One of the great strengths of our society in the United States is the broad range of freedoms that are guaranteed by our Constitution and the freedom of spirit that goes along with them. But, as always in this life, there’s a possible downside to all that freedom. It can take the form of an excessive individualism, which looks solely to one’s own interests and thinks little or not at all about the needs and concerns of others. It’s an isolating view of the world and of life, and it sets the stage, not only for much unnecessary suffering within the community at large, but also for the painful sense of alienation that afflicts so many people, even the most affluent.

In today’s epistle, Paul speaks rather pointedly: “None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master…. Both in life and in death we are the Lord’s.” None of us possesses either our life or our gifts as absolute possessions, but as loans from a generous God who gave us both life and gifts for a specific purpose, namely, to be shared with his family. To decline to share our life and to carry our gifts to those who need them is not only bad stewardship, it is stealing from those for whom the gifts were intended in the first place.

So where do you stand on the gift continuum? Are you sitting on your gifts and hoarding them for some unnamed rainy day, or are you learning the God-like joy of giving your gifts and talents away? Where you stand on this most basic question is probably the key to how and where you’ll be spending your eternity, so it will be wise to consider your answer well.

As long as any of us have been reading the newspapers, they’ve been bringing us bad news about divorces, troubled children, failing businesses, collapsing buildings, and imploding enterprises of all sorts, here and everywhere around the world. The bad news just keeps coming, and we have to wonder why. There is, of course, no easy explanation, but there’s at least one common thread that can be found in most of these disasters. And that is under-investment, reliance on half measures, when nothing less than all-out efforts have any chance of success.

It’s a very old and very deeply ingrained human tendency: trying to achieve our goals on the cheap. It almost never works, but we keep trying it nonetheless. And that’s why Jesus raises the issue with such fervor in today’s gospel. “You can’t win battles with half an army, and you can’t build a tower with only half the materials,” he says. We can’t create Christian lives, construct great hearts, and build God’s kingdom with half measures. Jesus is asking us for a total “yes” to our Father, with no subordinate clauses and no contingencies.

So how do our commitments look under the spotlight of Jesus’ words? Have we really cast our lot with him, or are our hearts still divided and our loyalties still split? Our lives and our futures depend on our making the right choice, and we have a limited amount of time to choose. So think twice before you say to yourself, “I don’t REALLY have to commit EVERYTHING! I can ALWAYS get a deal!” It’s a lie, and it could wreck your life in the long term — the VERY long term.

For quite a few years now, a familiar theme in more thoughtful publications has been what is described as “the decline of civility.” It touches upon every aspect of life, whether it be on the highway or on television or in debates in the halls of congress. In word and deed, people are oft times stunningly aggressive, outrageously insulting, and incomprehensibly insensitive to the feelings and needs of others. It’s not the whole story of our early twenty-first century society, but it’s a major strand that ought not to be ignored.

Jesus summed up a radically different vision of what society should be in his Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And St. Paul, in today’s first reading, fleshes out a particularly pertinent element of this: “Anticipate each other in showing respect.” That idea of anticipating others’ needs certainly turns the table from the “grab what you can” model of living. And there’s a kind of pleasure in escaping the prison of one’s self and one’s hasty dash to the next whatever.

Take the time, usually just a few seconds are needed, to anticipate your neighbor’s need of the moment, which is mainly just to be treated like a valuable human being, and respond as your heart dictates. It’s remarkable how something so simple can change a day and a life.

Sooner or later most of us have the experience of watching a loved one move through his or her final days and then pass from this earth.  It can be a tremendously sad process for those who are about to be left behind and who know in advance the loneliness that will be theirs.  But in most cases there’s a marvelous and touching aspect of the process as well, and that is watching our dying friend progressively letting go of all sorts of things that don’t count, old baggage in the form of grievances, fears, doubts, and so much more.  It’s a grace for the bystanders to watch that happen, and it presses us to let go of our own baggage sooner rather than later.

Yet, even the best of us, even the saints, leave this life with at least a little bit of unfinished business and a bit of left over baggage.  And that’s why we Catholics pray for the dead.  Our prayers are not aimed at changing God’s mind about our departed friends.  God’s mind doesn’t need any changing.  His love for us is unchanging, and he’s always ready and waiting to welcome home even the worst of us.

No, our prayers are for the deceased themselves, that they will relax in the Lord and let the Lord help them let go of what remains of their old baggage, and help them finish what is unfinished in them.  For those whose hearts are loving and trusting of the Lord, it will come naturally to open their hearts and let the Lord in.  For those of us whose hearts are more ambivalent and in the habit of withholding trust, the work will be more difficult.

So hold in prayer all the deceased whom you love, and look to your own heart, that it may be open and welcoming to each of God’s people now.  This day and every day are dress rehearsals for that final day when you will give back your heart to the One who gave it to you.

May your heart be true and open and ready this day and always.

As we mark this Feast of All Saints, it’s fascinating to remember where some of the better known saints started out and how their lives proceeded. St. Matthew was a tax collector. St. Mary Magdalene practiced the oldest profession in the world. St. Peter was impetuous and something of a blowhard, and he had to press hard before he’d let gentiles become Christians unless they first became Jews! The whole lot of the apostles ran for the hills when Jesus was taken captive in the Garden of Gethsemane, and that was just a short while after their robust promise that they’d follow him anywhere and die with him if need be.

The list could go on and on, but the point is a simple one: none of these great saints started out as saints.  Quite the contrary was true. They slowly and painstakingly evolved into holy men and women, with many starts and stops and numerous temporary reversals. And very often, as many of them have testified in their diaries, they suffered from deep discouragement at their lack of progress and their frequent mistakes. St. Paul spoke for them and for us all when he said in anguish, “The good that I would do, I do not.”  Isn’t it the truth?

There’s a lesson in all this for us who are still struggling along our own roads: Growing up into God’s image and likeness takes a long time.  It’s a lifetime work, and God understands that. After all, he’s the one who put us together.

So take heart. Rejoice in the little triumphs as they happen. Each one brings you a step closer to home. Each one brings you a step closer to the embrace of our Father.

Jesus was a good Jew and he loved the law, because its purpose was to help people do right by one another and in the process to grow closer to God.  That was the law’s purpose, but all too often it’s not what happened.  Many people, especially those who were experts in the law,  became fixated on the externals and on all the minuscule details of thousands of rules and regulations, and they forgot the larger purpose behind the rules.  Notwithstanding that, they seriously thought they were doing just fine, and they went so far as to attack Jesus for not being like them.  “Imagine,” they said, “curing sick people on the sabbath!”  No wonder Jesus said, “The letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life.”

It’s a problem that confronts people of every age: Following the letter of the law, but missing its real point and its inner truth.  It happens when we live on the surface and don’t go any deeper.  And it leads us into a kind of self-righteous blindness that proclaims to the world that we’re just fine, even though we aren’t.  So what’s the answer?  Ignore the rules and forget the law?  Not at all.  The real answer is to look inside the rules, find their real purposes, and then commit ourselves to those purposes, which may even cause us to set aside this or that man-made rule from time to time.

So how are we doing?  Here are some questions that may help us find out.  Do I generally know the “why” of my actions or do I just run on radar?  Do I keep God’s people at the center of my “screen,” or do I focus mainly on keeping the rules?  As I interact with people, is my primary goal to help them become more alive and more true?

If the answer to any of those questions is “no,” Jesus has some urgent inner work for us, and it needs to be done now!

St. Paul poses an interesting and crucial question in today’s Epistle to the Romans. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?” Nothing should, but lots of things do. There are many people in every parish who at one time in their lives were active in their faith, but walked away when some tragedy, like the loss of a loved one, struck and they never forgave God for failing to protect them.  There are plenty of people who didn’t deliberately walk away from the Lord, but just wandered away distractedly and barely even noticed it themselves. And, of course, there are always those who can’t face the Lord because they know that some part of their lifestyle is at grave odds with the love of the Lord.

The list could go on and on, but the message for us should be to look again at our own relationship with Christ and ask honestly how deep are the roots of the friendship. Is it just a casual acquaintance or a bond with real muscle?  What kind of candidate are we for early departure from this most important of all our bonds? It may be that we have some work to do and that a bond that’s just a matter of habit needs to become a matter of profound conviction and attachment. Now’s the time to find out, while there’s still time.

Alienation is not a new problem. From the beginning of time, people have found themselves feeling like aliens and strangers, sometimes even in their own land and in their own homes. Attila the Hun had a knack for making the Romans feel like strangers in their own town. Genghis Khan was an expert at turning people into strangers, and so were Hitler and Stalin. Though no one did it to them, our first-generation immigrant ancestors knew the bitter uncertainty of never quite fitting in after they left their homelands and came to America.

The problem of alienation isn’t limited just to immigrants and the victims of conquerors. It’s a part of many people’s lives in every age, and it’s a problem now: People feeling like outsiders, feeling alone and disconnected from the mainstream of their own culture, which seems to have gotten up and walked away from them.  A sad sense of confusion, futility, and uselessness fills many hearts.

In this complex, rapidly-changing culture of ours, that terrible malaise can afflict any one of us, and it can be crushing if we’ve lost our compass by letting ourselves get disconnected from Christ. He is the one who speaks for our Father and helps us to remember who we are — not aliens and strangers, but much beloved sons and daughters, and heirs, who have a future that’s only begun to unfold.

So stay connected to him, and you’ll always remember who you are. Stay connected to him, and you’ll never doubt that you have a very special place in God’s world.

Suffering is one of those unhappy, insistent facts of life that we’d rather not think about. It’s no respecter of youth or age, or of power or position: all are treated impartially to its attentions. Afflictions of mind and spirit, sickness of soul, agonies of the body, all take their turns in upsetting our plans and hopes.

So what are we to do with the sufferings that inevitably come our way? What are we to make of these uninvited guests whose invasion of our lives seems to make no sense at all? Why does a supposedly loving God allow suffering to happen? Those are questions we’d do well to think very hard about before we face the worst of what life may bring.

If we are truly Christians, our answer is firm and unwavering: God doesn’t create evil or suffering, but God does allow it so that a greater good may come forth. In the abstract that can be a perfectly satisfying answer, but when we stand in the midst of real life pain, the world is a much darker place and it’s very difficult indeed to see God’s great plan working. “What possible good can come from this?” we cry in anguish. We cannot see. All we can do is trust and hope for what we cannot see, which means waiting with patient endurance.

Cast your eyes upon the cross, whisper his name, “Jesus,” and let him walk with you and share your hours one by one. You’ll never be alone. And even though you cannot see it or name it, you’ll always know that you have a future.

At times life can lie heavily upon us, not only the troubles that make their way into every life, but also our own sins and failures. More than once St. Paul expressed his own frustrations with himself. On the one hand, he knew Jesus so well and knew what following him means, and on the other hand he stumbled on that path and at least temporarily wandered in other directions. It distressed him mightily, for the more sensitive and principled a person is, the more those falls hurt.

The often oppressive reality of our own limits and failings can at times cause us to wonder how God could really like us or be willing to give us another chance, much less take us to his own heart. That’s why St. Paul is trying to reassure us in today’s Epistle to the Romans. The Lord didn’t give us “a spirit of slavery to send (us) back into fear, but a spirit of adoption through which we cry out, ‘Father!’ The Spirit himself gives witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

Trust that Spirit who dwells within you, and especially on those days when your own spirit is weary, remember to cry out with all your heart, “Father!”