“Be watchful. Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.”

This weekend, the time has come for us to begin our yearly pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Last week we finished up the liturgical year of 2023 with the Parable of the Final Judgment in St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 25. Today we pick up at essentially the same place, except we are now in St. Mark’s Gospel, which will be our Gospel Scripture for 2024.

Jesus Christ is the Same Yesterday, Today and Forever

We wrap up this Liturgical Year of 2023, as always, with the Solemnity of Christ the King, or as it’s now more formally known The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe In sports terms, this Sunday is our Catholic Super Bowl or Game 7, and we learn about the Final Judgment, the big decider, today. The test of true holiness is how we treat one another. Are you an obedient follower of Jesus, the Good Shepherd: humble, maybe suffering silently, and treating others in our community well? Or are you a wild goat...? To be with God and to be happy with Him forever in Heaven is our Christian destiny.

"When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls"
The Wisdom of God is personified as ‘woman’ in last week’s and this weeks’ First Readings. These readings and the parables are a call to use our God-given talents wisely and well in order to do God’s work to build the Kingdom. We should never be afraid of God, and we should always have complete and total trust and confidence in the Lord.

We get to know Jesus through our practice of living the faith, through the Sacraments. He knows us best through our attendance at Mass, by receiving Him in the Eucharist. What is this oil that is so prized by the wise and the prudent? The oil is faith and it is also what we do with our precious faith: in other words, how do we light up our world by living out our faith.

“The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Mt 23:11-12).

We are now in the Holy Month of November and in our Scriptures today we are in the Holy Week in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Jesus and His Twelve Disciples have been on their final Passover journey after three years together. Now, Jesus criticized the Pharisees and scribes for many reasons, and one of those reasons was their wanting to be better than everybody else in public and receiving honor and praise.