we've had a lot of jokes about how well Catholics know scripture but it's time to stop joking about it. You cannot do battle if you have no idea how to hold this thing, okay? The Lord worked through the apostles and the early Christians to give us the sacred scriptures and he worked through the church to give us the collection of the Bible and it's not enough to say it's our heirloom. We've gotta take it off the coffee table, open it up and let the Holy Spirit speak to our hearts through the living word of God and we need to know it, soak it, memorize it, meditate on it, okay? Second Timothy 4.17, the apostles had to be able to give an answer for the hope they had in Christ. Paul says, but the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the message fully that all the Gentiles might hear it. People will ask you why you believe what you believe and it's okay to say you don't know the answer but look it up, study it, find it and come back with the answer. Your children will have questions and it's okay if you can't answer every question right then but promise them you'll come back. 1 Peter 1.13, therefore gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you with the revelation of Jesus Christ and we need to pray that our children know how to defend the faith as well. They need to understand why we believe what we believe not just what we believe. The day's gone when it's enough to just say to someone, well, Father said so, okay? It's good if Father says so but we need to put the why in our children's hearts ourselves. The second offensive weapon is prayer. Do you think of prayer as a weapon? Because it really is. Never ever say all I can do is pray. Prayer is an offensive weapon. We need to work on our mental prayer where we just talk to the Lord. He is your Father. Just open up your heart to Him. Okay, maybe you didn't grow up in a family that prayed easily and comfortably but that doesn't mean you can't learn. Just pray to Him. Open your heart to Him. 1 Chronicles 16, 11 says seek the Lord and His strength. Seek His presence continually. We need to not be overworked and under prayed. If you remember, and we often sing this, Isaiah 40 toward the end of the chapter in verse 31, those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Another thing that strengthens us as a prayer is confession. It's confession, coming and unburdening what ways we have blocked the grace of God in our lives through our sin and allowing that to be removed. Psalm 32, 3, and 4, when I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me and my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. By not confessing our sins, we become weaker and weaker but just go, just go. Come to our Lord in confession and let Him clean you up and get you back on your feet. Catechism says that one of the effects of confession is to increase spiritual strength for the Christian battle. Catechism 1496, the rosary. These are beads for the battle, like the stones that David picked up and conquered Goliath with, okay? Eucharistic adoration. Eucharistic adoration releases power and where do we have scripture and prayer combined? Again, very powerfully in the mass. Liturgy is one of our most important weapons. I wish I could give you more examples, but I'm gonna get on a little further into my notes. Just remember what Joshua did and how it began liturgically marching around Jericho. Now when they marched around, blowing the trumpets once a day for seven days and on the seventh day seven times, after the walls fell, did they say, okay, that concludes our service? No, then the people picked up their swords and they slaughtered everyone except Rahab and her family. It's not a matter of, I just go to mass, okay? That's my participation in spiritual battle. Then, no, we're commissioned. At the end of mass, we are sent out into this world to represent Christ, to hold every thought captive to Christ, to speak the truth in love, in love, but not to fail to speak the truth. And if you listen to my husband's study on the book of Revelation, you'll see the whole book of Revelation is a mass. First half is the liturgy of the word, second half is the liturgy of Eucharist, and it is filled with drama of battle. And I just really encourage you to get the lamb supper if you haven't heard it, if you haven't read it, to see how powerful the liturgy is. We need to understand our priests, as they say mass, are really giving us a call to arms, leading us. It's very interesting that this discussion on spiritual warfare follows the longest chapter St. Paul ever had on marriage. When our first child to get married, who was our second born, Gabriel, and Sarah, knelt down during their wedding ceremony, I had this picture of now one bullseye that encompassed both their backs. And it was funny because at that moment in the mass, I thought, okay, job done, you know? This is, this is, they're now their own family. And I had the deepest sense, oh honey, you have only begun to pray. One of the most powerful things a grandparent does is pray. Again, it's not all I can do is pray, it's I can pray. I can pray now not only for Gabe and Sarah, but for their daughter Veronica, their daughter Eliza, their son Gabriel, their daughter Josie, their daughter Francesca, and the baby due Christmas day. At one level, I just shook because I thought, they are drawing spiritual fire down because they wanna have a holy marriage. They wanna have openness to life. And then I realized that's true, but that Christian wedding is actually a foray of light into darkness. Remember, the gates of hell won't prevail. It's not that the hell's attacking us with gates. It's that we are attacking the gates of hell. And we need holy marriages as well as holy priests to do this. Pray for the marriages of your children. If they are cohabiting, tell them, you cannot say you love this person if you are taking them to hell. Get it right, go to confession, get married in the church, and be who you have been called to be, which is holy men and women in the bond of marriage if that's God's call for your life. We cannot withhold the truth from our children. We've got to speak the truth. So we do it in this, we've been, the battle is the Lord. So the battle is ours. We are the enlistees. We are the commissioned troops. We have to do it in his strength. We have to do it with his weapons and we have to fight the way Jesus fought. So first of all, that's with courage. That's with courage. When Joshua prepares to lead the people of Israel into the promised land, God says to him in chapter one, verse nine, have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Now if he wasn't struggling with a little bit of terror and a little feeling of discouragement, why would God even mention it? The fact that it puts fear in our hearts to imagine going door to door to share the gospel, to talk to people who are in our parish and see if they want to have a Bible study, to risk talking to people at work is because it is normal to feel afraid. It's normal to get a little discouraged when someone shoots you down. But the fact is, you have God's presence and God's power. Okay, you have God's presence and God's power. And he says, do not be terrified. Do not be discouraged. Ulf and Brigida have no idea where God is going to lead them and what they're going to say. But they certainly have been in the midst of those who have rejected the message. Some have accepted and welcomed it. Others have judged, others have criticized. And you may know if I say something to my siblings, to my children, to my parents, I'm gonna face persecution. I don't know if I'm up for that. And the Lord says, have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Second Timothy one, seven and eight, St. Paul says, for God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and love and self-control. Do not be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord nor of me as prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel in the power of God. So if you feel timid, it's understandable. But pray God's word through St. Paul. You didn't give me a spirit of timidity. That's not from you Lord. But you gave me a spirit of power and love and self-control. And what a great combination those are, right? Because if it's only power, you just kind of bulldoze people over with arguments. And if it's only love, you just kind of live it and hope they get the message. And if it's only self-control, again, it sounds somewhat removed. But if you put them all together, we're speaking the truth in love, in the spirit. The second thing is we lead with love. Remember, the battle is not between you and your spouse. The battle is not between you and your child. The battle is between good and evil. And so we need to speak and we need to let the Lord show us ways we need to adjust so that we truly are speaking the truth in love. Romans 12, 21, do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. We've had several friends whose parents are suffering and dying. And those that are Catholic have children who come alongside them and who just keep putting forward what they can do with this suffering, how they can offer it up. And they're spiritually midwifing their parents into eternity. But for those who have Protestant parents, the pain just is pointless. They can't get their mind around it. My mom broke her shoulder in three places and she's really having a tough recovery. And I said, Mom, why don't you get a little flip thing and just every time you do the exercise or every time you do something, you just say, Lord, I'm gonna make this a prayer to you, the struggle of this. And so each time it's a different grandchild or a child or great grandchild now. And I could hear in her voice, she was just like, okay, okay, Kimberley, okay. Like you're really getting Catholic on me here. And I'm thinking, you know. And Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, when he went by a hospital, how much wasted suffering there is? Let's not waste it, let's not waste it. Let's assist each other in leading with love and offering that suffering. Jesus did it with humility. I'm gonna give you a little contrast. The strength of the proud versus the strength of the humble. When we face challenges, we have a choice. Are we gonna be proud and do it in our own strength? Are we gonna humble ourselves and do it in God's strength? Okay. Job says this in 12, 13 and 21, when with God or wisdom and might, he has counsel and understanding. He pours contempt on princes and he loses the belt of the strong. So we're determined to do this in our own strength. Guess what? God's gonna weaken us for our own good because we need to be dependent upon him. We look at the book of Joshua and judges. What's the cycle? You know, things are going well. People kind of take credit for it, build themselves up, get prideful. And in God's love and mercy, he sends them difficulty, challenge. They come under the heel of an enemy and they're humbled and they cry out to God for assistance. He sends a savior. They're saved and they're so thankful and then they begin to think, oh, wow, we did a good job on that. You know, and they cycle. Isn't it interesting that was thousands of years ago and we do the same thing? When do we pray? When do we pray fervently? When things are going badly? And then all of a sudden, we realize things are going well and it's been a day, two days. We haven't even prayed. We haven't even thought of praying. That is pride. That is pride, the strength of the proud. And we don't want that. In contrast, think of the strength of the humble. I love Hannah's Magnificat and Mary's Magnificat. Hannah says, my heart exalts in the Lord, my strength is exalted in the Lord. The bows of the mighty are broken and the feeble gird on strength. And her child that God blessed her with was Samuel, the last of the judges, a great prophet and priest, and he's the one who anointed the first two kings of Israel. Mary and Luke one, 49 and 51, quote, for he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud and the imagination of their hearts. And of course her child is Jesus. And we also have the humility of Jesus in his crucifixion. The moment that appears to the forces of evil as his greatest weakness becomes the source of greatest triumph as the strength of his arms nailed to the cross and the strength of the spirit he lays down his life for us and then takes it up again in resurrection, preparing heaven for us. Even Mary as an example at the cross is so powerful. She, according to the catechism, never lost the joy, the spiritual virtue of joy as she participated willingly, heart to heart, soul to soul, in his self offering with her own. Again, that moment of absolute weakness becomes a moment of absolute strength in the Lord so that we then get to receive her as our spiritual mother as a beloved disciple at the foot of each cross. So we have a choice to make. Are we gonna stay in maintenance mentality? Be a good enough Catholic? Not miss Sunday Mass, but miss the spiritual life that God really has for us or are we going to have a mission mentality? Are we going to take up arms that we have been given, the sword of the spirit, the word of God and prayer and say, okay Lord, help me develop skill. Give me the ability to use these weapons to your honor and glory. Not to slaughter my enemies, but to have my enemies become my brothers and sisters in Christ. In the midst of various difficulties of sin and sorrow, we can get into this maintenance mentality and I know that God wants us to move into mission. The battle is the Lord's. Therefore the battle is yours and mine. Let's pray for each other, especially as we enter into the mass. Let us pray for each other to really hear the spirit speak. Where does he want us to go? What does he want us to do? What does he want us to say? What does he want us to give away? What is he asking us so that we will truly be his soldiers on the battlefield? And let's pray especially as we prepare for mass for the priests who will be leading us into the foray. Let's pray for them to be strong, to be faithful, to call us in ways we don't feel comfortable being called because they're good fathers. And a good father doesn't care if you like him. Okay, my husband would not say to our children, okay, here's food and this is good food for you and over here there's rat poison mixed in with the food and I just hope you make a good choice. My husband would throw himself on top of the poisoned food and not give my child a choice. Okay, we need priests who will do that, who will tell us the truth so that we live faithfully. Yes, we do. He will provide the strength we need to do his will, his way. Let's close in prayer in the name of the Father.