January 22, 1011, Homily, January 25, 2011.

Mark 16:15-18[19-20]

Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them: "Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."
[Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and proclaimed the word through accompanying signs.]
The Gospel of the Lord.

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the Apostle [April 25, 2009 is the Feast of St. Mark, the evangelist, the writer of the earliest Gospel] who truly went out into the whole world and proclaimed the Gospel to every creature.

The words of the bishop to the ordinandi, priests and deacons:
Read the Gospel. Believe what you read. Preach what you believe. Practice what you preach.

From today's The Anchoress: I found myself thinking once again about what James Joyce said about the Catholic Church: “here comes everybody!” It pleases me to no end that counted among our priests are not only the elegant Joseph Ratzingers and the gregarious Timothy Dolans, but the tough-talking John Corapis and streetfighters like Isaac Relyea, too.

Rumer Godden once wrote that the lovely thing about the Catholic church is that you could “find anyone in it, ‘from a tramp to a king;’ the cliche happens to be correct.”

Then again, why shouldn't that be true? We’re all tramps and kings, aren’t we, depending on where we are in any given hour?

And He shall be called Emmanuel which means God is with us. Jesus said that He “would be with us all days, even to the end of the world.” This Gospel teaches us that God is in three persons. For when the apostles asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus taught them "The Our Father" which is a prayer directly to God the Father, whom Jesus directed us to call "Abba" or "Daddy". And at the end of this Gospel we are told that Jesus "was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God" for a mediator sits at the right hand of the ruler; in one version of the Confiteor we Pray, "Lord Jesus, you plead for us at the right hand of the Father". Jesus explains in John 14 that if He does not leave then the Father will not send the Advocate, the holy spirit in the name of Jesus, to teach us and to remind us of all that Jesus has told us.