+ Our first reading today states that
“for freedom Christ set us free.”
+ John XXIII was born Angelo
Guiseppe Roncalli, the third of thirteen children, to poor Italian
sharecroppers.
After the seminary he studied
in Rome on scholarship.
He served as a secretary to
the bishop in Bergamo, and as a diplomat for the Holy See.
At the age of seventy-six, he
was elected in 1958 as a supposed “interim pope.”
Three years later he called
the bishop together in ecumenical council to address the Church’s mission to
the modern world. The Second Vatican Council convened on October 11, 1962.
John died the next year. “I
live by the mercy of Jesus,” he had said, “to whom I owe everything and from
whom I expect everything.”
And everything is what St. John
XXIII got: he obtained as a free gift the “freedom Christ set uss free for” so
that we never again need submit to the yoke of slavery to sin.
St. John thought of himself
primarily as a sinner in whose mercy and love he rested and found his comfort
daily – and this moved him to give himself entirely to God and the Mystical
Body of his Son Jesus – he gave the alms of his life to all in need – and the
ramifications of the Second Vatican Council that he called are still being
unfolded and unfurled.
Those abiding by its spirit
will be made clean – those who don’t won’t be.
The choice is always our, but
St. John and all the angels and saints are rooting for us to make a right, good
and salvific decision!
Thanks be to God – the word of
God is living a effective able to discern reflection and thought of the heart!
Amen.
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