**Due to server issues, this post was not published on 8/11/21, so we are posting it now.**

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” 

I cannot help but reflect on this line from today’s Gospel in light of how I spent the past week. I had the immense blessing of accompanying a local youth group (not even my own youth group, but that’s a different story for another time) as a chaperone for their week-long mission trip in the mountains of Tennessee. I could go on and on about my experience but I just wish to offer a few short thoughts for all of you. 

Our group was small but mighty – five teens and two adult chaperones. That’s it. There were no other groups spending the week with us either. But wait, there’s more. Our group was split in half and sent to two different job sites every day: one group of four people and another group of three. Everywhere we went, Christ was with us despite our small numbers and it was evident in the work that we did and the way we spent our week. 

A good portion of our mission trip was spent doing construction work, specifically building a ramp off of a lady’s deck. The first day that my group was on the construction site, we were blessed to spend 1.5 hours talking to the lady we were serving. We talked about a number of different things – she shared about the area of Tennessee we were in, we shared some of our experiences back home, etc. In the middle of our conversation, she stops mid-sentence and says, “You guys make me want to become Catholic.”

We hadn’t mentioned our Catholic faith to her or talked expressly about our beliefs. Yet she could still tell we were Catholic by our presence at her home, by our words and by our actions. Christ was certainly present with the five of us that day in that moment and He made His presence known!

Shouldn’t it always be that way, though? Shouldn’t people be able to tell that we are Catholics by the way we go about our lives each day? We shouldn’t have to put “Catholic” in our social media bios (#whoops, my bad) or say the words, “I’m a Catholic” for people to know who we are and in Whom we believe. 

My brothers and sisters, let’s take a good, hard look at our lives and question whether or not others would be able to tell we are Catholics. Let us make sure that Christ is present wherever we may go and that we can make His presence known to others by our lives. 

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