Prayer is becoming aware of who God is, and who I am in the presence of God.

Jesus teaches us the importance of praying always and not losing heart. God loves us and he hears us. God will answer our prayers and make the best of even terrible situations. If we put our trust in God, if we pray to him then he will write straight even with the crooked lines of our lives.

Gratitude and praise give us a new outlook on life; they are expressions of faith that bring out the best in us. Living with gratitude is a key to happiness, and it deepens our relationship with God.

Faith is not truly convincing until it is tested. Authentic faith grows and strengthens through adversity. The just person will live by faith while holding onto God's promises, even if the events and experiences of the present seem contradictory or hard to understand.

The prophet reminds us that the false security of wealth can easily blind us to God’s demands and the suffering of our neighbour. The judgment that falls on the rich man in the Gospel is the same warning Amos delivered: God sees and cares about those whom the wealthy ignore.

Our aim to is live free from money's control of our lives, to not be enslaved my material wealth, and rather to be fully owned by God, and nothing else.

Pier Giorgio and Carlo show us that holiness is not a thing of the past but a living reality. They gave a reason for their hope through their joy, their service to the poor, and their love for the Eucharist. And so, we too, are called to be people of good hope. Hope is a daily practice, not a mood. Hope isn’t optimism on autopilot. Hope needs to be worked at. Our Lady is our greatest model for this kind of hope. Her life is a profound testament to the power of hope.

To be a disciple is to fully embrace the identity and mission of Jesus. The cost of discipleship. Jesus must be our first priority and our all.

"What a person is before God, that they are, nothing more, nothing less." True humility recognizes that what we have and who we are, is by grace. We are not self-made people. A humble person knows this and is quick to give thanks and praise to God.

Every time we make a choice we are turning the central part of ourselves into something a little different from what it was before. All our lives we are slowly turning this central thing into a heaven creature or into a hellish creature.

In Mary’s great song of praise, which we hear in the Gospel today, she prophesies that all generations will call her blessed. We fulfill that prophecy every time we repeat Elizabeth’s words in the Hail Mary prayer, that Mary is the most blessed of all women.

Faith is something precious and important. We can ask for faith in prayer, and we can ask for an increase in faith.

St Paul teaches that our new identity calls for a radically new way of living and acting. He is quite clear that this new identity is incompatible with certain kinds of wrong behaviour. He even uses the strong language of saying that we must put to death everything in us that belongs only to earthly life. We must get rid of all those actions and ways of living that do not match up to the standards required by our nature as Christians

Why do we pray? After all, God knows us and our needs much better than we can explain them. Well, we pray because prayer is relational; it is the cement that keeps us connected to God.

When we celebrate the Mass, Jesus is present to us in four ways. He is present to us in the proclaiming of the Scriptures, the Word of God. During the Mass, it is Jesus who speaks to us when the Scripture texts are proclaimed. For everyone present, Jesus speaks to touch our hearts, to convert us, comfort us, challenge us and form us.

Trinity is a way of saying God is love. Not only is God loving, but God is love in himself. The phrase "is love" means that God's very being is structured according to love. In the Trinity, the Father is the one who loves, he is the Lover; the Son is the one who is loved, he is the Beloved; and the Holy Spirit is the love they have for each other.

On Pentecost Sunday, we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit. God’s personal, powerful presence poured into our lives to guide, comfort, and transform us. As at the first Pentecost, we are invited to be “pentecosted,” living daily in the Spirit’s love, strength, and mission.

The Ascension of Jesus is not his going away from us, but rather his coming infinitely closer to us. In St Matthew’s version of the Ascension, Jesus promises, “Behold I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

God created us and knows each one of us intimately. He thought about us with love when he created us. He knew each one of us individually even before we were born.

We are to love one another just as Jesus loves us. The key to understanding the glory that Jesus is speaking about is a sacrificial love which is entirely for the other. There is nothing sentimental or self-serving about this kind of love. It is a gritty, determined love.