We’re back in Ordinary Time for a few months, so relax: Your job just got easier. We’re given more than 20 saints’ days in this segment to give us fine models of virtue and service. Kateri Tekakwitha (14), one of our 12 canonized U.S. saints, is especially noteworthy. Also in this virtuous lineup is Mary Magdalene (22), whose day was elevated to a feast last year, and she to the title “Apostle to the Apostles.”

The woman of Shunem showed hospitality to the holy man, the prophet Elisha. How do you show hospitality in your life and ministry?

Loyalty is a quality we value highly. We want our friends to be loyal. We expect our families to be. We hope for some modicum of reliability from bosses or employees. In fact, every meaningful relationship involves loyalty to be viable.

“Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me.

After Dad died it fell to me to take Mom to the supermarket. We had radically different shopping styles. I was an aisle-by-aisle person working one end of the store to the other. Mom was a recipe shopper wandering all over for items for the meals she was planning on cooking.

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

All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”