{"id":3790,"date":"2026-05-15T10:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/?p=3790"},"modified":"2026-05-13T10:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T15:35:13","slug":"3790-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/3790-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Reflection \u2013 May 17, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"fusion-responsive-typography-calculated\" data-fontsize=\"32\" data-lineheight=\"41.6px\">The Great Commission<\/h3>\n<p>&#8220;He would be everywhere, whenever his friends gathered to pray. He would continue to act through them just as he promised: forgiving sins, sharing mercy, bringing young and old into the embrace of eternal life through Baptism, and feeding their very souls with himself, the Bread of Life. He would remain on earth through his Church.&#8221; (Great Adventure Kids Catholic Bible Chronicles, by Amy Welborn, p 265)<\/p>\n<p>There is one command at the end of the Gospel of Matthew; to go and make disciples. A disciple doesn&#8217;t just believe, but acts. He imitates his leader. As we recognize in James 2:26 that faith without works is dead, we are called to live our faith out in our daily life. By doing so, we inspire others to follow similarly.<\/p>\n<p>Catholic Social Teaching explains, &#8220;No one can be a Christian merely for his own benefit. Coming to Jesus, seeking his friendship, and following him also means publicly professing faith in him, allowing him to speak to us and commission us. All of us must be \u2018messengers\u2019 and \u2018witnesses\u2019 of the Gospel.&#8221; (DOCAT 235)<\/p>\n<p>So that we might proclaim the Kingdom of God in word and deed, God gives us the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Having wonder and awe of how good God is, we will seek to please Him by sharing this same goodness. We show what we believe by loving one another.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, God will measure our lives by how much we love. How much we love Him will show by spilling over to how much we love those that he has placed in our path. Christ lives in us through our words, healing, sharing, acts of kindness and mercy. Unconditionally serving one another is essential to true love.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2081\" data-end=\"2103\"><strong>\u2014\u00a0<em>Alexis Dallara Marsh<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2105\" data-end=\"2170\"><em data-start=\"2105\" data-end=\"2170\">Reflection provided by diocesan.com. Reprinted with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Great Commission &#8220;He would be everywhere, whenever his friends gathered to pray. He would continue to act through them just as he promised: forgiving sins, sharing mercy, bringing young and old into the embrace of eternal life through Baptism, and feeding their very souls with himself, the Bread of Life. He would remain on earth through his Church.&#8221; (Great  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-reflections"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Weekly Reflection \u2013 May 17, 2026 - St. Paul Church Macomb, IL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/stpaulmacomb.com\/church\/3790-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Weekly Reflection \u2013 May 17, 2026 - St. Paul Church Macomb, IL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Great Commission &#8220;He would be everywhere, whenever his friends gathered to pray. 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