Last year we traveled around the diocese with the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the monstrance: Jesus-on-the-move. During one of our stops, we visited a mobile home community and spent time with a family who warmly welcomed Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. We prayed and sang. Afterward, we spent time chatting with some of the children.
I asked them, “What would you like to ask Jesus for?" Their answers varied, but one caught my attention. A boy, about 5 years old, responded: “I ask Jesus to give us a new truck.” His answer took us by surprise and brought a smile to our faces.
I asked him why he made this request, and the young boy explained, “I want us – my family – to be able to visit my grandparents who live in Mexico. I miss them very much, but we can’t go because our car doesn’t work very well.”
His reason deeply moved me. His request was not selfish. The young boy didn’t focus on his own needs; instead, he expressed the profound longing to fulfill a shared family desire: to travel, to visit, to rejoice and to share life with loved ones.
This anecdote reminds us that Jesus-on-the-move travels throughout our diocese to meet us. He is Jesus who brings hope and needs “transportation” to reach those brothers and sisters who, for various reasons, have drifted away but long for a visit to feel loved and wanted, and to be reminded that they’re infinitely valuable, irreplaceable and indispensable.
Jesus longs to be with his people; He wants to visit and share his life with each and every one of us. He wants us to invite him to live every moment and event in our life with him. Jesus, who is love and mercy itself, seeks to encounter us, but doesn’t need a truck or car. He needs hearts filled with a missionary spirit, ready to receive him and accompany him on his journey.
Such a heart is the “Uber” Jesus needs to evangelize because a missionary spirit – the spirit of hope – is essential for sharing the joy of the Gospel. God grants this spirit to all who welcome his message of the Good News of love and hope. Love awakens gratitude and hope in the heart: evangelizes it, renews it and transforms it.
To be “Uber” for Jesus means responding to the longing, deep inside every person, to be loved by him and share his love, especially with those in the peripheries of society, who want to know that love is real. To be “Uber” of Jesus means allowing the Holy Spirit, the Divine Sculptor, to shape our hearts into Christ so that we may experience the joy of serving and loving others.
Where do we begin? We start with our families, reaching first to those who, for various reasons, are distant or isolated. Often, it’s not the lack of transportation that prevents us from visiting loved ones but the absence of a missionary heart – a heart willing to become an instrument of hope and evangelization.
The love of God is always new and always renews us. It opens the door to the hope of a better future, inspiring us to dream and imagine fresh possibilities. Love also compels us to share what we have gratuitously received.
As Lent begins, let us, in the best diocese in the world, ensure that the missionary spirit of Jesus-on-the-move, that spirit of gratitude, is present.
Recognizing that we are made to be loved by him prompts us to pray. Let us ask that Jesus-on-the-move will find hearts open to his touch and eager to be evangelized by the truth and life he offers, especially through the sacraments and his Church.
Let us keep dreaming and living the present in the love of Jesus, so that our diocese may continue proclaiming the Gospel of Love and serving as a beacon of hope for another 100 years. May those celebrating the bicentennial look back and joyfully proclaim, as we do today, that our diocese is “the best in the world!”