transform: Transform Me:
Transform the world
**We pray for tweaking—and then we wonder why God doesn’t answer our prayers. The reason is simple: God is not in the business of tweaking. He’s in the business of transformation.**The other sad, tragic, miserable truth is that most of us have never prayed a prayer of transformation—not even once in our lives. Most of us have never come before God and prayed:Loving Father,
Here I am.
I trust that you have an incredible plan for me.
Transform me. Transform my life.
Everything is on the table.
Take what you want to take and give what you want to give.
Transform me into the person you created me to be,
so I can live the life you envision for me.
I hold nothing back;
I am 100 percent available.
How can I help?
AmenIf you want to see miracles, pray that prayer. If you want to see and experience miracles in your own life, pray a wholehearted prayer of transformation. That’s a prayer God will answer. God always answers a prayer of transformation. Never once in the history of the world has God not answered a sincere prayer of transformation.So what’s it going to be: More tweaking or are you ready for transformation?Excerpt taken from Chapter 22 of Matthew Kelly’s Rediscover Jesus
THOUGHTS
The Rich Man and Lazarus
There are two thresholds in today’s gospel — not just a house and a gate, but two ways of living that press against each other every morning when we open our eyes.
Picture a man who wakes to silk and sunlight, whose table never misses a course, whose calendar is full of meetings and plans. Across the way, at the gate, a body is thin enough to be a map of every hunger: a name — Lazarus — who is known by the city only as a shadow. People pass. Some cough and keep walking. Some drop a crust. Some do nothing at all.
You can hear Jesus’ voice in this scene: he’s not lecturing about bank accounts as if money were the only measure of sin. He’s speaking to the heartbeat of a people — to anyone whose life has a closed door where another human need knocks. The parable’s sharper edge is not wealth; it is the quiet closing of the heart that allows another to become invisible.
A short story. Kevin was a manager with a tidy life: a good salary, a weekend golf group, a calendar that proved he was important. He noticed a homeless man at the train stop and felt guilty for a moment, then texted a reminder about a meeting and moved on. Months later, Kevin’s daughter came home, eyes hollow with a question Kevin didn’t have words for. For the first time in years, Kevin sat in her room and listened. The listening fixed him. He remembered the habit of moving on. He remembered the man at the train stop.
That night he dreamed he was welcomed into a banquet; then he woke and found himself at a gate, with the same man he’d passed now reaching out a hand. Kevin’s shame was not punishment; it was a wake-up tug — a call to reverse the habit. He drove back to the station the next morning with coffee. The man’s name was Sam. A conversation led to a breakfast program Kevin’s company supported. Small, awkward, costly gestures began to reshape Kevin’s schedule: he missed a round of golf, rearranged a budget line, stepped into a parish ministry. His life became less tidy and strangely more whole. The door that had separated him from God’s living voice opened not because he gave money, but because he learned to be where another was.
What creates spiritual distance in Luke’s story? Not the goods themselves but the interior architecture that those goods can build: an attention that turns inward, a generosity that fits into convenience, a faith that is polite but passive. The rich man’s surprise in the afterlife is the moment he realizes his life’s framework never let him hear the poor man’s need as God’s invitation.
Jesus gives a reversal: comfort to the poor, torment to the one who kept his life hermetically sealed. God’s justice is not a ledger but a relational reckoning: who did we love? who did we see? who did we become because of love?
Three concrete ways to practice crossing the gate this week:
1. Name one person you usually hurry past. Spend ten undistracted minutes with them — listening, not fixing. Presence speaks louder than checks.
2. Replace a convenience with proximity. Skip one automatic online donation this month and instead bring a meal, share a commute, or sit in a hospital waiting room for an hour. Let time be the currency of compassion.
3. Tell the story. Share with one friend how that encounter shifted you. Witness invites others to the gate.
Pope Francis urges a Church that “goes out.” He means a body that leaves its comfortable rooms and hears the cry at the gate. This is not a program; it is a posture: to prefer another’s need over our neat plans, to let our days be rearranged by mercy.
If you wonder whether this is about obligation or loss, notice Kevin’s story: as his life became less insulated, it became more joyful. Giving time and attention does not subtract from life; it enlarges it. The gospel’s good news is that God’s love meets us not in perfect schedules but at thresholds — in messy kitchens, in uncomfortable conversations, in shared tears. Each time we choose presence, we practice a resurrection of the heart.
Before you leave today, look across this nave: see faces that may be wrapped in dignity and faces that carry quiet pain. Pick one — perhaps someone you never thought to approach — and imagine putting your schedule down beside them for a while. The kingdom opens in those gestures.
“Go and learn the meaning of the words: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:13). Let mercy be your first language this week. When you do, you will find you have been learning all along to hear Jesus’ voice — not as afar command but as neighbor’s whisper: Come closer; love me in the least of these; invite others in.
Amen.THE WOOD OF THE CROSSThey took Him up the hill like they take up someone they love: steady hands under the shoulders, careful steps, eyes fixed on the road. The crowd pressed in—some to jeer, some out of fear, some because a story had begun and they wanted to be part of it. On that hill, everything was revealed not in loud words but in a single, simple raising—raised wood, raised body, raised love.
“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17)
Matthew Kelly writes often about courage being a series of small choices—choosing love over comfort, presence over opinion. Those small choices are the scaffolding of discipleship. They don’t make us perfect; they make us present. Picture Nicodemus in the dark, a man of thought who has been wrestling with a whisper he can't explain. He’s aware that law, ritual, and reputation hold his world together—but there is a restlessness in him. In the quiet, he comes to Jesus — afraid to be seen, but compelled to know. That night is not a theological lecture; it is a soul speaking to a soul. Jesus answers not by listing rules but by opening a window: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven.” (John 3:13)
Imagine Nicodemus awake the next day. He keeps replaying Jesus’ words: a God who descends, not to judge from above, but to enter the messiness of human life. This story of Nicodemus isn’t simply about curiosity; it’s the human journey of wanting proof and yet longing to be loved. He is us when we ask for signs and then feel foolish for asking. He is us when we linger at the edge of faith, because stepping forward might cost us friends, prestige, or comfort.
Now imagine the cross not as a final historical moment but as a continuation of that same tenderness. Each time Jesus is lifted up, he is showing what God looked like when God chose to go down into the human story—into sickness, betrayal, hunger, grief—and to take it on. The Son’s ascent is paradoxically through descent. The throne of God overflows into a manger and onto a cross.
A woman named Inez used to sit in the last pew—quiet, careful, always watching. She had a son who fell into addiction. There were angry phone calls at midnight, stolen money, promises that evaporated. Inez prayed and tried interventions; nothing seemed to anchor him. She began to feel judged by neighbors and even by herself—was she a bad mother? One evening, exhausted, she went to the Adoration chapel and found it nearly empty. As she knelt and pressed her forehead into the palms of her hands and, like Nicodemus, whispered a question she felt silly asking: “Are you there?” No thunder. No immediate answer. Just a warmth that slowly rose in her chest—a certainty that God was nearer than any judgment. In the weeks that followed, she stopped trying to fix everything and began to be present: she learned to listen without lecturing, to put a casserole on the table without needing it to be perfect, to show up at halfway houses and court dates. Her son didn’t become a different person overnight, but the presence she offered—steady hands beneath his shoulders—began to change the shape of his life. She later said, “The cross taught me how to stay.”
That’s the lesson of today’s feast. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross is not an abstract triumph; it is the Gospel lived where life actually breaks: in hospital corridors, in ruined marriages, in classrooms where a child’s eyes ask for attention, in quiet battles we fight alone. When we raise the cross today, we aren’t celebrating defeat or barbarity; we are lifting up the badge of a love that entered our vulnerabilities and stayed. The wood of the cross becomes a sign that God’s way is solidarity before solutions, presence before verdict.
Pope Francis once reminded us: “The church is called to go out of herself and to the boundaries of the human family.” That going-out begins not with a speech but with a single humble step—sitting down with someone whose life is frayed, resisting the quick fix, staying when others leave. The cross shows us that God’s method is relational, slow, costly, and faithful.
Think of Baptism, echoing Jesus’ words in John: to be raised with Him is to be reborn into a life that often looks more like service than success. You may not feel heroic. You may feel inadequate. That’s the point: God chose weakness to show strength. In our families and neighborhoods, the most persuasive witness is not our ability to win arguments but our capacity to suffer well—patiently, lovingly, without losing hope.
A parishioner once told me about his job—caregiving for an elderly veteran no one visited. The man would sometimes say bitter things; sometimes he forgot names. My friend could have stopped going. Instead he showed up daily, read the paper, clasped a hand. One winter night, the veteran died peacefully, and the son later said, “It was your presence that made him human again.” The son’s gratitude was not about sermons but about the small, unwavering presence that echoed the cross.
We exalt the cross so that we remember how God meets us: not from a distance, but at eye level. When you feel the sting of failure, when you carry the fatigue of care, when you face conversations you dread—imagine the God who came down to shoulder those burdens with you. The cross stands not over us like a judge but beside us like a companion.
You may wonder how to live this out tomorrow: begin with one small, practical act. Call someone you’ve avoided. Sit with someone who’s grieving without offering solutions. Forgive a momentary slight instead of cataloguing it. Bring a meal to the household in chaos. Offer your time rather than your advice. These are the ways the cross becomes visible—plain, ordinary, persistent gestures that imitate a God who refused to remain above it all.
[Tonight, when we incline our heads toward the cross, hear again the voice that promised life: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” (John 3:16) Let those words land not as distant doctrine but as a gentle summons: come close, remain, love where it hurts, and in doing so, the world will see Christ.
We carry the cross not to display how holy we are, but to reveal how God is holy in us—quietly, persistently, tenderly. Let that lifting change how you greet the day, the people you meet, and the silence you keep. When you choose presence, you make the cross visible; when you love without tallying the cost, you preach without a sermon.]
On this Feast of the Exaltation, let the wood of the cross sink into the wood of your everyday life. Let your hands be steady under the shoulders of someone in need. Let your life be a slow, faithful raising of Christ in the world.
AmenHOLINESS IS POSSIBLE.
If you can create just one holy moment next Monday, you can create two on Tuesday and four on Wednesday, eight on Thursday, and so on. There is no limit to the number of holy moments you can create, other than your desire and the consciousness to grasp each moment for God as it is unfolding.Now, it is important to note that you need God’s grace to create holy moments. He will never deny you the grace you need. It is never God’s grace that is lacking, but rather our willingness to cooperate with his grace.Here are some examples of holy moments:Begin each day with a short prayer of gratitude, thanking God for giving you another day of life. This prayer can be short and simple. But turning to God in the first moment of the day is a great way to start and a fabulous way to set the stage for other holy moments throughout the day.Offer the least enjoyable tasks of your day to God as a prayer for someone who is suffering. This person’s suffering could be physical, but suffering comes in an infinite number of disguises. You may know someone who is miserable at work, you may know someone who is struggling in his or her marriage, you may know someone who has an addiction.Offer your suffering for those people just as Jesus offered his suffering on the cross for us.Control your temper.Patiently coach someone who doesn’t know how to do something or did something wrong.Go out of your way to do something for your spouse that you would rather not do, as an intentional act of love.Opportunities to create holy moments are everywhere. In fact, every moment is an opportunity for holiness. Learning to grasp these opportunities one moment at a time is central to the Christian life.Excerpt taken from Chapter 37 of Matthew Kelly’s new bestseller Rediscover Jesus.
Trust in the slow work of God
From Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability -
and that it may take a very long time .
... Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
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