 Good morning again everyone, I mentioned, thank you, I mentioned to the the priests that standing up there to give a talk this morning was a very strange feeling because I went to Franciscan University and eventually went left early to join the Legionaries of Christ, eventually left the Legionaries of Christ, became priests of the Archdiocese of New York and being back here after 20 years and knowing too that I was not, I was the least spiritual person on the campus I believe while I was here. I mean I didn't go to a single festival of praise, you know Phops we call them, never went to a, I knew I was in the least spiritual household, they have households here of, you know, we were like the anti-household household and more like a beer drinking community than anything else, if you can imagine they they celebrate the household something not called the Lord's Day which is you you pass around bread and wine and we passed around Budweiser, honest to God, just just to be very clear why I shouldn't be giving the homilates a day either but God, God's mysterious ways are stronger, way stronger, way stronger than any of our weakness or any of our best-laid plans. We're here this weekend, this week in order to draw closer to God or maybe to get away from our parish, I don't know. When I went down to the chapel after our first session I did what I shouldn't have done and looked at my my phone. The Indian priest who is my associate has informed me that he'll be leaving a week earlier than originally planned which means he's leaving the day that I get back for five weeks and the associate that or the priest in residence that I had that was supposed to come back is not coming back. This is our life, this is our life and this is our path to holiness in the midst of the messiness of daily parish, the messiness that is the lies of our parishioners and the messiness that is our own lives, not just this messiness of sin but also of our inadequacies, of our doubts, of our unfulfilled desires, of our jealousy, of our envy, of our laziness, of our fears. There are seminarians here and I thought I would tell a little story of something that happened to me when I was in seminary that was one of the hardest points of of my formation. It was during a period in which between philosophy and theology we would take pastoral years and usually three and I think I was in my second second one and I was not doing very well I think. I was I had let my spiritual life kind of slip and I was with I was working with a priest who drove me crazy at the time at least during those weeks you know and I was traveling through a town south of Hartford I believe it was one of them one of your priests I maybe I shouldn't say it but I went into the confessional and I said forgive me father for I have sinned and I said I'm a seminarian and then I went on and I told him my sins and this priest said something that I'll never forget he said I don't think he knew my name I don't think I told him but he said something in Jonathan or young man or something he said you know that the devil exists right yep I do and he said well guess what the devil wants you to be a good guy and just a good guy I knew when he said it that it was directly from the Holy Spirit because my temptation at the time was not to go off and to be a bad guy it wasn't to you know commit the sins of the flesh that were whatever those my temptation was very simply it was just give up the devil wants you to be a good guy and just a good guy Jesus said to his disciples beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but underneath are ravenous wolves what are those false prophets in our lives I think we all have different ones and I wouldn't dare suggest what they might be I told the priest this morning that for me one of the big ones is caring what other people think about me reacting to that on a daily basis working in my office instead of walking the streets with the people so that my secretary will think I'm working what a stupid stupid idea right who cares what the secretary thinks but there are so many others that come the temptation to give up because things are just kind of too hard or to talk with the people that we like talking with and who tell us that we're doing a great job and to avoid the people who give us a hard time there's a woman who sits in the back I probably shouldn't say that these are I was going to give her seat number and these you know who she's probably the one who's going to like check check out this you know this taping of this homily and give me the notes she sits somewhere in my church you've seen her before okay and it must have been two weeks after I arrived and my parish is has is trilingual you know it's Italian Spanish and English and this woman doesn't speak Italian but she's Italian a few weeks into it I put up outside of my church the holy week schedule and it was just too complicated to put it in English Italian and Spanish because it's there's not that much room and so I called knowing the sensitivities I called uh in a few Italians Italian speakers and I showed them the English and the Spanish I said do you understand this I'm like see bad and she problema perfecto perfecto ah okay good I'm good now you know I put up the and then I get the phone call from the baker down the street you better watch out father they're really upset at you why what did I do you didn't put the Italian translation of the holy week schedule in the front of the church like okay well who is it she doesn't want you to know who it is well I found out because of that glare glaring look she would give to me from that one pew and so I called her and she told me that she had already called the archdiocese uh but that now she was going to be working to make sure that other people did too you're lucky you got a priest in the first place this place was supposed to be closed is what I wanted to say and the sheep or the wolf that was in sheep clothing was not her it was the sheep the wolf and sheep clothing for me on that day was anger I was justified to be upset I mean really I've been here two weeks give me a break that the wolf and sheep's clothing for me in that moment was to go into my little world of self defense but deep down it was because I cared too much about what other people thought of me and I wasn't humble enough to say I was wrong I was wrong and I was it turns out this year I had Italian English and Spanish we made the we made the whole thing a little bigger I turned out I was wrong I should have put it in Italian I know now but I was wrong first and foremost because it decided that I was going to give in to the wolf that looked like justified anger and to wonder why I was there what was I doing why this parish etc etc brothers we're gonna have time to talk more later on this this evening but in the Eucharist today we ask the Lord to open up my heart not that we become more virtuous but that we become men with hearts more like the hearts of Jesus humble the three things that I am not because when we become that it's very easy for us to say no to the wolves and to say yes to the shepherd who wants to bring us his sheep into the place of holiness and of happiness and of joy