Union with Jesus

In today's Gospel, Luke 9: 51-56, Luke tells us that Jesus is "resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him."  On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus enters a Samaritan village "to prepare for his reception there."  He is not welcomed "because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.

You and I are also on our way to "Jerusalem", to union with Jesus in his sufferings, death and resurrection.  Everything in Jesus' life mystically pointed to Calvary, to his returning to the glory of eternal life with the Father. Jesus was relentless in pointing to His Father, whom He left in glory to become a human being like us in all things except sin, and to whom He would return in glory at the close of His life here on earth.  We, in turn, will follow Jesus.  We came from God and will return to God the same way Jesus did, through the door of death, through the sufferings and joys of this life.
We have a foretaste of eternal life in the "resurrections" to new life that you and I experience every time we die to sin and rise to holiness, die to selfishness and rise to self-sacrificing love for the sake of another, die to deceitfulness and rise to honesty,  die to pride and rise to humility in how e relate to others.

We die and rise with Jesus every time we allow ourselves to die to sin and rise to that which is holy in how we deal with the vicissitudes of life.  The sufferings we endure in these processes are united with the sufferings of Jesus and through that union we are given the power to make right choices, to choose "resurrection" moments, moments that are holy!

As with St. Therese of the Child Jesus, whose feastday we celebrate today,  the Lord leads us and teaches us, and keeps us as the apple of his eye. Like an eagle spreading its wings, the Lord takes us up and bears us on his shoulders. In those holy moments of life each day, the Lord alone guides us. (
(Compare The Entrance Antiphon of today's liturgy).