Brothers and sisters: Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus

Life is a race. We gotta do 2 things – get rid of all the stuff that clings to us (sin, addictions, grudges, resentments, bitternesses, angers, hurts….)…all that stuff is a cloud of dust that clings to us, like PigPen on Peanuts…..we collect this junk as we go through life.

But our 2nd reading says we need to get rid of all that stuff…..Only jesus can do that. Jsus says: look at all that stuff you have there, give it here: I want to take it from you. Jesus in our Gospel says I want to burn that all away….

The second thing we need to do is to keep our eyes on the finish line…heaven. Memento mori, remember your death……we keep our eyes on Jesus, our finish line….in our first reading Jeremiah’s friends want to throw him into a pit of mud….but he kept on going, come hell or high water….he had bound himself to do God’s hly will

We keep our eyes on Jesus….why si that importnat????

When our eyes are on Jesus — God inspires everything we do, say, think, feel, become

We keep our eyes on Jesus in order that we might make it to heaven

Maybe some won’t like that….Jesus tells us that will happen in our gospel today….but we press on anyway