The Third Station of the Eucharist, the Sacrifice of Abraham. O Sacramentus Holy, O Sacrament Divine, I'll praise in all thanksgiving be every moment thine.

In Genesis 22, we encounter a powerful image. The image of Abraham being tested to sacrifice his own son. Abraham, he and his wife had no children, and yet Abraham had been promised that he would become the father of a host of nations. He would have more descendants and there are stars in the sky than there is sand on the seashore, and he and his wife have no children. Finally, God blesses him with a son, his only begotten son, Isaac. And then God tests Abraham and asks Abraham to take his son up a mountain and to kill him. Human sacrifice was common among other nations, common among other religions. So Abraham very possibly may have believed this is what God was asking of him. Abraham being faithful, takes his son, puts wood on his son's back, his only begotten son, and his son carries this wood up a mountain. And this father is prepared to sacrifice his son. One can go through this 22nd chapter of Genesis and find-- some biblical scholars have found 30 different connections between the sacrifice that Abraham is about to make of his son, Isaac, and the sacrifice of Jesus among Calvary. The only begotten Son, the wood on his back, going up a mountain, a sacrifice being prepared, an altar being made.

But as we know, praise God. Our God does not delight in people killing their children. Our God does not ask us to kill our young. In fact, any of you who are watching this video that have experienced the death of a child to know that my heart breaks with and for you, and you know how painful the death of a child is. And Abraham in faith was willing to offer this sacrifice if this would God asked of him, but God did not ask him to do that. An angel appeared and stopped Abraham from the act, but then what happens is so powerful. Abraham knows that there must be a sacrifice. Abraham knows that out of gratitude for all that God has done for him, out of gratitude for everything that God has done for him, he must somehow give back. He must somehow, in thanksgiving and gratitude, offer a sacrifice to the Lord. And so Abraham spots a ram it's caught in the thicket. Now, what is a ram and what is a thicket? Well, a definition of a ram is actually an adult male lamb and a thicket is a thorn bush. So what adult male lamb do you know that had his head caught in a thorn bush? What adult male lamb do you know that wore a crown of thorns? Well, his name is Jesus. God the Father had asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, and yet it is a ram that will replace his son on that day of sacrifice. Jesus, praise God, is our replacement sacrifice. Who should die for your sins and for my sins? We should. Who broke God's covenant again and again and again? We have. Who has continually disobeyed God's commandments thinking that our ways will bring us happiness and we end up in misery? Yeah, that's you and me.

So who technically should die? We should, and yet Jesus chooses to become our replacement sacrifice. He dies in our place. He became flesh in the womb, Blessed Virgin Mary, united himself to our humanity so that he could take on our sins and he is our replacement sacrifice. If we can comprehend this, our hearts should just be overflowing with gratitude, that Jesus chose to take our place. And Jesus, the adult male lamb, with a crown of thorns in his head, is slain on Mount Calvary for you and for me. That is his love for us. That is the love of God the Father, right? "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son." Who's only begotten son, the adult male lamb? The ram with his head caught in a thicket.

We have so much to be grateful for. I want to encourage you to live in gratitude. There was a time in my life where things were pretty rough, I'll be honest. And I decided that I was going to, every single week, make a list of gratitudes to go through my week and look at my calendar and write down everything I was grateful for. And then on Monday, I'm going to send—I would send an email to my staff just saying, "These are the things that I'm thankful for this past week, and I want you to know about it." I've been doing that now for three years. I look forward to taking those moments of going through my calendar and thanking God. And I love it when I get emails back in response, "Tell me more about this. I didn't know this happened. Praise God for that. That's amazing."

As we know, the word Eucharist means thanksgiving. I want to encourage you to every day be a person of gratitude. When you take those few moments of silence every day, always spend time in gratitude. Always spend time thanking God. Most importantly, thanking God for His Son, Jesus, who died for us. Thanking God for the forgiveness of our sins, thanking God for our last confession, thanking God for the sacraments we received, thanking God for our baptism and our incorporation into eternal life. But also thanking God for the little things.

Thanking God for the snow, for rain, for the sun. Thanking God for our grandson or our granddaughter who made us a card or drew us a picture. Thanking God for the food that we eat. Thanking God for the things that we often take for granted. Like Abraham, who is overwhelmed with gratitude, I want to encourage you to offer a sacrifice of gratitude to the Lord. I guarantee it, it will be pleasing in His sight. Amen.

The Fourth Station of the Eucharist, the Jewish Passover. Oh, Sacrament holy. O Sacrament divine. All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment thine. All of us are abundantly aware of Exodus chapter 12. As a young child being raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin, I remember yearly gathering with my family to watch the epic Ten Commandments, Yul Brynner, Charlton Heston, water parting, blood in the Nile. It's powerful. I hope you've seen that movie. The images are deep within me. Whether they knew it or not, my parents were saying, "This is important. You need to know this story," the story of the Passover is important, and it truly is, because it was on that night that the Israelites were saved. And every single year, the Jewish people celebrate the Passover, every year.

And they believe that what they do at the table, when they celebrate their Seder meal, their Passover meal, that they are participating in the freedom and the liberation that happened that night when the Jewish people were set free. And what set them free? What was it? Because, let's be honest, Moses had done a lot of things trying to set them free. Animals received boils. There were flies. There were frogs. Water turned into blood. There were a lot of things, but only one thing actually set them free from slavery and set them on course to the promised land. And what was that one thing? It was the death of a lamb. And not just the death of the lamb, but then their eating of the lamb, and the blood, which had been separated from the lamb, being put on their doorposts and their lintels. Clearly, that's why Jesus chose to have the Seder meal, to have the Passover meal be the context for our salvation, and why he chose the night before he died in the upper room to give us the everlasting memorial, which allows us to participate daily in the great gift and mystery of our salvation, which is the Lamb of God being slain, dying, and rising again. If you were a family in Goshen, in the land of the slaves in Egypt at the time of the Passover, and someone in your family said, "You all know what? I really don't like lamb. I prefer beef. I prefer chicken," if there is a wife who just said, "Honey, I just painted the doorpost. Please don't put blood on them. They look beautiful," what would have happened?

Their firstborn son would have died." Moses made it very clear that everyone had to eat the lamb and blood had to be put on their door posts. And if they didn't, their firstborn sons would die. Not just their sons, but also all of their animals. This is true for the Israelites. It was also true for all the Egyptians. And they did die. They was wailing that night for those who were disobedient to the plan that God had given to Moses. So imagine how much more weight is there when our Lord Jesus Christ, His very self appears in the flesh. And during his public ministry, which was just only three years, he stood at the synagogue in Capernaum and said, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink." Obedience to God's ways, obedience to God's laws, obedience to what Christ invites us to, it matters. It mattered then, and it matters now. And just as the Israelites had to eat the flesh of the son of-- had to eat the flesh of the lamb and have the blood on their doorposts, one of the great bishops, the great doctors, the great fathers of our church, St. John Chrysostom, has this powerful quote. "In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors, he did not dare to enter. So how much less will the devil approach now when he sees not the figurative blood on doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ." You see, you're a temple of God. You're a sanctuary of God. The day of your baptism, you were made a temple of God, a sanctuary of God, a dwelling place of God. And thus the blood of Christ is to be on our lips and is flesh within our very bodies.

This powerful, powerful story of the Exodus chapter 12, it's still alive today at every single mass, when Jesus, the Lamb of God, gives us His flesh and His blood to save us. And we're called to be obedient to that. He said, "Do this in memory of me. Do this in memory of me." What is it in your life that you struggle with when it comes to being obedient to God's ways and God's laws? I remember hearing a talk one time, and the presenter said, "Wherever you struggled being obedient, there is a lack of love. And wherever you are obedient, love exists." He made the reference. He said, "The majority of people don't need the commandment, thou shalt not kill their spouse." They only need it every now and then. Why do we not need the commandment, thou shall not kill your spouse? Well, because we love our spouse. Where there is love, there is obedience. And yet in those situations in our life where we struggle, there's a lack of love. I want to encourage you to spend some time just say, where are there struggles in my life of being obedience and what laws are they? Go through the 10 Commandments, go through the seven deadly sins. Where do I struggle in my life with obedience? And I just want you to pray today for an outpouring of love. Dear God, saturate me, pour down, shower me with love and with grace because you are the only one who can save me. I need more of your love, more of your grace in this area in my life, so that I can live as your son and your daughter. The Israelites, they were obedient. They sacrificed lambs and they put it on their doorposts, and they were saved, and they were set free. Jesus wants to do the same for you and for me. Yes, in the mass, by giving us His body and His blood to eat and to save us, but also by encouraging us to be obedient and faithful to His ways. Let's pray for that grace. Let's pray that this station, so deeply rooted in who we are may guide us and lead us to eternal life. Amen