A Word from Your Pastor - July 28

Dear Parishioners:

Family life is a mirror of so many things.  Every couple of years my mother’s side of the family, the Keeley clan, get together somewhere around the United States for a reunion.  This year, the reunion in being held in Erie, Pennsylvania.  This tradition began when one branch of the family decided to branch out and invite more distant cousins.  Since that encounter, we have traveled all over the country together. 

Our common ancestor, Lawrence Keeley, came from Ireland and eventually settled in Illinois on a family farm.   Our first extended family reunions were held around Illinois.  From there, the descendants went out in every direction.  Our reunions have taken us to Virginia Beach, VA, Colorado Springs, CO, Everett, WA, Newark, OH, Gettysburg, PA, and St. Augustine, FL.  In each of these places, we have relatives who have served as hosts.  My own branch has hosted twice, once in Newark at Blessed Sacrament Parish, and another time in Florida, where one of my brothers and his wife live.  My own hope is that we will eventually find Irish cousins who can host us in Ireland.  We have not been able to find the origin of the Keeley family there as yet, nor connect with living cousins.  Perhaps someday!

Have you traced your own roots?  Do you let your children know their heritage?  It is never too late to begin.  Gathering the family shows you just how small the world is.  Visiting places where your own people now live and tracing the journeys that started “in the old country” to where you are now serves as a reminder that we are all pilgrims on a journey through life.  We are members of the family of God and we all have a story to tell.  What’s your story?

This weekend, while I am away, St. Timothy welcomes Fr. Joselito Ramos for the mission appeal for the Disciples of Mary.  Our generous response to the needs around the world is a sign of our realization that we are part of the wider Church.  We are all members of the Family of God and our support of one another is what family is all about.

Year of Faith October 11, 2012 – November 24, 2013

We continue our journey through the Year of Faith.  As one way of observing this year, each week a small section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is read before the start of Mass.  This is a small way of offering some food for growth in Faith throughout this year.

ARTICLE 3        SACRED SCRIPTURE   IV. The Canon of Scripture
The New Testament

124 “The Word of God, which is thwer of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, is set forth and displays its power in a most wonderful way in the writings of the New Testament”  (Dei Verbum 17; cf. Rom 1:16.) which hand on the ultimate truth of God’s Revelation. Their central object is Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son: his acts, teachings, Passion and glorification, and his Church’s beginnings under the Spirit’s guidance.   (Cf. Dei Verbum 20.)
125 The Gospels are the heart of all the Scriptures “because they are our principal source for the life and teaching of the Incarnate Word, our Savior.” (Dei Verbum 18.)
126 We can distinguish three stages in the formation of the Gospels:

1. The life and teaching of Jesus. The Church holds firmly that the four Gospels, “whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up.”   (Dei Verbum 19; cf. Acts 1:1-2.)
2. The oral tradition. “For, after the ascension of the Lord, the apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done, but with that fuller understanding which they, instructed by the glorious events of Christ and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, now enjoyed.” (Dei Verbum 19.)
3. The written Gospels. “The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus.”  (Dei Verbum 19.)

Comment:  When the disciples of Jesus began to tell the story of their own experience of His life, death and Resurrection, they started a process that would lead to the Gospels and the other New Testament writings that now put us in touch with Jesus and His times in such a way as to take us there.  We are not just descendants of the early Christians; we are the living testimony to the power of their witness in their day.  They changed the world because they were not afraid to share their Faith.  Are we willing to keep it going?  Can we move beyond our fear to tell the Story of Jesus to our own generation?

Focolare Word of Life for July 2013:  For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Gal. 5:14)   http://www.focolare.org/en/news/category/parola-di-vita/