“Jesus doesn’t work magic; He works miracles.”  Tonight, Sr. Miriam asked each of us to look at our own lives and ask ourselves what it is that we want of Jesus.

Sister told the story of the blind man Bartimaeus who laid all that he had on the line in order to call out to Jesus (Mark 10:47-52).  He called to Jesus in a way that no one had before.  Bartimaeus called Him the Messiah and thus acknowledged that He was the Son of God.  One of the promises associated with the Messiah was that the eyes of the blind would be opened (cf. Isaiah 35:5).

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“Sin is ugly; we can’t sugarcoat this.”

The Healing of the Lepers

Mike Gormley begins by discussing the social effects that were impressed on lepers in Jesus’s time. They were isolated physically, emotionally, and spiritually for their disease was deadly contagious. However, he references Luke 17:11-14, which describes the story of the leper whose faith in God ultimately healed him. Now that he had been healed, he could go about his normal life again. Included in his schedule would be returning to the Temple, and that is why Jesus instructed him to tell the priests of his healing first. When Jesus healed someone, they were able to return home and their home is the Temple. Mike states that “Jesus is not just concerned with the individual, he wants to bring that individual into the life of the Body.”

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500 million tweets daily on Twitter. 1.7 million pictures posted every minute on Instagram.  900,000 likes every minute on Facebook. 9000 snaps per second on Snapchat. We are swimming in social media. It is no surprise that statistics show that teenagers spend about 9 hours a day on social media. In his talk, Paul J. Kim challenged teenagers to use social media for good.

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In the women’s session this morning, Sr. Miriam talked to the girls about experiencing complete freedom by allowing Christ to make them new.

Craving Freedom

We all long for freedom and adventure.  Sr. Miriam saw that sense of freedom one day in the airport in a little three-year-old girl who stopped dead in her tracks to lay down on the floor and make imaginary snow angels.  She was completely free from any fear of judgement or ridicule.  She was totally herself.

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We all have that instinct to want to impress others and maintain our ego; it is simply human nature. We tend to define our worth by our outward appearances or our achievements. In his homily this morning, Fr. Chris Martin challenged us to think differently about our worth. He establishes two very significant points that apply to our approach to sin.

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