Peter has to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven times. Yet today’s readings also pose a question: which objective is more important…maintaining control over others or learning to love one another?

In his ministry and teachings, Jesus consistently demonstrated this to everyone, that even if they didn’t break God’s laws, they still need to grow by living the spirit of the laws.  As Jesus walked the land, he persistently encouraged everyone to “love one another as I have loved you”.  Today, we might say, “actions speak louder than words.”

Maximillian Kolbe, whose feast we celebrate today, is an example of living 70×7.  Arrested and imprisoned because he was a witness to Jesus’s love (therefore a threat to Nazi control), he used his life so that others might live.  And from our own backyard, women from our Ursuline Community went to El Salvador to minister to the poor…and were martyred because they lived “70×7”.

Peter Julian presents “Jesus in the Eucharist” by sharing his personal “love experience” with others, illustrating that they, too, can have a one-on-one relationship with Jesus, just as he did.  And truly, those of us who respond to the encouragement of opening ourselves to the Real Presence not only experience it but find our attitude “adjusted” to being joyful because we can feel the Blessed Sacrament within ourselves.   We grow remembering our time with the exposed Blessed Sacrament.  We expand as we think within ourselves all the time.

Let Us Pray:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. (The Prayer of Saint Francis)