David O'Brien: The Yard Sale from Hell

Spring cleaning is an annual rite of passage in my house. Out with old, please no more new. I used to be able to pack everything I owned and fi t it into my Toyota Corolla. Now I have to rent a U-haul to go to Goodwill every April.

This year we decided to have a yard sale. We invited our neighbors to join in the fun, selected the neighborhood park as a central location for the sale and advertised in all the normal venues.

All went well as we stacked hundreds of big and small, cheap and expensive items by our front door in preparation for the big day. The clutter was manageable for a week and then I broke down.

"Honey, we need to borrow a trailer to store this stuff until the sale," I told my wife. "I’m going to break my leg trying to negotiate this maze of boxes and containers." She agreed.

Yard sale day arrived and we were in the park unloading the trailer at 5 a.m. in the dark, trying to display all our treasures on the borrowed tables.

At 6 a.m. we had our first early birds. No sales. At 7 a .m. a few more perusers made their way through. By 8 a.m. we had made a grand total of $7. I was starting to panic.

Around 11:30 a.m. I had to fight back the tears. I was just so tired, so beat up from two weeks of loading and unloading, sifting and pricing, purging and pleading with my children to cut ties with that toy they never play with anymore. Now, with 30 minutes left before closing time, we had made less than $20.

I was tempted to buy a gallon of gasoline and burn everything right there in the park. The prospect of reloading the trailer or, God forbid, putting this stuff back into our house, ugh, I would rather drink poison.

Then, a final customer moseyed over to our book section. After a moment, she looked up at me and said in a surly tone: "I’m not much interested in your book collection. They are a bit too spiritual, borderline religious."

I smiled even though I could tell she said "borderline religious" in the same way someone would say "he has borderline personality disorder." She seemed to think I might be dangerous.

Then she said it again. I thought to myself "that’s odd. Why make that comment a second time? Are you trying to tell me something Lord? Do you have some deeper purpose for this woman?"

I took the bait hoping that God was behind this encounter.

"I work for the Catholic Church," I explained and we chatted a bit over what I did. I ascertained that she was brought up Catholic but had put some distance between herself and the institutional Church over the years. Perhaps God was leading her back to Him and I was the bait.

"I write for The Catholic Week and that book is a collection of my columns," I offered pointing to a box of books on the last table. To my surprise she walked over and picked one up. She even stood there and read an entire chapter, right in the middle of the park.

"What are you doing Lord?" I asked Jesus. No answer. I waited to see if a door would open for more conversation. Nothing. She simply thanked me and walked back to her car. She didn’t even buy the book.

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.

But strangely, my spirits were lifted. Gone were the thoughts of arson and throwing all this stuff into a landfill. Now I was invested in God’s work with this woman. My mind was caught up in a greater plan, a noble and glorious purpose that God might be unfolding through this abysmal yard sale.

Yes, we had spent over 300 hours getting ready for this disastrous event. Yes, we had sacrificed sleep and time with our children in the hopes of making thousands of dollars. But none of those crushed expectations and investments seemed important anymore as I watched this woman close her car door and drive away. All I wanted was for God to plant a seed in this lady’s heart, a seed of love that would grow and perhaps one day entice her to give God and the Church a second look.

Will I ever see this woman again? Probably not. But I wonder if she were writing this column a year from now, perhaps she would entitle it "The Yard Sale from Heaven" because this is when she started her journey home to God.

David O'Brien: When is the Time to Love the Most?

Some years ago I wrote about how the movies saved my Dad (www.mobilearchdiocese.org/catholicweek). With a mother who was paranoid schizophrenic and a father who committed suicide when my father was 3-years old, my Dad’s childhood offered little sunshine. If he ended up an alcoholic, depressed or abusive, no one could blame him.

Instead though, he is a shockingly good man, filled with optimism, joy and hope. Over the years, my sisters and I realized that the virtues and goodness my father found in the great movies of his formative years were the primary source of his moral and spiritual education.

One of his favorite movies was "A Raisin in the Sun". The story chronicles a down and out black family trapped in a Chicago ghetto and ironically begins with a bit of good fortune. The father of the family has died and left them a small insurance death benefi t which will allow them to move into a modest home in the suburbs.

The money is split between the mother, the daughter in her early 20’s, Beneatha, and her married older brother, Walter. The three live together in the slum apartment along with Walter’s wife and son.

Desperate to prove himself as a man and do something with his life, Walter partners with a friend who has a scheme to triple their money. Walter convinces his mother and sister to give him their shares of the insurance but predictably, the friend skips town and leaves the family high and dry.

Beneatha turns on Walter with rage and contempt, saying "that is not a man. That is a toothless rat." Her mother responds, "I thought I taught you to love him."

Beneatha: "Love him? There is nothing left to love."

Mama: "There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself or for the family ‘cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning-because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe hisself ‘cause the world done whipped him so!"

My youngest sister ran ripshod over my parents when she was a teenager. To say she was a tough adolescent would grossly understate the reality. She was a hellion. At 15-years old, two years before she received her license, she would simply take the car and go wherever she wanted, disregarding my parents.

In her first year at the University of Massachusetts, she brought home a 1.4 GPA. But, she had a proposition for my parents. She wanted to take a modeling class in Manhattan on Saturdays. Her plan was to commute by bus every weekend, doing her homework coming and going. The class cost $3,000.

My mother, offended by the nerve of this disrespectful and ungrateful child, lit into her. "How dare you? After the way you have treated us these past few years, you have no right to expect anything like this. We are already bending over backwards to send you to college where you are wasting your time and our money, failing with a 1.4. You have some nerve young lady! You haven’t shown us anything...."

Just then, my Dad grabbed my Mom and took her into the other room. He asked her: "Honey, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done something good? This is the moment. She needs us now, right now."

After regaining their composure, my parents returned to my sister and agreed to help her pursue modeling in New York City on the weekends.

My sister modeled for two years. She never earned less than a 3.8 GPA the rest of her college career. She is now a successful estate lawyer in Boston, happily married with two sons.

My father was right. That was the moment. And he quoted a movie. It was all he knew. It was how God had formed him.

We are entering Holy Week, a time saturated with the deepest truths of God’s devotion to us. The message is as simple as it is impossible to believe. We are loved at our worst, cherished even in our deepest sinfulness. Forgiven when we haven’t even realized how broken we are.

Can we open our hearts this week to this unfathomable love? Can we soak it in and bring some of it to those around us, especially those most in need of some undeserved mercy and goodness? Wouldn’t that make for a good movie and a great Easter?

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.

David O'Brien: A Time of Mercy

Lent is a season of forgiveness. In the readings, we repeatedly hear about God’s mercy towards people in need of forgiveness. Many Catholics seek out the sacrament of reconciliation during Lent, especially now with the "Light is On" program making confession so readily available.

But God also calls us to take the forgiveness that we receive and give it to those with whom we are at odds. This is certainly the more difficult part of forgiveness. After all, we all want to be forgiven. But many times we are slow to forgive others who have hurt us.

The key is to realize that God will help us forgive others if we are open to reconciling with them. In fact, God will supply supernatural power to forgive if we simply trust Him. A few examples:

Many remember the episode some years ago when a gunman killed several Amish school children in Pennsylvania. He locked them in their one room schoolhouse, intended to sexually abuse them and then murdered them in cold blood before the police killed him.

What you may not have heard about is that afterwards, the Amish families reached out to the killer’s wife and children, telling the reporters who were stunned by this behavior: "They are grieving too."

Later that week, the Amish attended the murderer’s funeral, again explaining to the press: "Jesus said to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, forgive as you have been forgiven." The newspaper writers were stunned. For all the talk of Christianity in our culture, so rarely had they actually seen anyone really behave like Jesus.

A woman’s teenage son with his newly minted license picked up a hitchhiker who proceeded to rob him and gun him down. A year later, the mother visited her son’s killer in jail. Filled with resentment and hatred, she wanted to ask the young man why he had done that to her son. Was it drugs? Was he deranged? However, as she sat across from the young man, the convict broke down. Placing his head on the table between them, he grieved for what he had become, for all that he had done and for the hurt he had caused this woman.

The mother, moved by compassion, reached out and touched the young man, comforting him and telling him it would be ok. Later when she told her friends what had happened they were shocked.

"How could you touch that animal after what he did?" they inquired.

"In that moment, I saw my own son sitting there across from me. They are about the same age. And I thought, if that was my son, I would want someone to reach out to him," she explained.

Corrie ten Bloom wrote a book called The Hiding Place about her experience in a Nazi concentration camp where her family was tortured and killed. She survived and starting a speaking ministry where she described how God helped her endure the ordeal and had taught her about His powerful forgiveness through the Cross.

At one church in Munich following her talk, a former SS soldier approached her. She recognized him immediately as one of the guards who tortured her sister. The man thanked her for her message saying that he was relieved to know that God forgave everyone, even him.

She recounts: "His hand thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile. I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself."

Forgiveness to those who don’t deserve it is one of the few ways in which we are able to share in God’s supernatural power.

Lent is a season of mercy. Is there someone in your life that you need to forgive?

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.

David O'Brien: Things I Gave Up for Lent

This Lent, I wanted to go hardcore, up the ante a bit. I considered a 40 day bread and water fast but I am trying to go low-carb. So I decided to eat only salads.

This would require some creativity. Who can survive on iceberg lettuce and romaine hearts for 40 days? Yes, Jesus only ate what the angels fed him in the desert but I’m not that connected. Besides, maybe they fed him Rock Lobster tails and a nice Tortellini dish with homemade basil and olive oil sauce. Ok, probably not, unless they were Italian angels.

Salads can be filling. In ten days of experimenting, I have had the following for breakfast: fruit salad, egg salad, salad cereal, salad with cottage cheese, yogurt salad, a salad shake, a juiced salad, waffl e salad which is similar to soft croutons but with a hint of maple syrup drizzled on top, pancake salad (see waffl e salad) and oatmeal salad. That last one was pretty nasty. I can’t even bring myself to try a grits salad.

Lunch has been easier but no less creative. Have you ever had a peanut butter and jelly salad? It is not half bad. Of course there has been tuna salad, pasta salad, shrimp salad, and taco salad, potato salad, cole slaw salad, broccoli salad, three bean salad, two bean salad, one bean salad (I have reduced my bean intake for the sake of my wife and children.).

Some less mainstream entrees have included: quesadilla salad, soup salad which is kind of like vegetable soup on steroids, leftovers heaped on top of my salad, rice and beans salad, a salad rolled up into a tortilla, a salad sandwich, a salad wrapped inside a big piece of lettuce, and my favorite, a nut and sunflower seed salad. Anything with a crunch and texture is a treat.

Some years ago, a guy made a documentary fi lm called "Super Size Me" where he ate nothing but McDonalds for 30 days. I am thinking about making a similar documentary. I might call it: "Green to the Xtreme".

What does all this have to do with Lent? Is Lent just a game of self will and obsessing about what we cannot have? Or is this sacred season a chance to honestly consider where we are with God and our life of Christian discipleship?

Too often, I fear, we turn these 40 days into simply another thing we do as Catholics. Go to Church. Check. Put the envelope into the basket. Check. Support Catholic Charities. Check. Avoid chocolate during Lent. Check. What’s the point?

The reason we give things up for Lent is so that every time we think about that snack, TV show or beer, we are reminded to seek God and His will for our lives.

Lenten deprivations help us to take the focus off ourselves, slow down, consciously alter our lifestyles and stop playing religious games with God. Do we really believe God cares if we ate a hotdog on Friday during Lent in 1984?

But I would bet that God cares about whether I am turning into the person He created me to be. God cares if I know that He loves me and I can trust Him with my life. God also cares if I use my gifts-my health, my education, my energy, my money, my passions and even my Lenten sacrifices-to help move this world towards the community God envisioned from the very beginning.

St. Gregory the Great said: "Fast, then, by doing what you do with love... What you take from yourself give to someone else so that your needy neighbor’s body may be restored by the affl iction of your own."

So, according to St. Gregory, what we give up for Lent ought to result in a greater capacity to love, which means we are becoming more like God. Our sacrifices should free us up to think about others and use our resources for others, especially those in harm’s way.

Is Lent bringing me closer to these things? Right now, probably not. Maybe my time chopping vegetables would be better spent sitting silently in front of a crucifi x and then acting on what Jesus tells me to do? It sounds like I need to re-evaluate my Lenten sacrifices. My intestines are taking a beating anyway.

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.

David O'Brien: Mystics in our Midst

So many extraordinary things are happening around our Archdiocese. God is working, bringing new life. Sometimes that new life comes from parts of our faith family that we don’t hear much about except for the negative news on TV. Such is the case with the Catholic Hispanic community.

Marta Gale, a catechetical leader at a local parish who works in a local hospital reminded me of the many ways our Hispanic Catholics are a blessing to our community.

"I did a series of four talks on how to pray with the scriptures, Lectio Divina," she explained. "A Hispanic woman approached me afterwards and said they have been looking for this for two years and asked if I could do this in Spanish." Marta, an immigrant herself to this country, responded, "I could probably do it better in Spanish."

Thus began a new group of Hispanic men and women who are gathering regularly for instruction, ministry formation and intense periods of prayer and silent meditation on the scriptures.

Gathering every other week, twelve to twenty people have invested in this process of spiritual growth through Lectio Divina for the past two years.

"We do Lectio Divina because the early Christians grew in holiness praying this way," says Marta. "The more you do Lectio Divina the more you see the revealing word of God in your life and you can change your values to Gospel values."

Each session begins with enthroning the bible followed by a short introduction by Marta to give a historical and narrative context for the scriptures to be read. Music is then used to calm people’s minds and candles are lit to engage the senses. Someone reads the Gospel and then the group sits in total silence and total darkness for 20-30 minutes.

"In our culture today it is very hard to quiet our brains and allow God to speak to us. Lectio Divina is one way to learn to listen to God’s voice by prayerfully sitting with the scriptures," asserts Marta.

"We are like monks or Quakers," she jokes.

The focus is on the words of scripture and how God is speaking to them in their hearts. This ancient practice of meditation is a time honored discipline that leads to knowledge of God and knowledge of self.

"When you grow in self-knowledge, you grow in knowledge of God," offers Marta. "Seeking and discovering is what we are doing in Lectio Divina."

She adds: "We need to keep that silence because that is when we hear God; that is when the Holy Spirit will work."

Some who come fall asleep in the darkness and silence. "I just tell them that it’s ok. Maybe this isn’t the right time for them for this."

Since the group began, they have taken two silent weekend retreats. The first retreat was held in someone’s house. "That is the way the early Christians did it, in a house," recounts Marta.

Each retreat has been a mix between an Ignatian silent retreat and a Cursillo. Following each conference, the retreatants are given 60 minutes of silence with questions.

"The silence is essential for the retreat but afterwards we speak to one another about what God is saying," she describes. "It’s so important to hear from one another, to learn to share like that, growing in trust, facing our humanity even at painful levels and to experience the support of a group that is coming together in this way around prayer and the scriptures."

"We have to walk with each other," Marta admits. "There are wounds that can be healed when we walk together."

On the last day of the retreats, Marta challenges the people to become pastoral agents who are centered in Christ and living the mystery of Christ.

"I call it ‘la mystica personal’," Marta explains. "The goal is to create pastoral agents for the Hispanic community."

"I remember when I studied theology I read a piece from Fr. Karl Rahner where he said that if your pastoral agents are not mystics then they are not pastoral agents. We have to find that mysticism that is centered in Christ in order to do ministry."

Imagine that! Mystics right here in our midst. Even more exciting is to realize that these mystics are just like you and me-workers, students, parents, parishioners, lay people trying to find God in their everyday lives. They are seeking God for themselves and for the purpose of serving the greater community. Sounds like discipleship to me.

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.

O'Brien: Is this what we’re supposed to be doing?

BY DAVID O'BRIEN

Ok, so I go to work, come home, go to work, come home. Drive the kids to practice for the Christmas play. Kiss my wife as she rushes out to the next thing. Catch her words as she flies down the driveway. Evidently, there is a list for me on the kitchen counter.

The dishes are still in the sink from this morning. Before we know it, the time has come to pick up the kids. A late dinner, a little homework, carry the baby while my wife punches out a priority email and then we are into the bedtime routine.

Even after the kids are down, three hours of work lie before us. We hope to be in bed by midnight.

The thing that bothers me is that I know it all starts again tomorrow. In fact, the weeks, months and years are blurring together these days, obscured by the onslaught of daily tasks that never get conquered but instead seem to breed somewhere in the back room of our house.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were on our honeymoon, the world lie before us and we were dreaming about all the great things we could accomplish together? Now, married with four children, a mortgage, leaky faucets, a house begging for a paint job, stacks of administrative work piled up on my desk, I wonder: "Is this what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives?"

Already, we see the window closing as we reach our forties. Where did our youth go? The years are flying by so fast. Did we miss something along the way?

My sisters are farther down the road than us. They have children in high school and college. When we talk, they are asking the same questions. We commiserate in our shared search for answers and meaning in the midst of the daily doings of family life.

This morning I awoke at 3:00 a.m. My daughter’s baptism is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. The list of to-do’s is racing through my mind, disturbing my sleep. I try to calm my thoughts, breathing deeply, fi xing my focus on the Lord, offering my little girl into His loving arms. I feel the tightness in my hands recede and I slide into a half conscious state, somewhere between distraction, peaceful slumber and meditation.

My mind recounts the story my wife told me earlier in the week. She is holding our baby girl who is playing Jesus in a live Nativity scene in front of our church. A man approaches my wife. Not a parishioner, he appears shy, awkwardly slow and a little bit off. She is cautious at first but notices the innocence in his eyes. He asks her in all sincerity: "Can I see the baby Jesus?" She watches in awe as his face beams with profound joy, staring at the holy child, our daughter.

At the baptism, I look around at the room full of friends, parents, grandparents, godparents, children, children, children and a baby dressed in a white gown. The dress is made of fabric given to us by a women we know who lives on a garbage dump outside of Mexico City. She presented us with the material as a gift for sponsoring her daughter, who died of multiple sclerosis. Somehow, I imagine her questions about the meaning of life are different than mine. For her, all of life is a gift and she is grateful, even on a garbage dump, even though her daughter died. I pray that her spirit characterizes our family in the years ahead.

On the baptismal font sits the bowl that carried the Eucharistic bread at our wedding. A friend made it for us as a wedding gift. It has been the basin for the baptisms of each of our children.

The priest prays over us that we would be good parents to our daughter and help her know the Lord’s love for her. Surrounded by God’s grace, we feel more like lottery winners at that moment than the overwrought couple we thought we were a week ago.

At the little reception in the parish hall, my wife’s mother and brother sing "O Holy Night" followed by a trio of spiritual songs performed by my older kids, songs they learned at all those play rehearsals I drove them to night after night. They sit on a table and belt out in full voice: "I’d rather have Jesus than silver and gold." My sisters wipe the tears from their eyes and smile at me.

I’m not sure what I thought we were supposed to be doing with our lives but when I pay attention to what we are doing, I’m tempted to say these ordinary, mundane, every day, monotonous demanding elements of family life might just be holy.

I doubt the history books and the New York Times will seek to immortalize 99.9% of our lives. But God is paying attention and I’m starting to think God is doing something extraordinary, even if we are too distracted, busy and preoccupied to notice most of the time.

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.

David O'Brien: You Can Come Home for Christmas

BY DAVID O'BRIEN

I once spoke at a parish about God’s loving mercy. My main point was that there is no sin too heinous, no fault too great as to permanently cut you off from God’s inexhaustible compassion and forgiveness.

After the talk, a disheveled man in his 50’s approached me to talk. I noticed his ratty clothes and his unkempt appearance. But what leapt out at me more than anything was the pungent odor emitting from him, a sickening combination of sweat, bad breath, booze and urine.

He explained that he had been brought up Catholic but that his addiction to alcohol left him in his current state. He admitted, "I rarely come here because I don’t belong with these good people." Then he pointed to the Deacon in the front of the church and told me: "That is my brother."

I could see the sadness and self-hatred in his eyes. "I don’t even feel worthy to be in this church. I’m not like my brother and all these people," he confessed.

"You said up there that God loves everyone and will forgive anything," he recounted to me, leading up to the heart wrenching question I knew was coming. "Do you think He still loves me? I mean, after everything I’ve done. Do you think He could still forgive me?"

Fighting back my tears, for I knew this man was one of Jesus’ lost sheep (Lk 15:4-7), I told him that God loved him more than ever and always would. "You are still that little baby boy that He held in His arms the day you were born. You will always be His precious child," I assured him.

I could tell that this man doubted my words and despaired of God’s love, so I prayed with him and encouraged him to unload his guilt in confession. I hope he found his way back to the Lord and that the people in his parish welcomed him home with open arms.

A few months ago I heard from another searching person who had been inactive in her Catholic faith for some 25 years. Although she hadn’t read The Catholic Week in a while, something caused her to open a recent issue and she read my column. Whatever she read inspired her to email me and ask me how she might begin her return to the Church.

I found out where she lived and connected her to Becky Goff, a parishioner near her who had a heart for returning Catholics.

On October 28 this email popped up: "It started with you and your column. Thank you. I went to confession this week and asked Becky to come with me. Fr. McKenna was nice and very patient. This has been very emotional for me but I know I am on the right path. Becky met me at Mass the following day and we had communion together. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart."

In both these cases, it didn’t take much for me to extend an invitation to these people to reconnect with God and the Church. Likewise, for the people in your life who are struggling to find where they fi t with our Catholic community. Could you extend an invitation to them as we approach Christmas?

To make it easier, just pass along this website www.catholicscomehome.org. It includes some commercials that will air on TV across the country during Advent. They are excellent.

Last night I visited my neighbors and told them about the commercials. This morning I opened my email to find that they had sent the website to all their contacts and posted it on their Facebook pages. Easy. Invitational. Helpful. People already responded to my neighbors about how great the commercials are and how they will be sending them to other Catholics they know.

St. Paul told us that our job is to plant seeds and allow God to do the rest. (1 Cor 3:6) We never know what is going on in the hearts of other people. Maybe they are waiting for a simple invitation to come home to the Catholic Church this Christmas.

Remember, Jesus said that there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one lost sheep who is found than over the 99 who never left. (Lk 15:7) Why not give God a reason to throw a party this Christmas?

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.