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	1st Reading
	Psalm
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Jesus, when He came entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, said “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I would have gathered as a hen gathers her chicks underneath her wings. But, alas, you did not know the time of your visitation.”

This is an important idea..

God occasionally visits His people.

And sometime we miss it.

You know the first reading talks about the (???) Vision that on the mountain of the Lord the Lord will provide a feast for all Peoples.

The Lord will wipe away the tear from every face

The approach of His people He will remove

On that day it will be said, “Behold our God to whom we look to save us”

The Hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain

The mountain to which He is referring is mount ( ? ? ?) The hill on which the temple is built, the northern most hill of the city of Jerusalem.

This one of the great arguments that Jesus could not have been the Messiah, because He did not introduce the ( ? ? ??)

But...It is interesting to notice the Jews themselves believe in two ( ? ?? ) comings.

The Messiah, the son of Joseph, which always use to make Rabbi ( ? ? ) crazy when I use to always kind of raise my eyebrows at that, because of course Jesus name would have been “Jesus son of Joseph”, Joseph being his foster father.

The second Messiah who comes in glory, the first Messiah the son of Joseph is someone who comes to suffer, and to prepare the world for the coming of the second Messiah who is... the Messiah who is the son of david, who comes in glory..

And What Jesus told us is was the those two Messiahs who are mentioned in the ( ? ? ) are the same, isn’t that nice, you get the ( ? ? ) get here. Not many Catholic Churches get to own one....

But, that messiah is the same messiah, that He is both the son of Joseph and the son of David and will return in Glory.

But what does this have to do with anything?

Well, in the ( ? ? ? ), we believe that Jerusalem will be lifted up above the hills of the world and that God will provide a feast for his people.

Well, that hasn’t happened yet.

And the fact is the quite opposite has happened.

We live in a world full of tension.

Primarily because of Jerusalem.

You know, oil crisis.... Muslim/Christian tensions, the threat of war in the middle east..

All revolve around Jerusalem.

Jesus said “Alas, Jerusalem, for you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Jesus was saying that ( ? ? ?) Feast had been postponed because Jerusalem hadn’t reccondized that God Himself had come to visit.

Well, that’s an amazing thing..

God visits His people.

Today we are always celebrating the Feast of our Lady of Fatima, which I believe is ... a vitiation of God.

Was announced by our Blessed Mother, but all of us I think know the story of Fatima, but if you DON’T know the story of Fatima, go home, turn on your computer, and do a google search.

Find the story of our lady of Fatima.

Because of course Portugal and the world were in a terrible situation.

The first world war was really the beginning of the end of the European civilization .

The mess we’re in now politically, and the crisis our culture is in really goes back to that time, in which materialism and the ability to make unlimited war really took...took speed in our culture.

Well..the battle was between the collapsing governments of Europe and the up and coming socialist revolution.

And the socialist revolution had already happened in Portugal

And the church was suppressed and freedom of assembly was suppressed

The churches were in the process of being closed...
 

And three little kids kept going out into a field to pray, and rumor got out that they were having visions of the Blessed Mother.

People would follow them to the field

and low and behold they wouldn’t see the Blessed Mother, but they’d see this light, there’d be light...

And a light would come and descend on this little oak tree, this little scrub oak tree...  it was kind of evergreen..

And the tree would sag under the weight of this light.

And well, more and more people came... and the children were arrested and were told “If you don’t tell us that this is a lie... we will kill you. We will boil you in oil. If you do admit that this is all a lie, made up by the priests, to make money, well... you’ll leave with toys and your fathers will get good government lies, and it’ll be wonderful, so... tell us this is a lie.”

And they said, “You’re gonna have to kill us”

and they took the children one by one.

Screaming for their mothers.

Look this up, this actually happened. 1913.

This isn’t the dark ages.

And of course they didn’t kill the children, the mobs have formed to recuse the children.

And then they said don’t worry, because on October 13th the blessed mother will give a sign for everybody to see.

So on October 13th 1917, a crowd of about 60,000 people gathered, and it was cold and wet and rainy and muddy, and a big field where these children us to pasture their sheep, had been trampled into mud.

And the crowd was ina pretty bad mood

And the socialist communist administrators, the marks who ran that part of Portugal decided well this was going to solve the problem.

If nothing happened, then of course the children would be ripped limb from limb.

Well, at noon, nothing happened.

That was because the government had changed the clocks.

They had, for some reason, set the clocks to match the time at the war front, in the first war world, the battlefront.

Well, when it was solar moon, all of a sudden the sun began to peek through the clouds, and all of a sudden, the sun began to fall from the sky.

And for about thirteen, fourteen, fifteen minutes, the sun just exploded in a show of light, over the heads of the people in this large field, and then flew back up into it’s position, and they were clean.. And dry, and the field was dry and solid, and six months later the marks of socialist Portugal  government fell, changing the history of Europe.

That really happened.

I remember the pastor of the town I grew up in Monseigneur O Brian, would tell the story.

He was a student in Rome , and he said “All over Southern Europe you could see something happening in the sky” and he remembered the sun, quivering, even in Rome.

Well.. What is that?

It’s a visitation.

God visited His people.

In the word those little kids gave was very clear.

If the people would not pray and repent then a worst war would come.

But eventually God would win out.

Well, God visits his people.

And we consistently refuse to notice that visitation.

Another good is, go look up.. Do a google search for our Lady of Zeitoun.

Z-E-I-T-O-U-N

It’s a captured in ( ? ? ?) Over there years in the 1960's, a few times a week, the Blessed Mother would appear on the dome of a Church in ( ? ? ) the government, the Islamic government took the church apart 

To see how they were doing it.

Millions of people came and saw this

And ( ? ?? ) himself, the president of... the socialist president of Egypt saw it.

You don’t hear much about it

But God continues to visit His people

Through the agents of His angel and saints and the Blessed Mother

He visits His people in the Eucharist but we don’t notice.

You see, the same is true for us, as for the city of Juerslam, as sad that they did not notice the moment of their visitation, when God Himself came meek and humble, riding on an ass.

Because that great feast was postponed.

And we’re living in hard times, and they’re threatening to get much, much harder. 

There isn’t a person here who isn’t worried about the current situation I imagine

We’ve all got 401 ks or ROA’s or college funds for our children, and many of us have seen our resources cut by a third, and we wonder what will happen Monday on the market.

All of us are worried about this

We’re worried about the tension of the islamic world and our own.

And it isn’t a coincidence that our Lady Appeared in a town called Fatima

Fatima was the name of Muhammad’s daughter, and the town itself was name for Muslim princess who eventually became a Christian and Iberia 

We live in a world full of tension

And with all said and done, there is nothing we can cling to

Not our money, not our culture, not our sense of wellbeing or security.

Not even our family who we love so well

We can only cling to our faith

And God is faithful.

God is merciful

And He continuously visits His people

hoping to lift up our eyes, and seeing the promises He makes

And so, today, these are appropriate readings, because the Lord reminds us He wants to make a feast for us on His mountain

And if we would only turn toward Him and see Him and repent

Then the feast is availabe to us

Our Blessed Mother I believe in Portugal to remind us of God’s promise in another ( : ? ? ?) Time.

And He does not seize to promise us His mercy and His protection to those who love Him

In the second reading, just proof that things are always the same, St. Paul in his letter to timothy, is writing about a collection.

Don’t worry, I don’t think there is a second collection tonight.

He’s writing about a collection... he that I have known to be abased and how to be a.. I forget the old way of saying, but he says, He is not st— poverty is no stranger to wealth.

I know how to abound and how to abase.

I think is how the old translation has it.

But then he goes on a little further to say “Rechoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice. In these difficult times it is sometimes hard to rejoice”

Then he goes on and gives us a method on rejoicing.

He says, “Let your petitions be made known to God by thanksgiving.”
 

when I come to prayer, I always come with all my grocery lists of complaint, telling God with isn’t’ right, and then telling God what He should do.
 

I always tell the secretary when I come over to pray, that I’m going over to tell God how to run the universe.

God has never once taken a suggestion from me, or taken an ask for my advice.

I come and I tell Him everything that’s wrong with my life, with the world, with the things which about I’m worried

but St. Paul says, before you do that, before you tell God what’s wrong, thank Him for what’s right.

I think, oh yeah, that thing on my neck a few years back, it was nothing.

That situation I was worried about, it worked out.

That reletive of me, who was in such distressed, well, it went alright.

Well you can tell God a thousand things that are wrong, but before you tell Him all the things that are wrong, make your petitions known with thanksgiving.

In other words, Thank God three or for four things before you tell Him what’s wrong

And you know what?

It reminds me... God has brought me safe this far.

God will bring me home.

For all of the things that are wrong, God has brought me to this point safely.

The world, and all it’s troubles, the tensions in the middle east, the problems with the economy, the problems with my family, the problems with the problems with the problems.

Well the world is in God’s hand

And our Blessed Mother came to Fatima to three little Children to tell the world, don’t worry, the world is in your father’s hands.

As you look to Him and repent it will go well with you

So let us not miss the time of our own visitation

Let us not miss the invitation to God’s mountain

But with Thanksgiving, let us come before Him, and remember that grace has brought us safe this far, and grace will bring us home.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.