In today’s Gospel, a scholar of the law tested Jesus by asking: “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” The answer is very familiar to us. The way we ful ll this is not always easy and yet we know that this is what we must work at doing our best to ful ll. Our attentiveness to God can get lost in our day to day activity and list of obligations that we have. Loving our neighbor can be extremely challenging, but we don’t have to have the same “love” for each person. Some people are easy to love and are an important part of our lives. Other people expand our ability to “love” and will never have the same place in our lives as others do. They require more understanding and tolerance than others, but we can’t just “write them off” even if we would like to. They will never make of list of “friends” and they don’t have to. This remains a challenging question for us.
It is with sincere gratitude that I thank you for your generous response to the recent hurricane appeals. The first response was $8,000 for Catholic Relief Services and the second was $22,000 for Archbishop Roberto Gonzalez, O.F.M. in Puerto Rico. I have also heard of people o ering to take in children from Puerto Rico so that they won’t miss school for the remainder of the year. We will be sponsoring more projects.
This week we begin the month of November with the Solemnity of All Saints, and throughout the month we remember our deceased sisters and brothers. There are envelopes in church where their names may be listed for remembrance.
-Fr. Andrew Reitz, O.F.M.