Mom, Dad, and Court on the day he celebrated his First Communion.

When my son Court was little, once in a while his cousin (and decidedly BEST friend) BJ, who is almost exactly the same age as Court, would come for a sleepover and spend a day with him at his elementary school – St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School in Denver.

As BJ tells the story, he was allowed to sit next to Court during the school day, and whenever the teacher would ask a question, Court would whisper the answer to BJ but would never raise his hand to be called upon. He was too shy. Quite unlike the Court of today who is a Very Important Program Manager – whatever that is, but it likely calls for telling people the answer out loud.

Anyway, BJ always goes on to say that during religion class, if Court was called upon to answer a question – no matter what the question was — his answer was always something along the line of “to be good and always obey God’s will.” According to Court and BJ, it was the all-purpose answer to any religion-based question and therefore you didn’t really have to work too hard on your Religion homework.

As in: Q) Who is God? A) God is the Supreme Being who expects you to be good and always obey his will; Q) What are the Ten Commandments? A) They are the rules by which we are good and always obey God’s will. And so forth….

I’m not sure that it is true that this phrase can be used to answer any religion class question, nor am I sure that they aren’t pulling my leg, but I thought of that yesterday while I was listening to St. Mark’s gospel and our All Saints Catholic Church pastor’s ensuing homily. Because every week as I try to take a message from the Mass readings, it seems like the message I hear is always the same: listen to God and always do his will.

I try to take one message from the Mass each week to remember throughout the next seven days. Sometimes it’s from the readings. Sometimes it’s from the homily. Sometimes it’s from the words of the Mass itself. Yesterday my takeaway was something that Father said in response to the gospel story about Jesus chasing out the unclean spirit from the man at the synagogue in Capernaum.  “Even the unclean spirits listen and obey him,” the Jews said in surprise.

What our pastor said was , “If we listen to the Lord and do his will, he will fill our hearts with joy. Let that happen.”

In other words, be good and always obey God’s will! Court knew the answer all along.