{"id":926,"date":"2017-08-10T10:55:13","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T15:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/?p=926"},"modified":"2023-10-30T09:04:41","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T14:04:41","slug":"17th-sunday-in-ordinary-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/?p=926","title":{"rendered":"17th Sunday in Ordinary Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever confused the price of something? I have done this a few times. The first time that this happened to me was when I went<br \/>\nto Texas to meet some friends there. I was in my middle 20&#8217;s at the time. When we were there we took a trip down into Mexico for that<br \/>\nday. It was my first time south of the border. I remember being in the market place. I spotted a ring I really liked, even though I was not<br \/>\nmuch of a ring wearer. I found myself really wanting it but the price was $400 plus. I was very torn, until my friend informed me that it<br \/>\nwas 400 &#8216;Pesos&#8217; and was only about $20. I got the ring and had it for many years.<\/p>\n<p>The other time this happened was when I was in Nicaragua seeing a friend there. As many of you know I enjoy Antiquing and looking to<br \/>\nrescue Catholic Church things. We had gone out Antiquing. It was nice because I knew I could not let myself get anything BIG. As I<br \/>\nwas looking around I found 2 priest stoles. As I was looking at them (they were not in very good shape), the shop keeper went into the<br \/>\nback room and came back with a black Fiddleback vestment. It was in very good shape. My friend asked how much she wanted for it.<br \/>\nI heard hundreds. And my friend was talking them down a bit. The shop owner clearly asked (in English) &#8220;Is he a priest?&#8221; When she<br \/>\nfound out I was the price was agreed about at 100 Cordoba&#8217;s. I still did not know what a I was paying. It was $20 US. Another person<br \/>\nin our group was trying to get her to go down on a table. She told the shop dealing, &#8220;You came down for him!&#8221; to which she said, &#8220;He is a<br \/>\npriest, that should go with him.&#8221; I was touched.<\/p>\n<p>I say this not to brag about a couple of deals I have gotten. I say it for 2 reasons. 1) I have had a few people recently talk to me about<br \/>\nwanting to get to know me better. Who I am, what I like to do, etc. So I want to share some of who I am with you. 2) I think we often<br \/>\nthink some things have great value and they don&#8217;t. Or we give great value to something that we &#8216;want&#8217; badly. Often times we can be<br \/>\nconfused or mislead as to what has the greatest value.<\/p>\n<p>If we were asked what has the most value in your life? Would we think of something we have or own? Or would we think of a member<br \/>\nof our family or a friend? Where would our relationship with Jesus fall? How much do we value that? Often times we do not know the<br \/>\n&#8216;true&#8217; value we give something until it is taken away. I have no clue where that ring is now and it does not matter at all. My mother<br \/>\npassed away about 6 years ago, yet I miss talking with her almost every day.<\/p>\n<p>Since I have never had to give up my relationship with Jesus, I can sometimes forget how great the value of that is. I have heard POWs<br \/>\nspeak about having everything taken away from them and then locking them in a small cell. When asked how they survived they would<br \/>\nspeak about &#8216;Hope&#8217; or &#8216;Faith&#8217; or &#8216;Jesus&#8217; saying, &#8220;These things they could not take away from me.&#8221; It is only when we give them up, when<br \/>\nwe lose all hope, when we walk away from Jesus, that our life has very little meaning.<\/p>\n<p>We have a great treasure in the Eucharist. Better than anything we could own. And we do not even need to go and sell everything we<br \/>\nown to buy it. Jesus Body and Blood has been given to us. It has been given to us at a great price!!! But that price has been paid by Jesus<br \/>\nfor us.<\/p>\n<p>What is that saying? &#8220;Our life is a gift from God, what we do with it is our gift to God.&#8221; Let us give God the greatest gift we can.<\/p>\n<p>Blessing,<br \/>\nFr Backer <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever confused the price of something? I have done this a few times. The first time that this happened to me was when I went to Texas to meet some friends there. I was in my middle 20&#8217;s <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/?p=926\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-fathers-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":927,"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions\/927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchofstlukes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}