These reflections are a result of more than 40 years of ministry as a Roman Catholic priest. Most of these years I spent in the Diocese of Charlotte which covers Western North Carolina. Now I am retired, and live in Medellín, Colombia where I continue to serve as a priest in the Archdiocese of Medellín.

Sunday, Week XXIV, Ordinary Time

Brothers and sisters: None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091723.cfm
I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.
                   --Invictus, William Ernest Henley, 1875

But we are not our own no matter how much we might think that we are the masters of our fate or that we are the captains of our soul. As Saint Paul reminds us, we are the Lord’s.