We welcome everyone to Mass today at Holy Savior. We especially welcome the women from the ACTS retreat, both our retreatants and retreat team members, and all their family members, friends, and guests today. Our theme for the ACTS retreat this weekend was taken from the refrain from psalm 18: “I love you, Lord, my strength.” When you look at the words of this psalm, it is certainly a psalm of putting our trust in the Lord. The psalmist sees the Lord as his rock, his fortress, his deliverer, his refuge, and his strength. When we go through trials, tribulations, struggles, and challenges in life, we can turn to the Lord and to God’s grace to accompany us in the reality of life, to be our strength and our refuge.
A similar theme is echoed in our second reading from St Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. This letter is considered to be the earliest letter of St Paul included in the New Testament, written around the year 50 AD. St Paul praises the Thessalonians because they embraced Christ’s Gospel message even in the midst of their struggles and persecutions. They received God’s word into their hearts with great joy, becoming an example of faith for other believers in Christ in their part of the world. St Paul says that their actions and their example of faith spoke louder than any words. The Thessalonians turned to God, leaving beyond the false idols they had previously been worshipping. Through their faith, the Thessalonians truly served the living God. What a great example that Christianity community at Thessalonica is for us today as modern disciples of Christ.
Last month, I was in Tupelo serving as the priest as the women’s ACTS retreat. We had founded the ACTS retreat in Tupelo for the Spanish speaking community 11 years ago and it is still going strong, which has been a huge blessing for that community. This weekend, we celebrate the first English speaking women’s retreat here in our Diocese. We are very thankful for the men and women in Vicksburg and here in the Jackson area who had gone on the ACTS retreat in Louisiana and who had the dream of starting the ACTS program here in the Diocese of Jackson. They persevered in trying to start the ACTS program here in Mississippi and never gave up, even when so many doors were close for them. I am so incredibly thankful for their faith and their tenacity and their heart for evangelization. I am very grateful to the ACTS program in the Diocese of Alexandria that has led us and guided us in starting ACTS here in our Diocese. They have truly been a blessing to us. We are having the 2nd ACTS mens retreat in March. And some of the men from the ACTS retreat program are going to help us put on the prison version of ACTS, called the Kolbe retreat in January for my inmates at the state prison in Pearl.
On October 15, we celebrated the feast day of St Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun who was a great mystic and who was named the first female Doctor of the Church. After St Teresa of Avila died in the late 16th century, a prayer was found written in her handwriting in the margins of her breviary. This has become a very popular prayer:
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. They who have God lack nothing. God alone is enough.
Whether or not Teresa composed these lines herself, they certainly inspired her, just as they have inspired the many of the Catholic faithful who have prayed these words over the centuries.
This is a wonderful prayer of a person of great faith, and it has profound meaning, but as we think of the words of this prayer, we might ask: Do all things really pass, especially if we are trying to come to terms with the death of a loved one or a traumatic experience in our lives? Or how can we possibly “let nothing disturb us” if we are consumed with worry or anxiety about something? And what does it mean to say that “God alone is enough”? Do the things of this world mean nothing at all?
One thing to keep in mind about St Teresa, is that she struggled greatly in her prayer life and in her relationship with God for around two decades. Teresa lived in 16th century Spain, the time of the Spanish Inquisition and great turbulence in both the Church and in politics. It was not an easy time for someone who was looking for creative answers as she struggled in her faith life as a Carmelite nun. But she persevered, sought guidance, and pressed forward. To advance in her relationship with God, Teresa said that the key was what she called, “determined determination”: to be patient, to be faithful, to have courage in the midst of her challenges, and to persevere.
Even though Teresa’s prayer can challenge us in different ways, we can surrender to God and to the words of this prayer knowing of God’s tender love and care for us. God’s divine love can sustain us through the ups and downs of life, at the deepest level of our being. In a lot of ways, this prayer echoes the theme of what the ACTS retreat is about. In the freedom that God gives us, we choose to be a disciple of Christ and to live out the values of our faith. We persevere through the hardships and challenges and we find joy and hope in our faith.
The challenge of the ACTS retreat is for the retreatants to live out the spirit of the ACTS retreat in the reality of daily life. That is the challenge all of us have as disciples of Christ, to live out our relationship with Christ each day.
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