By: Alejandra Valdes

OK, mop in hand.  Now what?  Start cleaning kids;

know your limitations. How to clean–where can I start?  Let’s start with ourselves.  Can I will sainthood by sheer effort?  Sorry doesn’t work that way.  What we can do is lay down ourselves at the foot of the cross, at the foot of the Church and say, “I believe.”

Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, the final word of exhortation before the crowning of the King.

The Great Commission was not given as a dialogue in the faith, as an army of independent thinkers going forth with Bible in hand and pop culture in the other. It was given as divine command.  The Catholic Church is not a democracy where mob rules. It is an extension of a Kingdom where the King rules and governs according to His divine right as King.

He entrusted men with the right to rule in His stead.  Christ had a lot of hard teaching–breeze through the Sermon on the Mount and if you’re not challenged with the standard of the Holy, then congratulations you’re in glory.

As it is with the King so it is with His Kingdom.  Be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect, shall we dare to believe this life can be lived beyond a debt owed, a labor to be had, but rather a challenge to me met with love.

I’m talking about a virtue that is within all of us, a heroic virtue that finds inspiration in the truth of life itself. To know Him is to love Him, sounds like a quote maybe Augustine, but I’ll take it.

His love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit animates everything we do— a super charge of light, life, and love. To live in and through Him is to obey Him. Our heart’s desire is to know Him more, which makes this yoke easy and light.

Not that it is easy to obey Him.  It is a narrow way that without Him would be impossible, and apart from Him we can do nothing.  But as Paul said I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me. Christ is more than a model.  Christ is the narrow way.  In Him we move and live and have our being.  If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation, we are united to Him, grafted into His very being through the Spirit.  We participate in Him through the bread of life , for HE is the bread of life.

There is no name under heaven by which men must be saved, because He is salvation itself.  You want eternal life than take it in, Christ’s person and presence fills all things, especially us, His Church.

Christianity is Christ.  Without Him all is void, without value as far as eternal life is concerned. Social Justice not in Him is humanism; Social Justice with Him is the Kingdom of God manifesting in Corporal Works of Mercy.

Dogma and doctrine taught as rule becomes heavy, in Him it becomes the truth that sets the captives free.

Often we can find ourselves living our Christian life in the flesh.  As Paul says, who has bewitched you,  who started in grace are now trying through human effort; we are Sons and Daughters born unto a new household of faith, a faith that over comes by the word of our testimony and the blood of the lamb.  Transforming union, deification–words that describe our divine right as Children of God, brothers and sisters of the eternal kingdom where the sun never sets, rests in the core of your humanity.

Joy, love, peace, presence, communion, union, power, glory, the presence of God is ours!  In His presence obedience becomes energy, even a release of joy.

I fear many of us feel smothered buy our surroundings.  The Saints walked in this light, but we are all called to be Saints.  We must not look to what our surroundings say, but rather look up to see the great cloud of witnesses cheering us on!  We must look to each other who have found this pearl of great price that we may share in it together.  This is the body of Christ that will turn the world into one big shrine of the presence of the Lord.