There’s a story about two brothers who were loggers. They had farms adjacent to each other, and every day, they would go out and do their logging, and they got a little bit competitive with each other. They wanted to see who could cut down the most trees in one day. They began doing this day after day. The two brothers would work outside all day cutting the trees. Well, one brother would disappear for an hour, and the other would just keep working straight through. When his brother got back, his brother would continue working throughout the rest of the day.
Every single day, the brother who went away for an hour was able to cut down more logs than the brother who stayed and worked all day. The brother who stayed there and worked all day got very frustrated, and he finally said to his brother, “I don’t understand, I’m working all day. I put in an extra hour more than you do. What are you doing when you walk away for an hour? The other brother said, “I’m sharpening my axe.”
We have to sharpen our axes, right? We must take time to do that.
We hear in the gospel today Jesus gives us this command, the first commandment, to love God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength. Out of that love to love your neighbor as yourself.
Mother Teresa is a saint that we know to be a saint of service. That’s what we hold her up for, but what she held up even higher than service was prayer.
When Mother Teresa first started the Missionaries of Charity, there was a war going on in Beirut. During that time, one of the hospitals was destroyed. Mother Teresa left India, and she wanted to go to help the children that were left over from that hospital that were refugees.
The spiritual director I told you about before, his name was Monsignor John Esseff, and he got to know Mother Teresa during this time. He was Lebanese, and he was a diocesan priest in Scranton. He’s 94 years old. He just retired, so no longer do I get to go to him for retreat. This is the first time he met Mother Teresa. He was an ambassador over in Beirut during this time. Mother Teresa got there, and she said that she wanted to go in there and save these children.
The government said to her, “No, you can’t because it’s not safe for you to go there, nor are you allowed to go there.” She said, “However you like it, I’m going to save these children.” They said, “Mother, it’s impossible. Unless we have a ceasefire, there is no way that we can take you into the country.” And so Mother Teresa said, I’ll pray about that tonight.”
That night, she gathered all of her sisters for an hour of adoration, and they gathered together in prayer. The government had told her there was no way a ceasefire was going to happen. Monsignor Esseff was with them. At the end of the holy hour, there were still bombs going off, and all of a sudden, it got silent. Mother Teresa and her nuns finished the Holy Hour. She got a phone call from the embassy, and they said, “Mother Teresa, you got your miracle. There’s a ceasefire, and she was able to go into Beirut to save those children.
Whenever Mother Teresa’s nuns would tell her that they had too much going on, they would ask her sometimes, “Can I have a dispensation for making a Holy Hour? Whenever they said that it was a trap because Mother Teresa would say, “Now you can spend two hours in Adoration. The Holy Hour was the most important thing in her life. Why? Because it’s in this Holy Hour that she fell in love with Jesus. It was by spending time before the Blessed Sacrament that she found this secret to love God with all of her heart, all of her mind, all of her soul, and all of her strength. She would go out from there, giving her life and service to the poor.
She would spend her waking hours from the time that she woke up to the time that she went to bed, constantly giving herself in service until the time that she was in her 90s. Whenever anyone would ever say, “Mother, what’s your secret?” You know what she would always say? Prayer. Spending time in my Holy Hour.
I was with my spiritual director this week, and he asked me, “What do you hope for your parishioners as their pastor?” It was a good question. It got me thinking about it. One of the hopes that I’ve never said or mentioned is that I hope that at some point, we could have Perpetual Adoration here again. At some point, we would have parishioners who would want to make a Holy Hour throughout the day, seven days of the week.
I haven’t mentioned this yet because I’m afraid it will not happen. I’m afraid, what if people are just too tired to do it? Or they say, “Father, I’m too old, or I don’t know.” That is one of my hopes for this parish. I want you to pray about that and think about that. Would you be willing to give one hour per week in Adoration?
The second hope that I had, and I told him, is that by the time I leave here, every single one of my parishioners would spend a certain amount of time every day in prayer, whether that be 10 minutes or 15 minutes, half an hour, a Holy Hour. That every time, there would be some dedicated time for giving yourself totally to God.
The third thing that I mentioned to him, as I said, is that we’re doing these teachings on Tuesday night with wonderful and amazing speakers. We didn’t have a lot of people show up for it. I was getting discouraged by that. He said, “Don’t give up on that. That’s God’s giving you that vision. My third hope for the parish is that you would come on these Tuesday nights to learn about God, to fall in love with God, and then to want to give yourself in service to God.
It is so important for us that we place God at the center of our lives. The primary way we do this is by coming to Mass on Sundays. That would be my first hope for everyone that we never, ever, for the rest of our lives, miss a Mass or a Holy Day of Obligation that we make God the complete center of our week.
Just as we have this parable of the two brothers who work day and night cutting down the trees, it’s the brother who sharpens his axe and can do more. The same is true for Mother Teresa and every one of us. When we sharpen our axe, when we spend time in prayer and Adoration, and when we fall in love with God, He gives us the energy. He gives us the time; He gives us the ability to do everything else that we need to do in life.
Those are my hopes for me as your pastor: that you truly fall in love with God, with all of your hearts, with all of your minds, with all of your beings, with all of your strength.
