Catch Up
I have been a little under the weather in the last few weeks, and have not posted very much. This weekend we will be celebrating the First Sunday of Lent and the Second Sunday of Parish Alive. Our Ash Wenesday celebration was very well attended, and most of the Parishioners at both Parishes are participating in the Diocesan Parish Alive Project. Very gratifying and inspiring - I hope and pray for an abundant harvest - so many seeds being planted! We owe a word of thanks to our Bishop, the Pastors, the Diocesan team, and our PLT’s across the Diocese for all their hard work in initiating and organizing this project. And , a special word of thanks to all the parishioners of St. Mary’s and St. William’s who have committed themselves to this faith venture. May the Lord bless us now, and in the years to come, with a renewed, committed, and strengthened Faith.
Last Sunday, as we began Parish Alive, we were reminded that our faith is a ‘treasure of Love’. As I prepared to preach on this theme, I had visions of old Pope John Paul II. standing before millions of young people around the world procaliming and demonstrating this Love with his wonderful smile and the words: “The Pope Loves You — Christ Loves You!” And in response the young people would respond in a jubilant noisy joy, as they basked in the Good News of our Christian Gospel.
This Sunday our theme is ‘Accepting the Treasure’. When Pope John Paul’s succesor, Benedict 16th, issued his first encyclical so many were surpised by its title: God is Love. Following in the footsteps of his good friend and predecessor, John Paul II., Benedict defined in words the significance of John Paul’s visual embodiment of God’s Love. God does indeed love all of us, and God calls all of us into the service of love exemplified by Jesus’ life and death.
As Christian’s we are so very much like the pepulace we read about in the Bible. We are always looking for a temporal miracle worker, a messiah so to speak, to save us in the here and now. Jesus did save us, once and for all, but like Peter, we find ourselves soley rooted in the temporal and oblivious to the eternal - the divine. How often I have gasped at Jesus strong rebuke to poor Peter who did not want Jesus to die and told him so. Jesus’ response still echoes loud and clear: “Get behind me Satan.”
The Message of Love that Jesus imparted was a call to God, God’s ways, and to our brotherhood and sisterhood - a call to a service of love. Peter eventually accepted the message and fully knew in his heart Christ’s love, and died in service on a cross himself. Each one of us is invited to accept this call. Have we really accepted?
The great mystery of the Cross reflects the mystery of pain and suffering we all know full well in this temporal order. Yet, when we hear the call of the Good Shepherd in our hearts, we come to know the infinite warmth of God’s love, and in joy and humility we reach out in love and service. In embracing God’s love, we find hope in the midst of despair, faith in the midst of faithlessness, and we ever seek to sow God’s love in an angry and vengeful world. Each day we joyfully live in the knowledge of the eternal, fully aware that the ‘here and now’ is just one flicker in the light of eternity. Indeed, we become the body of Christ, the people of God, the Church.
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