Blessed by God with an Abundance

Today's first reading calls us to "fear [reverence] the Lord, [our] God, and follow his ways exactly, to love and serve the Lord, [our] God, with all [our] heart and all [our] soul, to keep the commandments and statues of the Lord...for [our] own good."

Yesterday, August 11, I had the privilege of celebrating my 60th jubilee as a vowed member of the Sister of the Sorrowful Mother!  Sixty years of being blessed by God with an abundance!  Truly God gives a hundredfold to those who follow Jesus in their respective vocations: consecrated life,  priesthood, marriage or the single life.  God is never outdone in generosity to those who reverence Him and strive to "follow his ways exactly, to love and serve the Lord, our god, with all our heart and all our love, to keep the commandments and statues of the Lord."  The majority of us can thank our parents for this gift of reverence of our God!

The gifts I received are truly that: gifts freely given and which found their way into my life because of my parents. Mom and dad passed the faith on to me and my siblings and modeled living their faith in God, in one another, and in themselves.. What gifts they were in their faithfulness to one another, their love of their children and their willingness to sacrifice for us!  Nothing was too much for them! I am grateful to them for all of this and especially for teaching us children that "if there is a will, then, there is a way."   Self-pity was not in the bag, so to speak!  "Just do it" was a motto we were taught long before Niki ever existed!

I never realized as a child that Jesus''determination to do whatever the Father asked of Him was what guided my parents, though this was not put in words.   They followed Jesus' way "as exactly"  as a human being is capable.  They knew their dependence upon God, as evidenced by their faithfulness to weekly worship with a community of believers, their involvement in their parish, weekly confession and daily prayer at home, especially the daily praying of the rosary.  They carried "the cross," as life was not easy for them, by any stretch of the imagination. Nor has life been easy for any of my siblings. Following the example of our parents, all of us persevered  through the tough times of our lives.  We are who we are, strong Christians, as a result of the way we coped with the "Calvaries" of  our lives over time.

God be praised and thanked and glorified!