“Live
in such a way that if someone spoke badly of you, no one would believe it.”
For those of
you that follow the school twitter account(@SPX7200), the above quote was posted first
thing Wednesday morning. For those that
want to know my secret, each week I google “inspirational quotes” and randomly
pick five quotes, one per day, for the following week. I really have no order or rhyme or reason as
to why I pick my quotes, other than to say, I find them helpful to our mission
or truly inspirational. The first quote
I pick is Mondays, the second one I pick is Tuesdays, see the pattern.
I share
Wednesday’s quote with you, because I am not sure, but pretty sure(the quandary
I am in) this quote picked me and Wednesday.
I say this because I really believe I have no rhyme or reason to the
quote I picked, but I am pretty sure God does.
Let me explain.
Each day,
the Catholic Church picks a saint to honor.
This Wednesday we celebrated the life of St. Matthew, the tax
collector. Fr. Hunter had a beautiful
homily explaining how Jesus simply went to Matthew and said “Follow Me,” and
without hesitation, Matthew did exactly that.
From that point on, Matthew lived his life, following Jesus, and living
in such a way that those that had bad things to say about him, people did not
believe it. Matthew then became a Saint
and an example for us all.
Fr. Hunter talked
with the children about how we can change our lives, just like Matthew. He explained how our children could be
leaders by forgiving those that make us mad.
He said that IT is never too late to show mercy and to change our lives
like St. Matthew changed his.
I share both
the quote and the summary of Fr. Hunter’s homily, because they are both
essentially telling us the same thing.
While I am pretty sure I have not lived my entire life in such a way
that no one would speak badly of me, I, like St. Matthew, can change my life
and follow Him. It is never too late to
change our ways.
When we
change our ways, it changes our heart.
When we forgive someone for wronging us, or offending us, it changes our
heart. When we are forgiven, by others,
for wronging them, it changes our hearts.
The more we forgive, the more mercy we show and the more mercy will be
given to us. Pope Frances recently
tweeted, “Mercy can truly contribute to the building up of a more humane
world.” Forgiveness is one of the many
ways we can show Mercy.
As you can
see, a randomly selected quote, and the message of the weekly Mass
coincided. What was clearly random for
me, certainly was not random for God.