St. Gregory the Great!

Luke 14:21

Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame.

The happy and contented burghers in Luke’s Parable of the Wedding Feast are the exact opposite of the great saint whose feast we celebrate today: St. Gregory the Great.  They excused themselves from the Wedding Feast so they could devote their lives to trivialities and ephemera.  St. Gregory the Great took just the opposite course.  He bailed on a life of yuppie achievement and chose to become a monk, contemplating God and doing his little bit for the Kingdom.  The world thought he was throwing away great potential.  But Gregory knew he was blind and lame.  And God, whose opinion is generally to be valued in such evaluations, went and found Gregory in some out-of-the-way highway or byway, and raised him to the Chair of Peter, just to remind us that parables really do come true.

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Mark P. Shea is a popular Catholic writer and speaker. The author of numerous books, his most recent work is The Work of Mercy (Servant) and The Heart of Catholic Prayer (Our Sunday Visitor). Mark contributes numerous articles to many magazines, including his popular column “Connecting the Dots” for the National Catholic Register. Mark is known nationally for his one minute “Words of Encouragement” on Catholic radio. He also maintains the Catholic and Enjoying It blog and regularly blogs for National Catholic Register. He lives in Washington state with his wife, Janet, and their four sons.

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