All of us need friends. But the deepest kind of friendship, according to Aristotle, is the friendship of virtue - seeking holiness together. This means that our first and primary friendship must be with Jesus Christ, Who has already called us "friends"!

It is a great thing for God to perform a healing miracle for us. But it is an infinitely more important thing for God to heal our souls of sin, and give us spiritual health (aka holiness). Sometimes God will not do the physical miracle we want, because instead He wants to make us holy through our sufferings. Trust Him, whether we receive the gift we want or not, because He will always give us the graces we need.

"I love my faith," people say. But what to they mean by faith? Rituals and sentiment? The Catechism is clear on what faith means: believing in God, trusting His promises, and believing all He has revealed in Scripture and through His Church. All three are necessary if we are to have the saving faith that makes us pleasing to God!

Our media thrives on outrage. Most of it is silly, but outrage and anger are actually the proper responses to injustice in the world. Christians need to use healthy anger and outrage to motivate them both to prayer and to action.

Once Christ has changed our life, what is our response to the power of the Cross? Living the disciplines of discipleship - prayer, virtue, service and sacrifice, and offering our life to the Lord!

This feast celebrates when St. Helen discovered the Cross of Christ in the early 300s. But more than that, it celebrates all that Christ's Cross has done for us: paying back the debt we owed God but were unable to pay; showing us the depths of God's love for us; teaching us how to love; and giving meaning to our suffering and death. Blessed be the Holy Cross of Christ!

St. Paul discusses slavery in today's second reading. Although the Church has always officially been against slavery, sadly it is all too prevalent in today's world - both physical slavery and human trafficking, and also the spiritual slavery of addictions. How can we do our part to experience the freedom Christ has won for us, and help others do the same?

The virtue that God loves the most is humility, because it mirrors His own economy of salvation - a God Who humbled Himself to become man and die for us can only be received by people who are humble enough to accept Him. He continues to come to us in the Eucharist, a hidden humility to lift up the lowly!

We usually chafe at the idea of discipline, but it's vital to train well for the spiritual life. Due to Original Sin, we are not naturally inclined to love God - thus, we must be taught, through prayer and self-denial and generosity, how to learn to love. But this discipline is difficult, and many people choose not to engage in it - which is why Our Lord calls salvation "a narrow gate". We must not be afraid to train for the everlasting life to which we are called!

The spiritual life has, as its goal, union with God through grace. This union comes when we cooperate with God in purging our soul of sin, so that we can live like Him. This requires that we be a sign of contradiction to a world so often steeped in sin - but Jesus, the "inspirer and perfecter of our faith", has given us the strength to follow Him into everlasting life!