On the final Sunday of the liturgical year we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. It’s easy to understand today’s scriptures as events that happened long ago and far away, or predictions that will come true somewhere, some day.

This Sunday’s Gospel is our final selection from Mark for this liturgical year. It is taken from the end of Jesus’ teaching in Jerusalem immediatelypreceding the account of his arrest and passion. In it Jesus gives his disciples hope to sustain them through his passion and death and any persecutionor suffering that they would encounter after his resurrection.

Fr. Jerry is a native of Whiting, Indiana, a suburb of Chicago. He has been a member of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood (C.PP.S.) since 1966 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1972. Over the years his ministry has included teaching high school and college, chaplaincy in a state psychiatric facility in California, and six years as secretary general of his religious congregation in Rome.

God’s laws are not intended to burden or torment us. Instead, they are guideposts that point us in the direction of good living. Accordingly, good living requires loving God and loving one another. We should not follow God’s laws out of fear of what might happen if we don’t, but rather view them as a foundation for building relationships and trust with one another and with God.

The prophet Jeremiah prophesies the end of the Babylonian exile. He describes how the weak and sorrowful people now return with joy. These are the scattered people of God: the blind and the lame, the mothers and pregnant women. They shall be led along an easy road so that no one will stumble. The Lord’s kindness and mercy are on all these weak and broken people.

The spirit of wisdom, as we discover in today’s first reading, comes to those who pray for her. Wisdom, like the word of God, carries a message of consolation as well as of great challenge. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that the word of God, infused with the wisdom of God, is “sharper than any two-edged sword.”

Today Jesus stresses how children embody the reign of God. They are trusting and loving and have hearts that are open to love. They are joyfulwhen they are made aware of God’s love for them, and are eager to return that love.

Read the full version at www.usccb.org/endoflifecare.

Let’s not be too hasty in defining who is “the wicked one” and who (namely us) is just! We are very quick to label others as evil, because we tend to label ourselves as good guys. We don’t like it when we are brought up short by a prophetic voice that brings us some bad news about our own behavior. We don’t like to be reproached for transgressions of the law or charged with violations of our training.

The core of the Eucharist never changes. The Mass is Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. The bishops at the Second Vatican Council brought together these three mysteries in a description of the Mass recalling the Last Supper, the sacrifice of the cross, and Easter Sunday.

From time to time, newspapers and magazines will offer, as an item of “filler,” various laws that are still on the books but seem silly to us in our day and age. In one California city, it is illegal to have two indoor bathtubs in one house. Clean water, a precious commodity when the law was written, is now readily available, so the law seems silly. But the human value of protecting and preserving precious resources is still around, evident in many conservation laws that seem sensible to us.

In the ancient world, “household” was a wide-reaching concept. When Joshua today speaks of his household serving the Lord, he meant not just those people who lived inside his walls or those related to him by blood or marriage; he meant slaves or servants and their families, and anyone indebted to him in any way. Even his livestock and other possessions would be consecrated to service of God.

Some things about human nature don’t change, even over the course of centuries. When we celebrate a holiday, we have a meal; when we celebrate a significant event, we have a feast. In today’s first reading, Lady Wisdom is setting a feast, a sign of celebrating the covenant that Israel has with God. Israel’s central remembrance of its saving Exodus covenant is the Passover meal.

We are so busy! Most of us have more than one job to do, and we never seem to have enough time. We are workers, volunteers, parents, friends, and most of us are more than one thing at a time. But which of these is the work of God?