Blessed Mother Teresa was still a young nun. She felt called to serve God in a special way. She was a member of the Loretto nuns, which were a teaching order of nuns. And she felt called, impelled by the Holy Spirit, to start the missionaries of charity. But her superior said no. And then she asked the bishop, and the bishop said, what is the superior said? They said no. So, well, the answer is no. But she was persistent. And in one of her letters to the archbishop of Calcutta, she wrote, I have been and am very happy being a Loretto nun, to leave that which I love and expose myself to new labors and sufferings which will be great. So she knew what she was getting into, sufferings that will be great. To be the laughing stock of so many. To cling to and choose deliberately the hard things of life. To loneliness and disgrace and uncertainty. And all because Jesus wants it. Because something is calling me to leave all, to live his life and to do his work. Loretto is speaking to us about making a complete gift of ourselves where the seeds of suffering are nourished in the rich soil of loving obedience to the will of God. And where the Blessed Virgin Mary is the embodiment and the perfect example of that very truth. And I want to share with you some reflections from the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and connect them to the very heart of suffering. The first one is the Annunciation. The angel Gabriel. Now why did God say Gabriel? Because we heard today in the first reading, Gabriel. Now who is Gabriel? Gabriel's name means what? Anybody know? Right, he's the messenger, right? But his name means the strength of God. Now he tells us there are seven angels that serve before God, archangels, only three of them are named. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Raphael means God's remedy. Michael is who is like God. Gabriel is God's strength. So Gabriel announces the greatest greeting in the history of salvation. Kairei, Kecharitomine, hail full of grace. Or literally, it means hail, one who has always been full of grace. Or hail who has been perfectly and completely graced by God. That's great news! But what's Mary's reaction in Luke 1.29? But she was greatly troubled at the same. And considered in her mind what sort of greeting this may be. But then Gabriel, God's strength, says, don't be afraid for you have found favor with God. See, she was greatly troubled because for us, sometimes suffering brings fear and anxiety. Ten years ago, and I can't believe it's been ten years already, my best friend whom I've known since I was nine years old, we were in grade school together, high school together, we were in boy scouts together, we were more like brothers really than friends. He was the best man at my wedding. I was the best man at his wedding. Ten years ago, he came back, he was a computer consultant. He came back from an overseas trip to Germany and thought he had pneumonia. He called me and said, I'm not feeling too good, I said man, you gotta go get that checked out. Which he did. And it turns out he did not have pneumonia. Rather he was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of small cell lung cancer. He was diagnosed, he received a diagnosis on a Saturday. He went to Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City for a cancer treatment plan the following Thursday. He died the next morning. I will never forget. I was sitting outside of the rectory of my spiritual director. That morning, that Friday morning was my normal time for spiritual direction. I was finishing up a breakfast sandwich waiting for eight o'clock so I can go in to see father. I get a call from one of my other close friends. He said, hey, this is Walt, I have bad news for you. And I'm thinking maybe one of his parents died and he told me that Craig died. I said, what do you mean that Craig died? I just talked to him. I don't know what to tell you Harold, he's dead and I felt completely empty inside. The same seven of us who were groomsmen at his wedding were now pole bearers in the same church he was married in. He left behind a wife and two small children. One of them was less than a year old. I kept saying to myself, how is Elysia and his children going to get past this? How is she supposed to raise those children by herself? Trust God at a time like this. Now, I'll tell you something. I am a man who loves to pray, okay? I was a Benedictine back in Newark, New Jersey. I love the liturgy of the hours. I love Eucharistic adoration. I love the rosary. I love the chapel of divine mercy. I love it all. But during that time, I felt dead inside. I was just saying the words because when I put my hands in the hands of the bishop and ordination, I promised to pray the liturgy of the hours every day on behalf of the entire church. And I did that, but I felt nothing. I was angry with God because I didn't ... See, here's what the theology tells you. Well, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that God doesn't allow evil unless a greater good could come out of it. What greater good is going to come out of that when it happens to you? So what do you do? How do you even begin to get past something like that?  One of the prayers that really moved me, though, because one of the things I did, I went to adoration. I did not stop doing that. I go to adoration every week for an hour, not for me, for my wife and children. Because it's only an adoration where I continue to be the man that my wife needs me to be, the father my children needs me to be, and the deacon that the church calls me to be, that hour is for them. And the psalm that touched me the most during that time was Psalm 88. Psalm 88 is traditionally the prayer that Jesus prayed on Holy Thursday night when he was in prison before the scourging and the crucifixion the next day. Part of the psalm says, and this is how I felt, and we've all been there. There's not one of us who have not felt this intense kind of suffering at some point in our lives. You have laid me in the depths of the tomb in places that are dark in the depths.  I am drowned beneath your waves. You have taken away my friends. My eyes are sunken with grief. Lord, why do you reject me?  I have borne your trials. I am numb, friend and neighbor you have taken away. My one companion is darkness. I'll never forget how I felt during that time. And when I went to adoration, I said, God, you got to give me something because I can't keep feeling like this. And as I looked at Jesus, body and blood, soul, divinity, and Eucharist, the thing that just kept coming to my heart was Psalm 59, verse 18, all my strength it is you to whom I turn.  And Gabriel says to the Blessed Mother, do not be afraid. You are found favor with God. Don't be afraid to love. Why? Because Jesus tells us that loving brings fear. But love casts out all fear. Where did this fear come from? Beginning in Genesis 3, chapter 10, after the fall, this beautiful image of God strolling through the garden in the cool of the day, looking for the man and the woman that he created in his own image and likeness. And he can't find them. And when he said, where are you? Adam says, we heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, fear, casting out love, the decision to choose my will over God's will casts out love. How did God choose to restore love? Genesis 3, 15, often called the proto-Evangelium, or the first Gospel. He says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. The Lord here is speaking of the Blessed Virgin Mary and not Eve. Just think about it. The only people around at the time are Adam, Eve, and a snake, mentioned so far. Adam, Eve, and a snake. So when God is handing out this punishment, who is he talking to here in Genesis 3, 15? The snake. But the punishment involves both the snake and the woman. He says, I'll put enmity between you and the woman. But he's only speaking to the snake. Think about this for a second. I have twins. Anybody else that has a set of twins? Okay. Anybody with kids can relate to this. I was up in my office doing some work. The twins were downstairs playing. All of a sudden, I hear, crash, downstairs. I see the lamp by the television set knocked over and broken, and I see a ball laying on the floor. They know they're not supposed to play ball in the house, so I said, who did it? And what did they do? Here is talking to the snake, and the punishment involves the snake and the woman. Why is God only talking to the snake? Simply this. The woman is not, is the same Feast of Cana, where she says they have no wine, or literally the wine failed, and Jesus says, what's that between you and me in our business? Woman. He says, woman, what is this, that sounds disrespectful, and when you think about it like, say my son, Benjamin, Benjamin, go clean your room, and he says to my wife, what is this between you and woman? What is this between you and me? Oh, no son. When he says, woman, he's not speaking to her disrespect, that is, but he's speaking to her by her nature. That's why when Gabriel greets her, he doesn't say hail Mary, although we say the hail Mary. He says, hail Kyrie Kechari Tomine. He's speaking of her nature, not her human given name. So when Jesus speaks of the woman, he's speaking of the woman from Genesis 3.15. At the foot of the cross, Jesus says, woman, here is your son. In Revelation 12, chapter 1, Revelation 12, verse 1, the woman with the stars around her head and the moon under her feet, that's the woman in Genesis 3.15, the Blessed Virgin Mary. How else can we be sure that it's her? I will put enmity, which means complete and perfect opposition, between your seed and her seed. Hold on a second. Who in the relationship provides the seed? The man. But it says here, her seed. Now we know that can't be Eve. Why? If you look in Genesis 3 and in Genesis 5, like verse 1, it says, Adam knew his wife Eve and the word for knowing is Yaudah in Hebrew, which means knowing by He experienced his wife and he had Cain, Abel, Seth, and all the rest of them. So the seed came from Adam. But clearly it says here, her seed. Possible, the woman is the only one that can provide the nature, the human nature. The only woman that did that was who? Blessed Virgin Mary. So God here, he sends love into the world through the blessed Virgin Mary to restore what was lost in the garden. Now we, obviously we're not created like Mary without original sin, but we do have sanctifying grace, which is the grace we receive in the sacrament of baptism, the grace that we need to get to heaven, which is strengthened by sacramental grace, most especially Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and the sacrament of reconciliation. If we freely cooperate with those graces and allow God to work through us, to respond to the call to be holy, to be perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect, and the word there in Greek is taumim, which means mature and fully grown, or in the Hebrew, which means complete and whole. If we cooperate with what God is trying to do with us, we can only do that beautifully, perfectly. If we keep focused on how the Blessed Virgin Mary responded to the graces in her life, in her example of saying yes, even though she wasn't completely sure what God was going to do, think about it. So she asked a qualifying question, how can this be since I do not, it says, do not have a husband, but literally the Greek says I do not know man. In other words, she was a virgin. How is that possible? He says, well, of course, Gabriel clears everything up. The Holy Spirit is going to overshadow you. Oh yeah, she's 13 or 14, that makes a total sense, the Holy Spirit is going, okay, I got it now, what? She didn't know exactly what that meant, but she trusted. Now it says the power of the Holy Spirit will overshadow. See, God gave her power for a purpose. The Holy Spirit overshadowed her, she was filled with the Holy Spirit. God filled her with her power for a purpose. What's this conference called again, I'm sorry, power and purpose. We are also filled, because remember, every time we receive the Eucharist, in a sense we become pregnant with Jesus, just like Mary was. As long as that Eucharist stays within us before it breaks down, we are, in a sense, pregnant with Jesus. We are filled with God. We receive his power for a purpose, and sometimes fear and suffering not gets in the way of what God is trying to do, but is a vehicle that God uses for his glory. But you can only understand that with the eyes of faith, faith that is given to us by the Blessed Virgin Mary's beautiful example. Now, trust is one way that we put faith into action. Trusting, like for example, I fly 150,000 miles a year. I'm on planes a lot, and I have to have faith that the airplane, which is a big piece of metal, flying at six miles in the air at 500 miles an hour, is going to get me safely to where I need to go. But sometimes what happens, fear, like when that plane starts shaking, like we're not on the ground, there's no potholes up here, why is the plane shaking like that? And fear starts to creep in. Look, I remember one of the times I was really scared on the plane, I was flying, I think I was flying back from Florida, and I'm from Oregon, so we're going over the Rocky Mountains. Everything was going, you know, they were serving the meals and everything. Everything was going fine. A guy sitting next to me, I was sitting on the aisle, he was sitting here at his laptop, everything was cool. And all of a sudden, the plane felt like a hit a wall. Boom! And everybody was like, what was that? But the time we were trying to figure out what was going on, the plane tilted to the left and started to dive.  I grabbed the seat in front of me, the dude's laptop slid down. I grabbed it, so I'm holding onto his laptop with my left arm. I'm grabbing the seat with my right arm. People are screaming, the cart tipped over, drinks were flying, and I'm like, it was just going off like 25 seconds.  And we're like, I never heard this before, the flight attendants were going through every person, is anybody hurt? Is anybody hurt? They're going from person to person to person. The pilot finally gets on and says that we hit what's called a mountain wave. He said we were supposed to fly under it because we heard this was up ahead. We asked for permission to fly low, but we didn't get low enough so we still hit it. And I thought, and I kid you not, for the rest of the flight, everybody was dead silent. The guy next to me, he said, when I gave him his laptop back, he goes, I noticed that you didn't look scared. I said, brother, if this plane goes down, I know where I'm going. The Blessed Virgin served on Earth as a loving mother of the Redeemer and the Lord's humble handmaid. She conceived, brought forth, and nourished Christ. In a truly unique and special way, by her obedience, Mary cooperated in the Savior's work of restoring divine life to our souls. Mary's next response, the Magnificat, when she goes to see her kinswoman Elizabeth, my soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. See, prayer in the midst of suffering is an effort and a response on our part. Because what is prayer in its very essence? What is prayer really? It's talking with God, heart to heart. Now think about those of you who are married. Could you get to know your spouse when you were first dating? Could you get to know them deeply, personally, and intimately without talking to them? Yeah, I don't think so. So how are we supposed to get to know God deeply, personally, and intimately without talking to him? That's what prayer is, at its very essence, sharing with God heart to heart. The problem is, how do we do that during those times that we feel that God is not hearing or answering our prayers? Sometimes the only prayer you can pray is, God, thy will be done. Because remember Jesus himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was so scared that he was sweating blood. He was like saying, OK, Father, if there's another way we could do this, let me know right now. But not as I will, but as thy will. Not what I want, Lord. Sometimes people think, well, Jesus wanted to be on that cross. He couldn't wait to get on that cross. What? No. He was scared. He knew what was, but he knew he had to fulfill the Father's will in perfect obedience. Even in the midst of the suffering, he knew that he was following God's will. The point that drives all this home for me is the presentation. My mother and I were very close. Just four of us, I'm the oldest, I have two brothers and a sister. My father, growing up in our house, now I'm the first baptized Catholic in my family. My father was pagan, no faith. My mother was Methodist, and she converted to Catholicism in Barbados. That's where I'm from. And I am the first baptized Catholic in the history of our family. When we moved to the United States to New Jersey, that's where I'm from, Jersey originally, I was three years old, and my father did not come with us. When my father finally came, I did not know what a healthy family looked like. My father loved three things, womenizing, alcohol, and cigarettes. That's what he loved. He certainly did not love us. Now, my father has 17 other children, besides the four of us, that we know of. And number 17 just made themselves known to us on Facebook during this past lent a couple of months ago. Now, if any of you have a situation with alcohol in your house, I only have to begin to tell you what life is like there, all the embarrassing moments. And of course, my parents got divorced. I actually don't know how my mother stayed married to my father as long as she did. I think she wanted to at least have some semblance of what a family looked like. So I am a child of divorce.  Why did they ask me that? Because they see the suffering that's going on in their own family, and they think my parents are going to end up like this, so I want to know what it's like. And I tell them, marriage is a beautiful thing, but it's also the cross. And divorce is when the parents put the cross down and the kids pick it up. So I am no stranger to suffering in my life. So because of that situation, the four of us were very, very close to my mom. When I was in the monastery, the reason I left was because my mother had a massive heart attack, almost died. I'm the oldest. In fact, my siblings named me Mr. Responsible. Because when we were kids and my father was out drinking, having all his affairs, I was the one who was responsible at home. My mother was a nurse. She worked in the CCU, Cardiac Care Unit, for years on the grave shift. She would drive us to school in the morning, come back, sleep, get up, make dinner for us, pick us up from school. Then she'd hang out with us for a while. Did she go to bed? Then I was in charge at 12 years old. I had to make sure that everybody's homework was done, that back in those days before answering machines that I had to take the message of somebody called. I had to make sure my mom didn't sleep through her alarm clock so that she would get the work on time. So I took on a lot of responsibility as a 12 and 13-year-old that my father should have done. So because of those experiences, we were very close. But after I left the monastery to take care of my mom, I was out for three months. I was taking care of my mom, making sure my sister was still in high school. I had to make sure she ate and got to school. And I went to a wedding of some college friends of mine. And at that wedding, I met this woman from this strange enchanted land of Oregon and didn't go back to the monastery. But that began a 20-year decline in health for my mother. Fast forwarding, she eventually left New Jersey, went to live near my sister, who was attending Auburn University, and was living with my sister in Montgomery, Alabama. Then she was living in a convalescent home. She had an accident there and broke her leg. We felt she was not getting the care that she needed.  That's a great idea.  I took her to Mass with me on Sundays. And she was permanently disabled, so she was on oxygen 24-7. She was in a wheelchair. I take her to Mass. And she had her spot front, right in the front, on the left side. And that was her. In fact, it got to the point in my parish where if someone else was sitting there and said, get up. That's Adika's mother's seat.  And every time I got up to read the gospel, my mom and I had this thing. I'd be standing there and I'd look down. And she'd look up at me. And make a little mother-son contact before I read the gospel. That was our little thing that we had. Nine years ago, I was, as I started beginning to travel more, actually not knowing. Six years ago, six years ago. I was leaving to go speak at a men's conference in McAllen, Texas, that I was flying to EWTN to shoot my, I think it was my third television series. I have six now. And just like I always do, I kissed my mom goodbye, told her I loved her, see you when I get back, all that kind of stuff. So I left on Friday, flew to Texas, flew to EWTN on Sunday. I'm having dinner with my producer and his wife. And we're talking about the shoot the next day. After we ordered dinner, my phone rang. It was an emergency room doctor at Immanuel Hospital saying that my mother was in heart failure. She was in a coma. And they did not think she was gonna survive. So right as the doctor called, my wife called, talked to my wife, I did call my brothers and my sister. And when they brought dinner out, my phone rang again. And the doctor said that my mother died. Now, my mother was one of the most God-loving, prayerful people that she ever wanted me. She would always say things like, I want you to preach in my funeral, son. Okay, mommy, yes. Son, I went, mommy, I'm gonna preach your funeral, okay. But a couple weeks before she died, I didn't understand this. When I would come home from work and I'd walk into the room and visit and see her, she'd start saying to me, son, unless the seed falls and dies, it can't bear fruit. Mommy, stop saying that. Son, unless the seed falls and dies, it cannot bear fruit. Mommy, stop talking like that. What are you, stop that. It was disturbing me. So the folks at EW-10 were great. Obviously we didn't eat. We got up from the table. They called the airlines to rearrange my flight. They were just so great. And Father Mitch Paco was my scripture professor in graduate school and I was a research assistant for him, so we became friends. He knew my mother. So Father Mitch had heard my mother died. He called me, I went down to his house and we talked for hours until early in the morning. He really helped me get through that first part of the grieving process. The next morning I deacon at Mass, Father Wade Manises was the priest. He offered Mass for my mother and I flew home. And all the preparations that had already been made, my mom was always such a good planner. Everything, I just made one call, the funeral home to care of everything. So we planned the Mass, my siblings flew out and so I actually have to preach at her funeral now. And I was holding it together pretty well until we got to the gospel. I walked up to the ambo just like I, oh and just out of sheer habit, I looked down. And instead of my mother had her arose sitting at her seat at the place where she always sat. And I looked down at the chair and I looked over at the casket. And I realized I will never see my mother sitting there again. And I literally slumped over in the ambo and started crying uncontrollably. My brother, who was a year younger to me, who was also born in Barbados, he came up and he put his arm around me. He said, hey man, we need you. When we were kids, you were always there for us. We need you to be strong for us now.  I read the gospel, preached the homily and buried my mother. Every time I'd walk into her room, I'd cry. Every single time. It still smelled like her. It felt like she'd be back any minute. All her stuff was still there. It's very, very difficult until the reading came along in the cycle of the presentation. And it was like I heard that gospel for the first time. Said this child is destined for the fall and the rise of many and for a sign to be spoken against and a sword shall pierce your own soul so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid there. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The Blessed Virgin Mary understands what I'm going through right now. Because it's not just a matter of losing somebody that you love. I lost somebody that I was part of. I came out of my mother. Jesus came out of his mother. Mary knows what it's like to lose someone like that. So in that moment I said to myself, what if I laid my broken and bruised heart and laid it within the pierced soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary? The union of the two hearts. My heart and hers. And when I started to do that, it started to take my relationship with God with the Blessed Virgin Mary to a whole different place. And then I finally understood what my mother said. Unless the seed falls and dies, it cannot bear fruit. The death of my mother elevated my relationship to the Blessed Virgin Mary to a whole new place. Why? Because now I had two mamas in heaven. When you love someone with all your heart, with the depth of your soul, with your whole being, when you love someone with a love that is selfless and pure, you are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of the other. And this is exactly what God has done through the Blessed Virgin Mary. God has given us the gift of himself in and through his word, Jesus Christ. Someone who we can understand and relate to so that we can have life in him. And how did that life come to us through the Blessed Virgin Mary? Through the heart of love. The next little reflection, the finding in the temple. The reason why I like the finding in the temple is because this shows the humanness of Mary.  Where would you begin to look in New York City? This is what it was like when they realized that Jesus, I mean it probably went something like this, they're walking along, because remember they traveled in family caravans. So it wasn't unusual, they did this every year. It was, they did it every year. Jesus was 12 now, they did it every year. And Jesus was probably with some cousins or some relatives and stuff like that. So they didn't think anything of it, they did it to the trip. Mary's like, you see Jesus? And Joseph is like, I thought he was with you. I thought he was with you, he's Jesus. And they enter those terrifying moments where their child is gone and they don't know where the child is. And when they finally find him in the temple, what does Mary say? Oh, blessings to the Lord. Thank you for letting us find you. Did you have a good time during those three days? Were you all right? No, Mary says, son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously. It's just almost like say, why did you do this to us? That's a normal mom reaction. Not long ago, my parish is in the hood. I'm the only black deacon in the archdiocese so they put me in an inner city parish. Makes sense, makes sense. So sometimes we have disruptions during mass. We have homeless people, sometimes mentally ill people will come into church and start praying loud. And in fact, somebody said once, oh, they must be charismatic. But oh, no, no, no, no. And one time after mass, I was greeting people after mass and someone said, deacon, I think someone broke into your car. And sure enough, I go out there, windows broken out, it's our minivan. Windows broken out, glass on the ground. And I was working in law enforcement at the time. I didn't have my, so I couldn't clear the car. So I had to call for Portland police to come and they checked to make sure the person wasn't still in there and all that. And my kids were scared. And I asked myself, what would I say to that person if I ran into the person who broke into my car and scared my family? Now I know what I would want to do, but the bigger question is what does God call me to do? But what happened to me pales in comparison to so many who have suffered? How do you pray for the person who raped you? How do you pray for the person who got you hooked on drugs or alcohol or pornography? How do you pray for the person who molested you as a child?   And we want more than anything for the person who hurt us and our family to suffer greatly even to the point of death. Yet in the midst of unimaginable suffering and pain Jesus calls us to do the seemingly impossible. He says that we must forgive. He gives us no other options and makes no exceptions. This is such an important point that Jesus put it in the our Father. Forgive us our trespasses. We forgive those who trespass against us. That means that God will only forgive us to the extent that we forgive others. There's a point in suffering when we're looking for healing and forgiveness. We always forget one step. This is a hard step. It usually comes right at the end of forgiveness. We forget this. Now I'll give you an example. Because of what happened in my house with my father, all four of us, three boys and my sister reacted differently to what was going on. My brother, the one who was a year younger than me was very much like my father. He has three different children from three different women never been married, got in trouble in jail because of drugs. My other brother became very angry. Very angry person. And my brother was, that brother was gonna get married. And I knew it was a mistake because he had not dealt with the anger. So I sat down with him, brother to brother, in a loving way by ourselves apart from it. Nobody knew. And I said, hey Drew, I wanna talk to you. He goes, yeah. He goes, I don't think this is a good idea for you to get married. Because I don't think you've dealt with the anger because of the stuff at home. I mean, we've all had been affected by this, but you're so angry, this is something that's gonna carry into your marriage. I think you really need to deal with that first before you get married. And he looked at me and said, oh, Mr. EWTN. Let me tell you something, brother. I know you. I'm not one of your fans. Don't talk to me like, I said, Drew, I'm not trying, I'm just trying, I'm speaking heart to heart, brother to brother here, man. I said, I'm telling you, all of us bring baggage into a marriage. That kind of volatile anger that you have is not good. I mean, you're gonna end up having serious problems. I'm just trying to be loving. Oh, he got mad. He got angry, didn't get invited to the wedding. He got married outside the church on a beach somewhere and stopped talking to me. Few years later, his wife divorced him. And we were still not speaking to each other. So my sister, who was the reconciler, I was down at EWTN and whenever I go down there, my sister still lives in Alabama. So I always try and go see my sister and she goes, oh, yeah, when you get here, we'll go to dinner. Okay, great, we'll go to dinner. So we get there, I see my niece and my nephew, we all go out to dinner and sitting in the restaurant is my brother. Now, she told my brother, hey, this would be a great day for you to come and see. Oh, your niece and nephew miss you so much. They always, you say, where's Uncle Andrew? Where's Uncle Andrew and they other? So she, on the false pretenses, got us together. Now, things did not start off well. He was basically talking to her and I was talking to her and we weren't talking to each other.  If there's anything that I've said or that I've done, even going back to when we were kids, if I've done anything to hurt you, if I've done anything to make you angry, if I've done anything to separate this relationship between I said, I'm sorry and I'm asking for your forgiveness. Why is that so important? I was right. You know what the human thing is? What, the society, the human way of thinking? Let me rub it in your face a little bit now. Remember that conversation we had and I, but what does the Word of God tell us? What does Paul tell us in Romans? Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you may know what is God's will, what is good and pleasing and perfect in the sight of God. I, in that moment, had to put on the mind of Christ and I asked my brother to forgive me, to forgive me for how he did not accept what I was trying to help him. I asked for forgiveness. My brother looked at me like, not because he was like, he don't know if it was for real. And he saw it was serious. He said, okay, I forgive you. Just like that. Now what that did though, even though it was still awkward even, that started a process. Cause let me, why is it so important with regard to suffering? The mind and the heart of that pure soul with the blessed Virgin Mary. What pours out of her heart? Grace. And that grace gives you the ability to do things not as the world would have them, but as God would have them. Cause everything Mary does always points us back to who? To Jesus. So laying my heart was in the pure soul the blessed and the mother gave me the grace to be able to ask my brother for forgiveness. That act of humility, what is humility by the way? It's not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. The grace to be able to do that, that started a process. That humbling myself. Cause what happened? So my brother has completely stopped going to church, completely. I get emails from him. What about this in the Bible? What about this in the Bible? And I lovingly and patiently answer his question. What about this? So finally, he emailed me. Hey, I went to Mass. What happened? They changed the words. I said, Drew, it's okay. They did a revision of the Mass. It's actually much more scriptural now. Don't panic, I said in the thing, I said don't panic it. So now, this past November, this past November, I was in Florida where my brother lives and we went to Mass for the first time together in years. So we're sitting next to each other. I said, hey man, what was the last time we went to Mass together? I don't know. It's been too long. My brother's back in the church today. Why? Not because of me. Because my mother said, unless the seed falls and dies, it cannot bear fruit. Dying to myself, dying to my pride, even in the midst of this tension and suffering between my brother and my family. Dying to that so that Christ can live. So that my brother didn't see his big brother. He saw Jesus. And that's what led him back into the church. A couple more short reflections. Mary at the foot of the cross.  You all know Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Which Jesus prays from the cross. First of all, let's explain what's going on. Why Jesus is praying that Psalm. See, some people will say, we'll see the Father abandoned Jesus and see, so Jesus is praying that. Jesus is praying that Psalm. First of all, it's a Psalm of fulfillment. The rest of the Psalm, the Psalm for a second. Keep reading Psalm 22. They tear holes in my hands and my feet and lay me in the dust of death. I can count every one of my bones. These people stare at me and gloat. They throw dice for my clothes. That's all in Psalm 22. So Jesus reciting that Psalm, number one, to let the people know that it's being fulfilled, being fulfilled in their presence. He's reminding them. Second, Jesus, of course, my God, why have you forsaken me? Of course, Jesus, God never abandoned his son. But in his human nature, Jesus was allowed to experience that same emptiness, that same isolation, that same desolation. We've all felt when we're going through something really difficult and we feel that God is not there. In his human nature, Jesus was allowed to experience that. Why? So that he could redeem it. So that he Catholics. There is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. There is no resurrection without crucifixion. And Lord knows most of life is the cross. There's another part of that Psalm though, starting at verse 10. Psalm 22 says, yes, it was you who took me from the womb, entrusted me to my mother's breast. To you I was committed from my birth, from my mother's womb, you have been my God.  His mother. Mary heard the words. I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine as a mother what Mary was experiencing watching her son hanging there, beaten half to death, brutalized and now dying on the cross. And he's saying to you I was committed from my birth, from my mother's womb. And she's standing right there. It's almost like he's saying, mommy, help me. See, think about this for a second. Guys, remember when your kids were small? Now, when we had the twins, we had a four year old, two year old, and newborn twins, okay? There were days I would come home from work and my wife would say, get them out of here. One of those days. So I'd take the kids and we'd go, so let's give mommy some alone time.  And I'd take them to the park or something like that. You know, I'd take them someplace and you know, we'd have a good time. And one of the kids would fall down. Not bad, it's getting a little near something. They start crying out and I'd run over. Don't worry, dad is here. Daddy's here.  Don't worry. They look at me, who they yelling for? See, when you live inside of somebody for nine months, that is a relationship that we will never fully understand or appreciate ever because by the very nature of how God created a woman, even if she never has a child, she becomes a nun. By the very nature of how God created a woman, she cooperates with the Holy Spirit, like Mary did, only a way that a woman could. In her saying yes to the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is who? Domino and vivificantem, the Lord and giver of, by the very nature, women are life givers and life bearers, life givers and life bearers.  And he's crying out from my mother's womb, you have been my God. And she's, I can imagine standing, let me help him, let me help him. Hmm. Now interesting, Mary, no, her last words are what? Her last recorded words spoken in scripture are what? Do whatever he tells you. Again, her last words direct us to Jesus. Now during the crucifixion, she says nothing. Mary listened, Mary listened. Mary was a faithful witness to the fact that even in the darkest hour of our lives, God's love knows no end. Even in the hardships of everyday life, God's love knows no bounds. Even in our suffering and death, God's love holds nothing back. On the cross he gave everything. And he says if we are to truly be his disciples, we must deny ourselves, take up his cross and what? Put it down when he gets heavy? Follow him. Because where is he leading us to? Heaven. So the cross, amen, the cross gets heavy. Amen, it gets heavy. And we feel like giving up. We feel like putting it down. And that's why we have to help each other in the body of Christ. Because even Jesus needed help carrying his cross. We are not in this alone. Brothers, as we have the Blessed Virgin Mary and her prayers to help us. So to conclude, says that Mary kept all of these things, Luke tells us, pondering them in her heart. Suffering, especially suffering during the last moments of life, has a special place in God's divine plan. It's a sharing in Christ's passion and a union with the sacrifice he offered in obedience to the will of God. What is obedience to God, by the way? Obediere in Latin means to listen. It's listening to the voice of God and allowing that voice to change your life. That's what obedience is. Listening to the voice of God and allowing that voice to change your life.  Some of us are stuck. We're stuck. We're stuck. And we can't move forward. Because we think we've got all of this figured out and we don't. It's like God is standing there. I wanna fill you. I wanna give you everything, but he can't unless he gives us permission. We have to say yes like the Blessed Virgin Mary did and accept everything that God wants to give us, even the suffering. Because the real cross of prayer is to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of every single situation in our lives. The real cross of prayer is to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of every single situation in our lives. We pray from the heart because we love. We pray because we want to deepen and strengthen our relationship with God. We pray because prayer moves us from knowing about God to knowing God. Mary's example shows us a fidelity to God's will. Though sometimes we have to take our hands off the steering wheel and let God drive. I have a hard enough time letting my wife drive. Nevermind letting the Holy Spirit drive. We have to empty ourselves of sin so that God can fill us with his love. We have to die to the ways of this world, to the thinking of this world so that Christ can truly live in us. This means being counter-cultural. Jesus told the truth and they killed him. What do you think is gonna happen to you when you start living the truth of your faith? I'm gonna talk more about this in my talk tomorrow. But I'll give you one example now. I'm gonna say I fly a lot. I'm on planes a lot. I was on a plane a couple of years ago. And I always, now permanent deacons in the United States simply don't wear clerics when we travel. We dress in regular clothes. But I always wear my crucifix. And by my way, this is my mother's miraculous medal. People ask me when my mom came into the church when she was 16 years old in the 1930s. When she came into the Catholic Church she received this miraculous medal. She never took it off. I don't remember a time literally in my life where I didn't see my mother wear this miraculous medal. And when she died, that's the only thing I wanted. Why? Because just as Mary is always close to her son, this reminds me that I'm always close to my mother. I was waiting patiently while the lady was putting her luggage up in the bin. And she turns and looks at me. She goes, that offends me. First I thought, cause I was black. I'm like, what? What you talking about, you know? And I said, what? She said, that. I said, this? She said, yes. I said, oh, then don't look. Christ did not die so his teachers could be changed by the culture. Christ died so that his love and his truth can change the world. So my brothers and sisters in Christ in the midst of suffering, I ask you to lay your heart within the pure soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And when you're in the midst of that suffering you can't think of anything else to say, pray this. Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I trust you. Jesus, I give my life to you. Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I trust you. Jesus, I give my life to you. Amen. All right. Thank you. God bless you.


Welcome everyone. Before we begin, would someone open us in prayer please? Let's pray. Gracious looking from the Father, we thank you for enabling each one of us to gather here. As we continue our study on New Testament survey, we pray for your spirit to minister to us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you. So today we're beginning in the book of Acts. So ideally, we should have gone from Luke into Acts because there is continuation in the things that Luke is talking about. But we'll read a little bit of the end of Luke so that we are able to make the connection back from Luke into Acts. So let's just look at Luke 24 first. That's the last chapter in Luke. It ends with these three stories. The first is the women who go to the tomb. So there's a list of a few women who go and find that Jesus is not there. And they are sent with the message to tell the disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead. After that we have the story of the disciples, the two disciples on their way to Emmaus and Jesus walks with them. And once they recognize who Jesus is, they go back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples that Jesus has been raised and that Jesus appeared to them. So we have the women who've already told the disciples and then we have these two disciples as well who return to Jerusalem. And so verses 45 onwards in Luke 24 continues from there where they are discussing about Jesus being raised from the dead. So let's just begin from verse 45 onwards to 53. Give us some context for where Acts begins. If someone can read that for us. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. Then he said to them, Thus it is written and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. And the repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. And he let them out as far as Bethany and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass while he blessed them that he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. Amen. Thank you. So we see here Jesus appears to the disciples. Okay, so as they're gathered, they're discussing all of these people have shared that they've seen Jesus. The disciples themselves have not yet seen Jesus. They are still when Jesus appears before them, they still are afraid that he's a ghost. And so he shows them his hands and his feet.  He's not just a ghost. And then we read these last few verses where Jesus tells them he opens up the Old Testament scriptures to them about how it had talked about the Messiah who would suffer. How it had pointed to him and all that he fulfilled. And then he promises the Holy Spirit and then we see the ascension. So from there, let's go to Acts 1, 1 to 11. And if someone can read that for us, please. Acts chapter 1 verse 1 to 11. The former account I made, Otheophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up after he threw the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait. For the promise of the Father, which he said, you have heard from me for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Now, when he had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight, and while they looked steadfastly towards heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, and he also said, men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. Thank you. So we see here Luke clearly continuing, right, from the Gospel of Luke. He is continuing into this book, and he says in my last book, I wrote about all the things that Jesus did and taught, and right up to the day he was taken up into heaven, and then he goes into a recap of what Jesus did just before he was taken to heaven. He appeared to the disciples, proved to them that he had really been raised over 40 days. He taught about the kingdom of God, and then he told them that they would receive the Holy Spirit, and he said, you will receive, so this is the key verse in Acts 1.8, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. We'll see how this verse is an introduction to everything that Luke will talk about in the book of Acts. So how he's arranged the book as well is how the church starts to spread right from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. And so Luke begins that recap and then ends with the ascension and then goes into the story of what happens next. The choosing of the 12th disciple, the day of Pentecost and then how the church grows from there. So this is how we can split the book of Acts into three sections. So the first section is chapters 1 to 7. This is where, if we're looking at that key verse, Acts 1.8, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. So at chapters 1 to 7 is focused on the church in Jerusalem, starting with the Pentecost and then how the church begins. Let's just read Acts 2.42 to 47. So that is where after the Pentecost the church has started and it's just a record of the early church. Acts 2.42 to 47. Acts 2.42 to 47 and they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done through the Apostles. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all as anyone had needed. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Thank you. So here we see this record of the first church, the church in Jerusalem. So this is what they were doing. They were meeting together in the temple courts. They were learning about who Jesus is, about this new covenant relationship with Christ. They were fellowshiping together at people's homes and they were celebrating the communion. So they were celebrating the Eucharist together. So this is chapters 1 to 7 and at the end of chapter 7 is where Stephen is stoned. So we have the record of the first martyr Stephen. And then we go into chapter 8, Acts chapter 8. If someone can read Acts chapter 8 verse 1. Acts chapter 8 verse 1. Now Saul was consenting to his death. At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the Apostles. So we see here the start of the spread of the church from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria. Going back to Acts 1-8, the witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria. So this is the second section of Acts where the persecuted believers move from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and they're taking the message of the Gospel to these parts of the ancient Near East. And then chapters 13-28 is the record of Paul's missionary journeys. And as we know, Paul travels from Jerusalem all over Asia Minor. And that is pretty much the known world at that time. So we see from Judea Samaria the spread to the ends of the earth through these missionary journeys that are recorded in chapters 13-28. So this is why I said Acts 1-8 is the key verse for us to know. Because based on this Luke will share how the church grew throughout from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. So why do we call it Acts or the Acts of the Apostles is because that's how some Greek manuscripts refer to it. So Luke himself doesn't call it that. But Greek manuscripts use the word praxis which means Acts. On some manuscripts it's extended to Acts of the Apostles. We see in this book also a focus on Peter in chapters 1-12 and then on Paul from 13-28. So we talked about Paul's missionary journeys from chapters 13-28. So chapters 1-12 will focus more on Peter's leadership in the church and among the apostles and then Paul's missionary journeys from 13-28. Now we all know that Luke is the author but as scholars like to debate there are questions about is it really Luke. But these are the reasons why we believe it's written by Luke. The first is the early church records that it was written by Luke. The second is like we read in the beginning of Acts. He says in my previous book Theophilus we see the same thing in the beginning of Luke where he's addressing the book to the same person Theophilus. So because of that we see that similar introduction to the book. We believe that it was written by Luke. Another reason is that there is a lot of similarity in the style of writing in the language that is used. So Luke uses some of the contemporary Greek like that was spoken between people. But he also uses Jewish Greek which is closer to the Septuagint. So what is the Septuagint? The Greek translation of the Old Testament. So the Old Testament is written in Hebrew but it was translated into Greek because most Jews were not speaking Hebrew. Greek had become the popular language of the people so the Old Testament was translated into Greek. So in the New Testament whenever we see quotations of the Old Testament it's usually using that Greek translation. That Septuagint version of the Old Testament that they are referring to. So Luke uses a lot of that language as well. So we see in terms of language similarity between Luke and Acts. Another thing we see is that Luke himself was on these journeys with Paul. So we see in Paul's epistles in Colossians, in Timothy, in Philemon Paul referring to Luke being with him. So by Paul's testimony we know that Luke travelled with him on some of the missionary journeys. But in the Book of Acts itself Luke records certain journeys that he made with Paul. In parts of the stories he starts to talk about we instead of they or them. He starts to say we meaning that he is also part of what was happening there. And so because of that we attribute this book to Luke. So I wanted us to just look into all of these passages because it's quite fascinating to see Luke's description of the journeys that Paul made. He goes into a lot of detail and it's quite interesting to see how much detail he puts in into these journeys. So these are longer passages. We'll just read Acts 16, 10 to 18 first. Now after he had seen the vision immediately he sought to go to Macedonia concluding that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel to them. Therefore sailing from Troas we ran a straight course to Sametres and the next day came to Neapolis and from there to Philippi which is the foremost city of the part of Macedonia, a colony. And we were staying in that city for some days and on the Sabbath day we went out of the city to the Riverside where prayer was customarily made. When we sat down and spoke to the woman who met there, now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatera who worshipped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul and when she and her household were baptized she begged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord come to my house and stay so she persuaded us. Can you go on till verse 18? Now it happened as we went to prayer that a certain slave girl possessed with the spirit of divination met us who brought her masters much profit by fortune telling. This girl followed Paul and us and cried out saying, these men are the servants of the Most High God who proclaimed to us the way of salvation and this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her and he came out that very hour. Okay, so this is the first time Luke talks about being part of what is happening. Okay, so this is Paul's second missionary journey, so we don't know at what point Luke joined him. But we see here in verse 10, Paul has the vision of somebody calling him to Macedonia and so they are in Troas here. And from Troas they go into the sea, they go to Samothris which is here and then they go to Neopolis and then they travel to Philippi. Okay, so you also have it here on the map. I hope it's clear. So this is the second missionary journey and Luke is with them briefly and then after this, after this story where Paul, he commands the demon to come out of the girl, Paul and Silas are taken to prison and so Luke is no longer part of the story at that point. We then see in Acts 20 again that Luke talks about being with Paul. So this is on Paul's third missionary journey. We'll just look at that. It's a long passage but has a lot of good information about what all happened in the journeys. So let's just read that and we can also just keep track of where they are on the map as we're reading. Acts 20 verse 5, these men going ahead waited for us at Troas but we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread and in five days joined them at Troas where we stayed seven days. Now on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where they were gathered together and in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus who was sinking into a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep and as Paul continued speaking he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But when Paul went down fell on him and embracing him said do not trouble yourselves for his life is in him. When they had come up and broken bread and eaten and talked a long while even till they break he departed and they thought the young man is and they brought the young man in alive and they were not and they were not a little comforted. Then we went ahead to the ship and sailed to Asos. They're intending to take Paul on board for he had given orders intending himself to go on foot and when we met when he met us at Asos we took him on board and came to Medellin. We sailed from there and the next day came opposite Kios the following day we arrived at Samos and stayed at Troglium. The next day we came to Miletus for Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus. So he would not have to spend time in Asia for he was hurrying to be at Jerusalem if possible on the day of Pentecost. From Miletus he sent us to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church and when they had come to him he said to them you know from the first day that I came to Asia in what manner I have always lived among you serving the Lord with all humility with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews. Now how I kept back nothing that was helpful but proclaimed it to you and taught you publicly from house to house testifying the Jews and also to Greeks repentance towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you. You can continue till 21 18. So testifying and see now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem not knowing the things that will happen to me there except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city saying that chains and tribulations await me. But none of these things move me nor do I count my life dear to myself so that I may finish my race with joy and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And indeed now I know that you all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God will see my face no more. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole council of God.  For I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn every one night and day with tears. So now brethren I commend you to God and to the word of his grace which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have coveted no one silver or gold or apparel. Yes you yourselves know that these hands have provided for my necessities and for those who were with me. I have shown you in every way by laboring like this that you must support the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he said it is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had said these things he knelt down and prayed with them all. Then they all wept freely and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him. Soaring most of all for the words which he spoke that they would see his face no more and they accompanied him to the ship. Chapter 21 now it came to pass that when he had we had departed from them and set sail running a straight course we came to cause the following day to Rhodes and from there to Patara and finding a ship sailing over to Phoenicia we went aboard and set sail. When we had sighted Cyprus we passed it on the left sail to Syria and landed at Tyre. For there the ship was to unload her cargo and finding disciples we stayed there seven days. They told Paul through the spirit not to go up to Jerusalem. When we had come to the end of those days we departed and went on our way and they all accompanied us with wives and children till we were out of the city and we knelt down on the shore and prayed. When we had taken our leave of one another we boarded the ship and they returned home and when we had finished our voyage from Tyre we came to Tholmes greeted the brethren and stayed with them one day. On the next day we who were Paul's companions departed and came to Caesarea and entered the house of Philip the Evangelist who was one of the seven and stayed with him. Now this man had four virgin daughters who prophesied and when we stayed many days a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. When he had come to us he took Paul's belt bound his own hands and feet and said thus says the Holy Spirit so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. Now when we heard these things both we and those from that place pleaded with him not to go up to Jerusalem then Paul answered what do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart for I am ready not only to be bound but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. So when he would not be persuaded we ceased saying the will of the Lord be done and after those days we packed and went up to Jerusalem. Also some of the disciples from Caesarea went with us and brought with them a certain nascent of Cyprus an early disciple with whom we were to lodge and when we had come to Jerusalem the brethren received us gladly. On the following day Paul went with us to James and all the elders were present. Thank you. So we see here this third missionary journey a very detailed account of someone who is with Paul on that journey. So it's just a beautiful story you see as they're traveling there are certain stories that Luke highlights right. He stops at Troas he talks about the of Eutychus being raised from the dead stops at Miletus and talks about Paul saying goodbye to the Ephesian elders in the church. They stop at Tyre and they talk about the prophecy of Paul being taken to prison and now we know when he goes into Jerusalem that that's what happens. So Luke's account is very very detailed. Very detailed is from the fact from the list of all the places they pass to the passing Cyprus from the south they spend seven days in Tyre all of this gives us this kind of takes us on that journey with Paul on that missionary journey with Paul. So from here we read the last account of Luke with Paul on his journey to Rome. This is also a longer read but we'll just read that Acts 27.1. Acts 27.1. And when it was decided that we should sail for Italy the delivered Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion of the Augustine court named Julius. You can go ahead just a little 28, 16, 5. And embarking in a ship of Adramitiam which was about to sail to the ports along the coast of Asia. We put to sea accompanied by Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica. The next day we put in at Sidon and Julius treated Paul kindly and gave him leave to go to his friends and be cared for. And putting out to sea from there we sail under the leave of Cyprus because the winds were against us. And when we had sailed across the open sea along the coast of Celicia and Pamphylia, we came to Mira in Elisha. There the centurion found the ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board. We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty of cinders. And as the wind did not allow us to go further, we sailed under the leave of Crete of Salmone. Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fairheavens near which was the city of Lasi. Since much time had passed and the oak was now dangerous because even the fast was already over. Paul advised them saying, Sirs, I preserved that the, perceived that the awake will be with the injury and much loss. Not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives. But the centurion paid more attention to the pillow and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said. And because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to sea from there on the chance that somehow they could reach Phonix, a harbor of Crete facing both southwest and northwest and spend the winter there. Now, when the south wind blew gently supposing that they had obtained their purpose, they wade anchor and sailed along Crete close to the shore. But soon a tempestuous wind called the north-easter struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and we drove in along. Running under the lee of a small island called Kauda. We managed with difficulty to secure the ship's boat. After hosting it up, they used supports to undergrip the ship. Then fearing that they would run a ground on the trees, they lowered the gale and thus they were driving along. Since we were violently storm-tossed, they began the next day to jettison the cargo. And on the third day, they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands. When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of our being saved was at last abandoned. Since there had been without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, Men, you should have listened to me and not have sailed from Crete and incurred this injury and loss. Yet now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night they stood before me an angel of the God to whom I began and whom I worshipped. And he said, Do not be afraid, Paul, you must stand before Caesar and behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you. So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we must run aground on some island. When the fourteenth and ninth had come, as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. So they took a sounding and found twenty platforms, a little further on they took a sounding again and found fifteen platforms. Sister, you can go ahead to twenty-eight sixteen. Twenty-eight. I mean, continue till? Twenty-eight sixteen. Okay, fine. And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for days to come. And as the sailors were seeking to escape from the ship, had lowered the sheep's boat into the sea under, pretends of laying out anchors from the boat. Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut away the ropes of the sheep's boat and let it go. As day was about to dawn, Paul urged them all to take some food, saying, today is the fourteenth day that you have continued in suspense and without food, having taken nothing. Therefore, I urge you to take some food. It will give you strength for not a heiress to perish from the head of any of you. And when he had said these things, he took bread and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat. Then they all were encouraged and ate some food themselves. We were in all two seventy-six persons in the ship. And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, throwing out the wheat into the sea. Now when it was day, they did not recognize the land, but they noticed a bay with a beach on which they planned if possible to run the ship ashore. So they cast off the anchors and left them in the sea. At the same time, loosening the ropes that tied the rodders when hosting the for sale to the wind they made for the beach. But striking a reef, they ran the vessel around the boat stuck and remained immovable. And the stern was being broken up by the surf.  But the centurion wishing to save Paul kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land. And the rest on plans are on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land. Chapter 28, 1, after we were brought safely through, we then learned that the island was called Melta. The native people showed us unusual kindness for the kindlet of fire, kindlet of fire, kindlet of fire and welcomed us all. Because it had began to rain and was cold. Then Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire. A wiper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, no doubt this man is a murderer. Though he was escaped from the sea, he had not allowed him to live. He however shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They were waiting for him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a girl. Now in the neighborhood of that place the island named Publius who received us and entertained us hospitalily for three days. It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed and put his hand on him and healed him. Publius had taken place the rest of the people on the island who had diseases also came and were cured. They also honoured us greatly and when we were about to sail, they put on board whatever we needed. After three months, we set sail in a ship that had been turned in the island, a ship of Alexandria with the twin gods as figurehead. Coming in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days and from there we made a circuit and arrived at NGM. And after one day our south wind sprang up and on the second day we came to Puthoyli. There were found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days and so we came to Rome. And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the forum of Apios and three taverns to meet us on seeing them. Paul thanked God and took courage and when we came into Rome Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier that guarded him. After three days he called together the local leaders of the Jews and when they had gathered he said to them, brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the custom of our fathers yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans. When they had examined me they wished to set me at Liberty because there was no reason for the death penalty in my case. Thank you sister. So we see here why I wanted to read these passages is to kind of see what was Luke's experience. So when he's writing this book he's not writing as an outsider to what was happening. He experienced all of the things that he talked about and he wrote it from that experience of seeing the miracles, seeing the persecution, seeing the side of appearing before Roman authorities and defending the faith. So all of these things he had a firsthand experience of it and he was writing from that firsthand experience. So we'll just quickly cover these last few slides and stop there. So when was this written we talked about this when we were looking at the book of Luke as well. Majority of scholars believe that was 70 to 90 AD. A few people some scholars say in the 60s and fewer say after 90 AD. So why we don't say it was before 64 AD is because Luke is believed to have used Mark as a source when he was writing the Gospel of Luke. So it has to be after 64 AD. He also talks about the temples. It seems that he's talking after the temple's destruction and the temple's destruction happened in 70 AD. So that is one reason but the people who say that it was before AD 64 conclude this because the book of Acts ends before Paul dies. So we see Paul in Rome but we don't know what happens after that. So some people say because it doesn't record Paul's death he must have written before Paul's death. But another side of people say that he was mostly focusing on how the Gospel was spreading and once it reached Rome it had gone from Judea Samaria to the ends of the earth and so he ends on that positive note. He was not writing specifically about Paul in this book. He was writing about the spread of the Gospel. So those are some reasons that people give for the dating. The purpose of writing in our textbooks we have he's recording the early church history and he wanted to show that the church's existence was a historical reality and that the Gospel message also is based on historical fact. And then he also shows that the Gospel applies to all nations and classes. So as it spreads it's going to all people from all places. There's no distinction between who is welcome who is unwelcome to the kingdom of God. Some other purposes is a legal perspective. So we saw where Paul is defending his case in so many places and there are people who are brought before authorities. So Stephen Paul they are made to defend the faith that they are standing for. So Luke writes this to give Christians a basis to say that even though people were coming against us they were never found guilty. The Christians were never found guilty of doing anything against the Roman government. This could be used by later lawyers and even Christians trying to defend their faith to say that we are not doing anything that is illegal or against the government. He uses it also apologetically to show the historicity of the Christian faith. So there was more value given to a faith that is more ancient. Now if faith had begun with Jesus that means it's only about 30 years old. This religion is only about 30 years old when Luke is writing. But Luke is trying to make the connection to the Jewish faith to the Old Testament to show that this is a faith that is as old as Judaism and it is still one that is to be received by others because the Jews themselves were not receiving this faith that is valid. Okay, so we've come to the end of time. Let me just see. So just we'll close with this and we'll continue from here on Monday. Emphasis on prayer, signs and wonders and the spirit and world evangelization. We'll read these passages on Monday. So we'll continue in the book of Acts from Monday. I'll post your exam tomorrow. And then we'll have till the next weekend. So I'm not sure what the date is for the next weekend. But we'll have more than a week to submit our exam. Okay, I'll let you all know on Monday once it's posted but you can look out for it on Google and we'll see you in the middle class room tomorrow. Thank you.


There we go. Now I have sound. Whoops. All right. So, if I have multiple, if I have a process with say eight threads and one of those threads calls fork, what should happen? So should I create a new process that's an exact copy where that new process also have eight threads? Well, that would get out of control really, really quick because those other seven threads were just doing some random stuff whenever one thread called fork. So you don't even know what they were doing. It would be just in some weird inconsistent state. It would get out of hand really, really quickly. And especially if you were like fork bombing yourself, well, now suddenly you can fork bomb yourself much more effectively. If it just copied all those threads as well, that would be kind of silly. So in order for this not to get out of hand, the rule in Linux is whenever a process with multiple threads forks, one thread would have called the fork. So it will create a new process that is a copy of that. But the caveat is this new process will only have one thread in it running and it will be a copy of whatever thread called fork. So if in that process I have threads one, two, and three, and say process two calls fork, it will create a new copy of this process. So all the virtual memory will look identical. All the file descriptors, everything like that, except that this process will only have a single thread in it and it will be a copy of thread two. So it will look like it continues there. So that new process, one thread, that's it. So Linux just copies the thread in the new process. The new process just has a single thread in it. And if that thread hits P thread exit, all the same rules apply, it would be the only thread running. So it would just end the process and it would just call exit. If you get into more advanced uses, generally calling fork with multiple threads and then wanting, like, assuming things are consistent is really, really hard and generally you don't do it. If for some reason you do do it, there's this function called P thread at fork that will not be covered in this course that will run to completion before the fork happens. So you can guarantee your memory from all the other threads are in some consistent state. It's really, really hard to get that right, but it gives you some control over what happens at the fork in terms of the other threads. But we're not going to cover that in this course. I have never used it in my life, which probably means you will never use it in your life either. So typically, you either create threads or you create processes and creating, forking with multiple threads generally doesn't really happen. Oh, yeah, yeah. So if this is just for kernel thread, so if you just have user threads, they just exist in that process. So if you fork, you'll just create same rules apply as last time. You just create an exact copy. It keeps on executing. They look the exact same except for the return value of fork. So yeah, if you do that, if you have user threads, they'll still exist. All right. Other fun thing that if you have a process with eight threads in it and you send it a signal, what happens? Does one thread get the signal? Does the main thread get the signal? Do all of them get the signal? Turns out there's really no good answer to that because, well, if the main thread gets the signal, main thread's not guaranteed to exist. So that's probably a bad idea because you might lose signals. If all of them get the signal, that's probably bad because all eight threads or however many threads you create would all be trying to do the same thing at the same time. Generally, that's inadvisable, so it doesn't do that. So what Linux does is just pick one of the eight threads at random and send the signal to that thread. And then that thread gets to handle it. So this makes concurrency hard because you have no idea what thread would even receive a signal. It could get interrupted at every time. Go ahead, have to run the signal handler and then switch back. Yeah. Can we designate to an extent a thread to not receive a signal? Yeah, so you can have threads block signals if you want. But what if I have every thread block signal to a different one? Then that thread would get it. So you could do it if you want. But by default, if you just have every thread handling, if you just set up your default signal handler, that's what would happen. If multiple threads are registered for that signal. So yeah, it would just randomly pick one. One thread gets it. That makes your life really challenging because you don't know when any thread will get interrupted at any given time. So that hybrid approach generally comes and goes, like I said, seems like a good idea. If you want that hybrid approach, you can just do something called a thread pool. Some of you may have heard of this before, some of you may have not. The goal is to get all the benefits of the hybrid approach with none of the drawbacks. So a thread pool would create a certain number of kernel threads up to however many cores you have on your system and also create a queue of tasks. Because typically this will only give you advantage if you have a lot of really, really short tasks. So like I want to create 10,000 threads, 100,000 threads, millions of threads. You don't want to use kernel threads for a number that high. Typically you don't have to do much in that. So instead of that, I divide my task up into a queue. And then I create, say I have eight cores, I would create eight kernel threads. And then in each of these kernel threads, all it would do is ask for more tasks. If there are any tasks for it to do, it would go ahead and execute that. So I could run everything in parallel if there are enough tasks. And then if there are no tasks, it would just go to sleep, wait for another task to come in. If another task comes in, it would wake up, execute that task, resume them. And then the nice benefit of this is I only create eight threads ever. And I just keep on reusing them over and over again. So if you want to make your program go fast, there is thread pools that are built into Python. So let's look up Python thread pool. Boom, that's what it does. And it just creates a little queues. It creates the queues for you and you just give the threads tasks. Things go fast, really, really good. Like I said, this course is good outside of C. So if you want to implement main to one, well, guess what? This is what you're doing for Lab 4. You are going to create a threading library called Wacky User Threads. Why did I name that? Because it gives me joy to see what at the beginning of all your calls. I'm easily entertained. So this is the state diagram for a process. Well, guess what? The state diagram for a thread, which is what is executing, looks exactly the same. So initially, you will create a new thread through this what create library call. And that should create a new thread for you and then throw it into this ready state or waiting state. And that would be the queue of all the threads that want to execute. So creating a new thread doesn't mean you immediately switch to it and start executing it. You just create it and you put it on this waiting queue or ready queue. And again, I will show you how to use a built-in queue so you don't have to implement it yourself. Now, to switch between threads, it is going to be explicit. So this will be cooperative user thread. So the only way to context switch between threads is to do it explicitly. So if a thread is running, it needs to call what yield and that will put it on the back of the ready queue so it would go to the back of the line and the next thread in line would start running. So only one thread will be executing at a given time. So if you want to say, go ahead, something else run, you call yield, this thread goes on the ready or waiting queue and then the next thread executes. Concurrency. So we have concurrency, right? So we can make progress on multiple things at once or not once. We can make progress in multiple things in little small chunks. If we switch between them fast enough, it looks like parallelism. And sometimes it's easier to program concurrently. Whatever, like the confidence. All right, whoops. So if a thread is running, another thing that might happen is it calls exit in which case that thread will be terminated. It cannot run anymore. It cannot pass go. It cannot collect $200, so on and so forth. And these are all going to be by default joinable threads. So one option you have if a thread is running, it can block so it can try and join on another thread and that will block this thread from running so it won't go on the waiting or ready queue and it will wait for that thread to terminate. Then whenever that thread that it's waiting on terminates, that thread can now go ahead and execute again. It would just go to the back of the ready queue or waiting queue. And this is essentially minus a function, everything you need to implement. Yeah, OK. Any questions about this? Lots of fun. Again, it's set up so that you will have, I think I said before, so you will have a week, so to encourage you to start early and really understand this, you will create your own test case for this lab. So your own test case, you'll have a week to do that. It's only worth 5% of the lab just to get you to at least start thinking about it early. And what you do, you don't have to write any code for it. You just use these functions. You can create as many threads as you want. And what will happen is you submit that test case and I will run the solution on it and then tell you the result. So if there are anything tricky you want to ask about, you can get the definitive answer from the solution because whatever you write, I will run the solution and I will tell you and only you what the result of running the solution in that code is. So you are encouraged to write good test cases. So the better test case you write, the more information you will get out of the solution. You will not be allowed just to, you know, get the source code of the solution or anything like that. That is not valid. It just checks for numbers. So any questions about that? No, we're good. Yeah. So you just add it to your Git repository. It'll be a week after the lab's released. So it will just be one of your source code files in your repository. So nothing special. Yeah. In this lab, we do concurrency fast enough and then we can achieve parallelism. The goal of this lab is you're just implementing user threads. This is silly because, I mean, they have to yield from each other so you know when the context switch. It's just practice implementing what threads would actually do in like the simplest way possible where you can actually figure out how they work. Yeah. So block in this context means that thread can't run anymore. So if a thread calls join on another thread, so say thread one joins thread two, well thread one can't execute until thread two is done. So not being able to execute is what we call blocked. So it's blocked because it's waiting on thread two to terminate. Yeah. Yeah. So thread one joins on thread two. Thread one can't continue executing code from that join until thread two is done. And then if thread two terminates, then thread one can go ahead and resume. Yeah. Yeah. So you're essentially implementing pthread join. Yeah. No. So if you are joining another thread, so thread one joins thread two, well if you put thread one in the ready queue and it starts to execute again, no. So thread two can yield. So it's possible thread one waits on thread two. Thread two is the next thing to run, so it runs, but it could yield to like thread three or something like that. And then thread three, maybe it terminates, goes to thread two, thread two creates thread four, terminates thread two creates thread five, right? It could do whatever. Yeah. So basically when a, doing normally, it goes back to waiting. When a thread finishes executing normally, like, yeah, if it yields, it goes back to waiting. So basically, the same unusual happen. Yeah. You just switch to another thread. So then both of us yield together or? No. You just wait for another thread to finish and then when that thread is finished, you just, you're able to run again. So you just go to the back of the waiting queue. When you exit a thread, it will just be terminated. In this case, it will be like a zombie thread. So we'll have some resources later. So you can't clean it up until it gets joined. So there'll be like return values from threads. We're going to emulate like a status. We're not doing detached, by the way. No, no detached. So there'll be only joinable just to make your life a bit easier. Yeah. You can call yield whenever. So like yield is just a function call. No. So you just call yield and that means if there's another thread to run, run the ad instead of me. So in this case, things are cooperative. So like if you want to switch between them, it has to be really explicit. That will get into my next point. So the scheduler between them can just be round robin or whatever. So create a queue. I'll tell you how to do that. Easy. Run the thread at the front. Yield the one way. If it yields, go to the back. You have to do a context switch. Again, I'll show you how to do that. So these are called cooperative threads. So they're a bit useless because if you want to switch, it has to be really explicit. You have to essentially give up your CPU time. They have to be nice. But if we wanted to make them preemptive threads, which look more like real kernel threads, what we could do is we could set up a signal and tell the kernel to interrupt our process after a given time unit. And then after that given time unit, that signal handler can call yield. So then it's automatically switching between threads and it could do this however long the timer interrupt is, which would be like a time slice. So you could implement round robin, switch between threads really, really quick without them having a say about it. So this is just to make it a lot easier to debug because if I put in a timer interrupt and we try and debug your program, it's suddenly non-deterministic and you have no idea what we're doing. If it's cooperative, you get to control all the context switches so you actually have a hope of debugging it. So you are welcome. All right. So here, really quick, here is our next complication. So midterm material, soft now. So this midterm stuff is only going to be lecture like the first half. So lecture one to this, which is 17. And this will be the next problem we have to solve. I'm not going to tell you how to solve it completely today because if I told you how to solve it completely today, I could test you on it. So we'll just demonstrate this problem. So let us see this fun little program I have created. Whoops. No, I have way too many windows open. Yeah, you cannot see what I see. Oh, I have to fix the other. Okay. So here is a silly program I created.  So this creates a new process. This main thread starts executing the main function. The main thread will create an array of P thread T's up to num threads. In this case, num threads is eight. So it has a for loop. So it creates eight threads. So every array index gets its own thread. And it will create eight threads that want to run this run function. Otherwise we have default arguments. So these are all joinable threads. They're not detached. After creating all eight threads, I have another for loop that joins them all. So I create eight threads and then I wait for them all to finish. Then after they are all finished, I print off the value of this counter. What is counter? I'm glad you asked. So counter. It is a global variable. So it's a global variable. I put static in front of it. Remember static just means I can only access its global variable in the source file. And that doesn't do anything special. So creates a global variable called counter. And then in the run function for each thread, while declares in i, then has a for loop that iterates 10,000 times. And each iteration should increase the value of the counter by one. Then they're all done. So if the counter is initially zero, and each thread increments at 10,000 times, and I have 8,000 threads, what should the value of counter be? Eight threads. So eight threads, each of them does 10,000. So it should be 80,000. So this program will compute your grade. So 80,000 means you guys get 100. So if I compute your grade, you got 55. Do it again. Got 52. It's even worse now. You got 62. A bit better. Let's see. Da-da-da, 79. Oh, it was kind of close. Boom. No bugs. My program works just fine. So this is why this course is hard, because now this is a possibility. Anyone want to guess as to why it happens, and if you know what the term data race is, don't tell me. No. Yeah. So essentially this global variable, well, it's just in virtual memory somewhere where the compiler would just pick an address for it. So since it's in virtual memory somewhere, it's shared between every single thread. So they're all trying to update the same thing. So if we remember 243, does anyone want to tell me what this line actually does? Move and add and move. Yeah. So we know what loading from memory is, right? Yeah. We know what storing is. So that line of code. Let's go back to this. So that plus plus counter. What that actually does. Oh, yeah. Like how did I get 80,000 that one time? No. This is just luck. Literally just luck. So just because it works a few times, I mean, it doesn't mean it actually works, which is why debugging this stuff is close to impossible. So you have to essentially, you're going to have to reason about your programs from now on. I actually know the low level details. So like for example, in this case, plus plus counter, it will do several things. So say if we just execute it on one thread where remember registers are local in a thread. Well, the first thing it's going to do is it's going to read that value into a register from memory. So it would load from whatever that address of counter is. So it would read the value that's at that address and then populate that register with whatever the value it's read, right? So next thing it would do is it would increment that register. And then finally, well, it would write that register to whatever, to that address. So that plus plus counter actually is three steps. So if initially, let's say, let's say initially counter is zero. So if initially counter is zero, well, what's going to be the value in this register? Zero. So the register would be zero. And then we would increment it so the value of the register, hopefully we can add one, should be one, right? I mean zero plus one is one. Yeah, okay. Zero plus one is one, at least in this universe, hopefully. So if I write that register to that counter, that would update counter equals to one, right? So if another thread came and did the same thing, so let's say I have thread two. So let's erase what I said before. So let's say we have thread two that comes along now. So we switch to thread two after we update the counter. So what would it read into the register? What value would it read? Zero. So remember that global variable is shared between processes. So thread one updated it to one. So thread two would also read one. Yeah, so it would also read one. So now that thread would increment that register. So hopefully that register would now be equal to two. And then the last step, it would write and update that global variable. So now counter equals to two. No problem, right? Makes sense. One thread increments, the other thread increments. Well, the bad thing that can happen is we don't have control over if any concurrency happens. So what could happen if we are unlucky, which in fact is likely to happen. So let me move this up. So what can happen is thread one executes first and let's assume our counter is equal to zero. So what would it read into its register if it's loading that value? Zero. So we could get unlucky in that the kernel context switches over to thread two. So if thread two starts executing, what would it load into its register? Zero. Zero. And now at this point, we are absolutely screwed. So if thread two continues running, while that register goes to one, and then it would update that counter to be equal to one. Then we could context switch back over to thread one. The register is unique to a thread. So whenever you switch back to it, its register is still zero. So if it increments that register, it gets incremented to one. And in this case, it would update that counter also equal to one. So both threads would update counter to one, which is why, guess what? That number when we execute this program is lower than 80,000, not above 80,000 or something like that. And that's because this happens. And the lower the number, it just means the more unlucky we got. So we just got really unlucky with switching really fast between processes. So that's fun, isn't it? So how would we fix that? How without knowing anything else, how could I fix this program so that it always prints 80,000? Well, because of time, let's just do that. Would that work? So that would work. Would that be a good thing to do? It would be very pointless. So this works. This would print 80,000 every time. But one thread just gets created. It executes. Another thread gets created and executes. Essentially, I'm making this serial with additional steps and I'm making my program even slower. So threads are not always... There's always a trade-off with going as fast as possible. But the faster you go, the more you might encounter this problem. Safest thing to do is to be serial, but then things are really, really slow. And if you just add threads on top of the serial program, it just becomes even slower and you will get fired from your job. So that's time. So just remember, pulling for you. We're holding this together.