This weekend as Catholic Christians we celebrate the great gift of God’s Love—Eternal Life—offered to each of us who believe in God through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This gift of Love comes to us unmerited by our being and actions yet freely given so that we might share in the Divine Life of the Father—a life of unending Joy and Perfection.
To be “Perfect” or “Perfected” does not mean to be without fault or to never making a mistake of not stumbling in living out the Christina life, but rather “to be perfect” means to accomplish the Will of God that each one of our lives was createdto do. Like Christ, who was perfect in carrying out the Father’s Will for all of humanity, we too are asked to seek the Will of God and align our own individual’s wills to His Will. How can we do that?

Through Grace, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines grace as “favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons (and daughters), partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life" we are able to respond
to God’s call to know Him, love Him and to serve Him in this life so that we may live with Him forever in the next life (Baltimore Catechism). In the Sacrament of Baptism, some people will ask
“Now God loves my child, right? No—God loved your child before he or she was formed in your womb, rather the love that is coming into being at Baptism is the grace for the human heart—
the child being Baptized—to have their hearts oriented toward God’s Will so that as he or she grows in maturity and faith, they will accomplish the Will of God through their words and actions.

The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our heart enables us to say “yes!” to God, that simple fiat, “Yes Lord, I come to do Your Will.” It is through Grace that we turn toward the Father and
His way of life and so we can cooperate with God in His ongoing plan for human salvation…continuing that “chain-link fence of faith” begun by the first Christians and continuing today. In the seven Sacraments of the Church the abundant grace, which Saint Paul says abounds all the more when sin is present, of God enables our cooperation with it to perfect us—making us
accomplish the Will of God—when we choose to feed the hungry or cloth the naked as well as when we choose to care for neighbor in need or to faithfully love a special needs child, when we work
on a broken marriage even though divorce is an easier out, or when we accept an inconvenient truth when choosing the untruth is more simply more convenient in our culture, when we stand
with God on Sunday morning as society or friends call us to the sport fields—these choices we are asked to make for and byGod—He will give us the grace to do so, and in His plan He seeks
us to choose righteousness and truth because all such things shall lead us to the our own Easter Sunday Resurrection…when the Lord will invite those who believe in Him to come home—home
to peace and joy, perfection and glory, happiness and light.