This past week, Mother Nature gave us several reminders that we are not in control. How many events did you miss this past week? School was delayed or cancelled several times. Our Catholic School 's Week celebration was annihilated by the snow and cold. Adoration was stopped or delayed. Practices were called off. Some churches even cancelled their services because of the weather. This past week, several times and in several different ways, the weather dictated our behavior. But it's not just the weather, sometimes our jobs, our finances, our responsibilities, our relationships, all of these different things, disrupt our lives and limit our freedom to do what we want to do. Now we are used to this. We might not like it. But as human beings, this happens to us all the time.

But God is not used to this. God is Omnipotent. He is All-Powerful. God can create and He can destroy. God is in charge of it all. God is used to things going pretty much as He wants them to go. And then, when God created His masterpiece, man, He endowed man with Free Will. God was so good and so perfect, that He wanted His greatest creation to be free to choose. God would not make man obey. God wanted mankind to obey because he or she wanted to obey out of love. Without the love, and without the Free Will, mankind would be just another animal. This is not what God wanted. But with Free Will, mankind suddenly had the ability not to do God's will. We could do whatever we want. We could cheat and steal and lie. We could kill, and get angry and say terrible things. We could close our hearts to God and to one another, and in doing so, we can stop God in His tracks. We cancel God's plans. We stop the miracles from happening. Think about this. We are the only ones of all of God's creatures who have been granted this privilege. So far, at least, Free Will hasn't worked out real well for mankind. For most of us, Free Will has led us away from God, instead of uniting us with Him.

Now it may appear that we can just keep on doing things our own way. But eventually, even with Free Will, there is accountability. A day of reckoning is coming for all of us. Before we get too far away, before we close our hearts entirely to God, we are given our Gospel story today. Jesus is still at home in Nazareth . After He proclaims that the Kingdom has arrived, as we heard last week, He goes on to say that the Kingdom is being given to others. God's chosen people have so closed their hearts to God, that God has no choice but to give what was offered to them, and rejected, to someone else. Jesus reminds them of when this had happened before: with Elijah and Elisha, the prophets. The Prophet Elijah was rejected by Israel and then was sent by God to perform a miracle outside of Israel for foreigners. This same sort of thing is happening in the story of the Prophet Elisha. There were thousand of lepers in Israel at this time, but Elisha heals only the foreigner Naaman. Both of these events were embarrassing to the Jewish people of Jesus' time. They knew exactly what He was saying. And they realized all too well why He wasn't performing any miracles or healing anybody in Nazareth . They, like the people of Elijah and Elisha's age, had closed their hearts to God, and would miss out on the miracles because of it. They knew it. In their Free Will, they had shut God down. God would simply move on to other people who would let Him into their hearts.

Do we realize the message that's being given to us in these readings? Do we know? Today, Jesus points His accusing finger at all of us, and He asks, "Are you going to let me into your heart?" And what is our answer going to be? We have the choice. God is not going to force us.

The problem with the Israelites seems to be that they knew it. They knew it in their heads. But they didn't know it in their hearts. The author Fred Craddock used to say that the longest journey that any of us will ever take is from our heads to our hearts. We, too, know it in our heads. What is it going to take to get Jesus and His message in our hearts?

Did you hear the story about the little four-year-old girl who went to the pediatrician's office for a check-up? As the doctor looked into her ear, he asked "Do you think that I'll find Big Bird in there? The little girl stayed silent. Next the doctor took a tongue depressor and looked down her throat. He asked, "Do you think I'll find the Cookie Monster down there? Again, the little girl was silent. Then the doctor put his stethoscope to her chest. As he listened to her heartbeat, he asked, "Do you think I'll hear Barney in your heart?" "Oh, no," the little girl replied, "Jesus is in my heart. Barney is on my underpants!"

Wouldn't it be nice if Jesus were in all of our hearts all the time? What can you do to let Him a little more this week?

May God bless us all, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti. Pray for us !!!