Tuesday The First Week of Advent Dec. 5th

Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
December 5, 2006

“In him all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.”
Psalm 72:17

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One day while walking through my favorite store, the dollar store (the dollar store is my favorite store because you can get everything for $1), I said, “Hi”, to a man and he greeted me back. Then, his next response literally stopped me in my tracks. I asked him how he was doing and he replied, “Blessed.” I thought, “What an awesome, true and invigorating answer.” We are so blessed. I asked the man if he had a copyright on that answer and if I could use it. He just chuckled and told me to use it.

So, I have been teaching that when someone asks us how we are doing we can say, “Blessed.” Yes, we are so blessed! Just count your blessings. You have eyes, eyesight, and you are reading this now. You just took another breath. This day alone you will have at least 100,000 reasons to say you are blessed because that is how many times your heart will beat. We were created by God who loves us with an everlasting love! We know that God is good- all the time! We are forgiven and beautiful in his sight. Jesus died for us so that we could go to heaven. God invites us to live with him forever. Yes, we are so blessed! Count and count and count your blessings.

Many of you have shared with me how you have stopped other people in their tracks when they have asked you, “How are you doing?” You have told them, “Blessed.” Why does saying we are blessed stop people in their tracks? Because that response causes all of us to go to the source of every single blessing in our lives. When we tell others we are blessed, we are pointing our lives to the source of all blessing--God. Yes, we are blessed because we are beautiful, loved, forgiven, and invited to live with God forever. Could we possibly be more blessed than that? No! Please continue to let others know how blessed we ALL are.

My dad has Alzheimer’s disease. He is losing his ability to remember things. He is a bright man and has always been a creative thinker. As you can imagine, it can be frustrating to lose your mind when you have used it so well and creatively. He shared the following touching story with me. Going to sleep at night is difficult for him because his thoughts were so jumbled and confusing. Dad would get frustrated so he decided to seek peace in his heart by praying the rosary. But he said to me, “I tried to pray the rosary, John, but I cannot remember all of the words of the Hail Mary. So now I just keep repeating, ‘Thank you, Jesus’ until I fall asleep. It works.”

The words that dad wants on his tombstone are, “Thank you, Jesus.” My dad is a blessed man.

How are you doing?

Love is spelled T-I-M-E,
Fr. John