Tag: Dakota Pesce

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“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” – St. Teresa of Calcutta

Throughout today’s readings, we hear of Christ’s ability to fulfill our desires. We are told, again and again, that He is our greatest desire and that only Heaven–union with God–can bring true fulfillment. As Pope St. John Paul the Great said, “It is Jesus you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you.” In this time of preparation for Christ, the readings remind us that our ultimate desire is oneness with our Savior.

The Gospel acclamation reminds us that the Lord is coming to redeem man, but we must be prepared for His coming. In the same way that the people in the crowd followed Christ along the Sea of Galilee, so too should we follow Christ. In the Gospel, Christ shows the crowd (and us) how much he loves us and how well he cares for us. He understands the needs of his flock and provides for those needs. Those who followed Him trusted that He could care for their spiritual needs. They trusted that, because of their faith, Jesus would make the mute speak, the lame walk, and the deaf hear. And so He did! The crowd followed Christ in order to tend to their spiritual needs and, in doing so, ignored their spiritual needs. But Jesus knows His people, and therefore, he tended to their material needs as well. He ensured that those who followed Him were fed and did not allow them to go away hungry. For this reason, Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist as bread; He satisfies our spiritual needs by satisfying our material needs.

In this time of Advent, as we prepare for the birth of our Savior, let us not forget that Christ has been preparing for us since the beginning of time. He has a place waiting for us at the banquet where He will welcome us home with open arms. May we welcome Him into our hearts and our homes, especially during this season, in the same way that He will one day lovingly embrace us.

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Dakota currently lives in Denver, CO and teaches English Language Development and Spanish to high schoolers. She is married to the love of her life, Ralph. In her spare time, she reads, goes to breweries, and watches baseball. Dakota’s favorite saints are St. John Paul II (how could it not be?) and St. José Luis Sánchez del Río. She is passionate about her faith and considers herself blessed at any opportunity to share that faith with others. Check out more of her writing at https://dakotaleonard16.blogspot.com.

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When speaking about this Gospel, Pope Francis said, “Faced with the needs of others, we are called to deprive ourselves of essential things, not only the superfluous; we are called to give the necessary time, not only what remains extra; we are called to give immediately and unconditionally some of our talent, not after using it for our own purposes or our own group”

Today’s Gospel is one of those readings that hits me in the gut–hard–every time I read it. God, by giving His only Son as a ransom for our sins, taught us how to love sacrificially and unconditionally. The image of the Crucifix is the image of love because it is an outpouring of love that allows for us to be cleansed from our sins and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The image of the poor widow who offers her whole livelihood is the image we should imitate when we offer ourselves to Christ at the foot of the Cross.

Christ presents this poor widow as a model of charity and generosity. In a time when widows were considered totally defenseless, Christ raises her up as an example of how to live a virtuous life. He chose to point out a woman who is the meekest of the crowd because he sees her, not for her poverty, but for the love and faith she shows. She does not do so in order to gain praise but rather to give praise. In giving her whole livelihood, she submits herself to the Will of God and trusts in His goodness and mercy.

My favorite part of this Gospel is that it serves as a reminder that Christ knows each one of us. He knows our hearts. He knows exactly how much we have and exactly how much we give. We have no need to impress Him or try to prove our worth by means of grand gestures. In the same way that he saw “wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury,” so too, “he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins.”

We take nothing with us when we go, so why do we spend so much of our lives collecting things? We collect clothes and movies and books. We save up for the fastest car or the biggest house or the best vacations. But the fact of the matter is, one day we are going to answer God’s question of, “And what did you save for me? What did you collect for me?”

As we approach Thanksgiving this week may we be grateful for all the blessings in our lives and may we take the opportunity to love sacrificially and unconditionally because, as St. Mother Teresa said, “I have found the paradox; if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” The sacrificial love we show will only produce more love.

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Dakota currently lives in Denver, CO and teaches English Language Development and Spanish to high schoolers. She is married to the love of her life, Ralph. In her spare time, she reads, goes to breweries, and watches baseball. Dakota’s favorite saints are St. John Paul II (how could it not be?) and St. José Luis Sánchez del Río. She is passionate about her faith and considers herself blessed at any opportunity to share that faith with others. Check out more of her writing at https://dakotaleonard16.blogspot.com.

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In today’s Gospel, Luke recounts the story of the healing of the lepers. At this time, lepers were one of the most marginalized and isolated groups. In order to avoid spreading leprosy, which is highly contagious, they were not even allowed to live with their families. Those who had leprosy were without hope because there was (and still is) no cure for the disease. Lepers were considered unclean and, therefore, sought purity. When they encounter Christ, they recognize Him as someone who can heal them and grant them purity. When Christ heals the 10 lepers, and he does. He then tells them to show themselves to the priests so that they may be welcomed back into the community. However, only 1 man of the 10 comes back to offer praise and thanksgiving to Christ. And Christ’s response is, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”

How often do we ask something of God in prayer and receive it (or receive something better) but forget to give thanks? How often do we forget to give thanks for our everyday blessings (a job, family, food, a roof over our heads, a car to get us to work, etc)? The Gospel acclamation today is “In all circumstances, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Jesus Christ.” That seems difficult, right? What if our circumstances are less than ideal? What if we have a lot on our plates or are going through a tough time? It seems impossible to give thanks when those are the circumstances, but we ought to look at those circumstances as an opportunity to unite our suffering to that of Christ on the Cross and give thanks for his Passion and Resurrection. The best way we can continuously offer thanksgiving to God is to stay close to His sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Eucharist means thanksgiving and, by taking part in the Sacrament, we are taking part in the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are recognizing that he laid down his life for us in order that we may be saved. He became man so he could say to each one of us, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”

In this season of thanksgiving, may we not take for granted all our blessings. May we praise God for all His works and remember that our faith with save us.

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Dakota currently lives in Denver, CO and teaches English Language Development and Spanish to high schoolers. She is married to the love of her life, Ralph. In her spare time, she reads, goes to breweries, and watches baseball. Dakota’s favorite saints are St. John Paul II (how could it not be?) and St. José Luis Sánchez del Río. She is passionate about her faith and considers herself blessed at any opportunity to share that faith with others. Check out more of her writing at https://dakotaleonard16.blogspot.com.

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One of my co-workers, who I admire, gave a talk at our school the other day. He talked about endurance and told us the definition of endurance: to suffer patiently. I’d never thought of endurance that way before, and it really opened my eyes to what it means to endure something: to suffer through something patiently. As I thought about the readings for today, the word hope came to me. Hope is truly my favorite word in the world: “…we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm…” (Hebrews 6:18-19). I think the author of Hebrews is telling the Jews the same thing Paul is telling the Romans in the first reading.

In the first reading, Paul speaks of the sufferings of the present time. Even though he wrote 2000 years ago, his words are still poignant in today’s culture. The sufferings the Church endures today and the division we experience in our culture are “creation groaning in labor pains.” Creation continues to await, with eager expectation, to be set free from slavery and to share in God’s glorious freedom. We suffer patiently because we have hope in the resurrection. It is by placing our hope in Christ and by allowing hope to be the anchor of our soul, that we are able to endure, to suffer patiently through our present age.
This emphasis on hope is present in the Gospel as well. Christ tells a parable in which he compares Heaven to a mustard seed that grows into a large bush. In the same way that the small mustard seed was able to grow into a bush large enough to be home to many birds, so too has the Church grown. The Church started with one man, Jesus Christ, who sent a small group of men, the Apostles, into the world to spread the Gospel. Now, there are over 1.3 billion baptized Catholics in the world; 1.3 billion people call the Church “home.” Our hope now is that the 1.3 billion of us will continue to spread the Gospel to all corners of the world.

May our present hope allow us to endure our present suffering with joy.

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Dakota currently lives in Denver, CO and teaches English Language Development and Spanish to high schoolers. She is married to the love of her life, Ralph. In her spare time, she reads, goes to breweries, and watches baseball. Dakota’s favorite saints are St. John Paul II (how could it not be?) and St. José Luis Sánchez del Río. She is passionate about her faith and considers herself blessed at any opportunity to share that faith with others. Check out more of her writing at https://dakotaleonard16.blogspot.com.