Today’s Gospel about humility makes me think of s saying I read not long ago — “Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.”  Ezra Taft Benson

Today Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  There is a true saying — charity begins where natural love (that is, the love that we have naturally for another) ends.

Beautiful, these words from Matins this morning from Saint Cyprian:

Above all, he who preaches peace and unity did not want us to pray by ourselves in private or for ourselves alone. We do not say “My Father, who art in heaven,” nor “Give me this day my daily bread.” It is not for himself alone that each person asks to be forgiven, not to be led into temptation or to be delivered from evil. Rather, we pray in public as a community, and not for one individual but for all. For the people of God are all one.

Even the slightest cooperation with God’s grace can provoke massive change.
– Bishop Baron

“Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him.”

How providential that our first reading today talks about how Elijah builds an altar for the Lord: “He built an altar in honor of the LORD with the stones….”  I say providential because today some priest friends and I celebrated Mass at the top of a mountain, on an altar one of them had built about a year ago.

Sometimes we feel like we’re running out of steam, like there’s nothing more to give. Like the widow in our first reading.  Listen to God’s promise: “‘The jar of flour shall not go empty, nor the jug of oil run dry….”  She had next to nothing, and had to provide for her son.  Then Elijah comes and wants her to make a cake for him instead.  She trusts.  And the jar does not go empty.