How do you deal with life’s outcasts when they come knocking on your door—sometimes seeking a hand, but often just seeking a handout? Do you turn them away and go back to serving the respectable folks who show up at church and donate to the cause? Or do you find time for those who no one else has time for?

DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION for a moment to the cross of Christ. What's fair about that? An innocent man dies at the hands of the guilty. The friend of sinners is abandoned by his closest companions. A teacher, healer, and wonder worker is beaten, wounded, and left to die after being denounced by the very people he served and saved.

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “Tell me what you think of this story: A man had two sons. He went up to the first and said, ‘Son, go out for the day and work in the vineyard.’ The son answered, ‘I don’t want to.’ Later on he thought better of it and went.

There is a picture of me floating around in which I’m wearing a Chicago White Sox baseball cap. It was taken at the parish yard sale. How could this be? I am a lifelong Cubs fan.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

Another week, another acrostic psalm, another scriptural meditation on the “ways” of God! This week humility is the key: the willingness to empty oneself as Christ did and so be able to accept the goodness, mercy, and guidance of God, which in turn enables you to reject sin and selfishness.

“Do as I say, not as I do” is probably the single worst line a parent or other adult can use when trying to give moral guidance to a child. Children see right through hypocrisy. So does God.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. —Sir Francis Bacon