He said it was the best advice he ever got.
This story took place almost 40 years ago, when I was in my twenties and not yet a priest. I worked in a CPA firm doing audits. I became friends with one of the fellows there who worked in software marketing in the financial industry. He told me he’d gotten some good advice and shared it.
“In my situation, I’m married with a number of kids…” They had four or five at the time and went on to have eight children. “The demands of my job mean that I’m gone a lot.”
And he was. Sometimes his job had him gone for three, four, or five nights out of the week. That’s very hard on a family with little kids. But he had a dilemma: he worked really hard to make a lot of money to support his wife and children, and send them to Catholic grade schools and high schools. A friend had told him he should go talk to a priest who could give him good spiritual direction.
The priest said to him, “You know what you need to do? You need to make that your intention at your next Mass.”
The next day he went to a 7 AM weekday Mass at his parish and made that his intention: “Lord, help me figure this out! I need a better situation, I don’t know what to do.”
So he went to Mass, received Holy Communion, and spent a few minutes in thanksgiving afterwards. Then he drove into work, got there at 8 o’clock, and at 9 o’clock, his boss came in and said, “I need to talk to you, we have some big news. We had to let twelve people go last night because we found out they were trying to take part of our business away. So the partners at our firm, we think you’re the one who should lead this group now, and we know you love to travel, but you won’t be able to travel anymore. We’re going to incentivize you by giving you a 50 percent pay raise!”
That was the answer to his intention at Mass. He needed a way out, and he got it!
If you need help, make it an intention and bring it to Jesus. That’s the best advice I can ever give you.
And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the people who showed up for Jesus in Indianapolis last summer: 65,000. Thank you, and be sure to watch for another Eucharistic Encounter next week, and may God bless you!
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