Today’s readings teach us the great Mystery of Faith, witnessed in the Eucharistic Sacrifice in which we now take part. God the Son has taken our human flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God Himself has taken a human heart under Mary’s Immaculate Heart, in order that He might suffer and die for our salvation, in order that He might receive our hearts into His glorious Heart, His Heart which was pierced as He died for us on the Cross. [...]

The theme, Go West Catholic Men, evokes those who braved many hardships and worked hard, over the long haul, to reach this treasured portion of God’s vineyard and to make here a good place in which to live and work. But it also evokes the many challenges which were theirs in living their faith with integrity and thus making this naturally beautiful territory supernaturally beautiful, that is, holy, a land whose inhabitants are devoted to knowing, loving and serving our Lord. [...]

Our Lord teaches us today that we are, by virtue of our life in Him, “the salt of the earth,” and “the light of the world.” His teaching, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount, comes immediately after the proclamation of the Beatitudes and is followed by the exhortation to obey the divine law which Our Lord has come into the world to bring to fulfillment by His Passion, Death and Resurrection. [...]

On February 5th in the year 251, Saint Agatha, a young Christian virgin of Catania, gave her life in faithful and enduring love of her Divine Spouse, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Called into trial by the Roman Emperor Decius because of her profession of the Catholic faith, she, together with many young Christians of Sicily, resisted the pressure to apostasy. She gave the supreme witness, suffering a cruel passion and death [...]