Jesus “took him off by himself, away from the crowd,” and healed the man by placing his finger into the man’s ear and touching his tongue. The word Jesus used “Ephphatha!” means “be opened,” and this is what Jesus comes to do.

Jesus comes into our lives, into this world which seems to be without God — and he says to every man and woman “Be opened!” When God enters into our life — suddenly our eyes are opened and we see the world in a new light, we can hear the voice of God!

The prophet Isaiah in the first reading is crying out: “Here is your God! He comes with vindication … he comes to save you.” God’s love is a saving love. He creates us because he loves us, and he redeems us because he loves us!

Like that man in the Gospel, Jesus wants us to open our hearts and our mouths to proclaim his love for every person! We need to ask for the grace to make God the center of our lives. His love needs to become the reason for our lives.

This week, let’s try to find ways to reach out to those in our society who feel excluded or closed off, like the man in the Gospel. By our actions — listening, caring, and serving others — let’s try to open people’s hearts to the presence of God in their lives.

Let us ask for the intercession of Mary, our Blessed Mother — may she help us as we continue to follow her Son. May every ear be opened to the Word of God and every mouth be opened to proclaim him.

“That’s what the word ‘Catholic’ means, it means universal, it means international, it means one family drawn from every race and language and tribe and people to the ends of the earth. This is God’s dream for his people. We are God’s dream for humanity.” — @archbishopgomez

A conversion is a change of heart — a change in the way we are doing things.

God wants us to live our faith in natural ways, in our ordinary lives. He wants us to share our faith heart to heart — with a sincere smile, a truthful conversation, listening to somebody. We can make small changes, small conversions in our daily lives to live our faith better.

We have a daily duty of conversion — of looking at our lives critically, rooting out anything that takes us away from Jesus.

The best way we can honor the lives lost on 9/11 is by living our lives totally for Jesus Christ — by working, in everything we do, to share his Gospel or love, his promise of God’s mercy and reconciliation.

When we listen for and try to answer, in a positive way, for the call to constant conversion, then we lose our life and we live for Jesus.

When we give our life to Jesus, he gives us a new life. We begin to live with Jesus every day and everything is different — even if we continue to make some mistakes, we know that Jesus is walking with us.

Real conversion is not just having pious thoughts or good intentions. Real conversion means really changing the way we live — getting rid of our pride, trying to be less selfish. It means trying to straighten out all our habits and attitudes.

Conversion starts with Jesus. In him, we see the perfection of human nature, we see what a true child of God looks like.

May we have the courage for conversion — so that we can gain pardon for our sins and live in the newness of life!

Our lives are a continual conversion — a journey of constantly turning away from our selfishness and our sins and our pride and turning toward God and his grace and holiness.

Conversion is all about trying to love like Jesus loved and trying to live like he lived. We can do this by sharing our lives, by serving others.

Let us try to listen more closely for Jesus’ call to conversion in our lives. And let us try to follow him more closely — with greater love, with greater trust, with more sacrifices and more devotion.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is an ancient devotion that dates back to the earliest days in the Church and reminds us that the cross is the great sign of our hope as Christians.