TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - OCTOBER 20, 2024

TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

A life well-lived is a life lived for the sake of others. Anyone who might live in a truly selfish manner will seek out those things that will placate them only for a moment, and the chase after constant satisfaction will numb them to any sense of purpose or meaning. Those who live selflessly, though, see life as a whole and are willing to throw themselves into discomfort or sacrifice for a little while in the hopes for a life of growth. As sinful human beings, we may fall into the tendency of living selfishly every once in a while, but as Christians we are called to live for so much more; even when we struggle with defining and visualizing what that purpose or meaning might be, our faith serves as a guide for us to live selflessly as long as we live in conformity with the Church. A life well-lived is bound to follow only if we do so.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

Consider the most exciting, the most happy, and the most hopeful moments in your own life. Perhaps you applied for a dream job that required a lot of preparation, training, and education in order for you to even be considered as an applicant. When you landed it, you were filled with the promise of how happy the potential of working that job would make you, but the excitement of getting the job didn't last long; soon after, the responsibility of work started, including those good days and those bad days. Regardless, you would never have turned down the job just because of some rough working days. Perhaps you married the love of your life, and the thought of spending the rest of your life with your favorite person filled you with excitement. Still, that excitement wore off as soon as the responsibilities of living for another person became apparent. Regardless, you would have still married that person even if you understood the struggles of married life. Perhaps you had a lifelong dream of having children, and the moment you found out you were expecting for the first time became the happiest moment of your life. What awaited you after that immense happiness, though, were the difficult responsibilities that come with having children. No amount of foresight into the difficulty of raising a family would have ever prevented you from making the decision to have a family, though. The reason why we become so happy for those things in life that we know will have difficult moments and challenges attached to them is because we know that these are the things that make life worth living. We are willing to dive into life-altering situations because of the innate potential that these things have to give our lives purpose; that meaning and purpose is only found because these things are inherently selfless.