In today’s Gospel, the Apostles ask the Lord: “Increase our faith.” We can never tire of asking for an increase in the gift of our faith.

Registration closes on October 19th for the WOW 10 Year Anniversary meeting.

Everything we have is a gift! The Father entrusts His gifts to us in the measure we are capable of receiving them. If we wish to receive greater gifts from God, we need to prove ourselves trustworthy and capable of receiving them. I think of Jesus words in John 17:24, "Father, they are Your gift to Me" which reminds me that people are the gifts whom God entrusts to us. As every spouse and parent understands, the entrustment of persons is an exceptional gift that calls forth the great responsibility of love.

This weekend, we hear the story of the Prodigal Son, which may be Jesus' most profound parable. The word prodigal means excessively wasteful. It's easy to read this parable only through the lens of the wasteful extravagance of the younger son. Going deeper, we may see that the older son was also prodigal, in the sense that he wasted so much time at home without ever really drawing close to his father in his heart. What I believe Jesus draws out at the deepest level is the prodigality of the father who lavishly immerses both of his sons in the richness of his mercy.

In this week's Gospel, Jesus uses some strong and disturbing language with the crowds following Him: "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." How should we understand these words which seem so definitively cold and dismissive?

As we embark on a new school year, we can’t help but think about the bulletin board in the school lobby, whether you are in our day school or our PSR program, you should stop and take a look. You can’t miss the train that is there. It reminds us of a journey. This journey that we are all on. The bulletin board behind it says, “Engineered by God, driven by Faith”. We know we are created and loved by God, that we learned at an early age. But faith is what keeps us driven as we journey through life.