THE HOLY YEAR....ST.PAUL

Father Dennis gave a really good sermon on the second reading today:

Reading IIRom 8:9, 11-13Brothers and sisters:You are not in the flesh;on the contrary, you are in the spirit,if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,the one who raised Christ from the deadwill give life to your mortal bodies also,through his Spirit that dwells in you.Consequently, brothers and sisters,we are not debtors to the flesh,to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,you will live.

This is attributed to the writings of St.Paul and this is the Holy year of St.Paul! We are celebrating his birth. This makes me all the more excited about going to Rome for the third time and another Holy Year! I plan on learning more about St.Paul and interceding to him so that I have some of his passion and zeal for the gospel! At Baptism we were all given the Holy Spirit and at Confirmation we were sealed in a special way as well. We all struggle just like St.Paul and we will struggle until we have one foot in the grave! Fr.Francis Martin one of my favorite professors use to say "dead men don't struggle". Fr.Dennis reminded us that we all have sins that we are temped with and we need to call upon Jesus to help us and not to give up! Because of our fallen nature we all have disordered desires but when Jesus died he sent us "the Helper" the third person on the trinity, the Holy Spirit! So don't be too discouraged, continue to run the race because our goal is to spend eterinity with our Lord.

I've been to the Basilica of St. Paul's before but this will have such special meaning this time around!