Whom Do you Serve?

"Veniam Pro Laudo Peto" asks the question.

In doing so, he reminds us all what's at stake in this life--for everyone and ourselves! Behold:

If we are not winning souls for Jesus Christ as His sons and daughters then who are we winning them for? If we are not proclaiming Christ's Love, Mercy and Truth then who or what are we proclaiming? I have the death counter on the middle section of this blog for one reason to remind myself and to remind each of you that our days are limited. I can hope and pray that tomorrow that I will be allowed the chance, the privilege, to be a better witness for Christ but that is not up to me. Today I have to proclaim God's Mercy and Truth. Today I have to reevaluate my walk with Christ and beg for His Mercy. Today I have to pray even more fervently than ever before. The signs posts of our defiance and the consequences are unfortunately all around us all.
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I have to constantly fight my selfish pride and turn to God in prayer. Sometimes prayer is easy and flows forth with great ease and at other times I am tired and want to give in to the latest television show rather than enter into prayer. I have to fight the temptation to allow the struggles in my own life to preoccupy my time when I should be offering it up and looking to God for solutions. I know that if I have difficulty fighting daily preoccupations as much as I want and try to serve Christ and based on the conversations I have with other faithful then I am not the only one.

I indentify with everything he has said. Too often I surrender to my anxieties over my struggles rather than embrace Christ's Cross through them. Too often I am not a sacrament of Christ in the world but a sign of contradiction, an arrow that points only to me. Those are the days when I need to ask myself, if my neighbor does not see Christ living through me, exactly who does he see? How will that further the Kingdom?

Christ has chosen us to bring his mission of redemption to fulfillment. We, his church, are his Mystical Body here on Earth. People from all ends of the Earth Christ's saving love and mercy through us. Or they won't. And while God may offer salvation through his own mysterious interventions into the lives of those that don't know him, we should all feel sorry for those whom he saves this way that we could have evangelized.

Today more than ever, we all need to heed the words of Christ, spoken anew by our late Sheperd, Pope John Paul the Great: "Be not Afraid!" Too often, I have hesitated in fear. Well, my fears never allowed me to reap joy. I need to muster up my courage and face life with joy. For the Lord stands by my side. Let's all remember that we do not struggle in this life alone. Let's walk beside our Master, carrying our cross as he carried his. Then we may truly share in his mission to save the world. At the end of our days, we may find that one of the lives we saved is our own!