A Word from Your Pastor - February 14 First Sunday of Lent

Dear Parishioners:

We continue our journey through the Spiritual Works of Mercy.  The Spiritual Works of Mercy are acts of compassion by which we help our neighbors with their emotional and spiritual needs.

·       comfort the afflicted

Affliction can come from many different sources: from within our own hearts, from our experience of the world and its indifference to our personal plight, from attacks from without, and even from the call of God to be something more than we perceive ourselves to be.  To comfort the afflicted is to be present to them with an attitude of compassion and empathy.  It is not to “fix” the other or to solve the other’s problems.  Rather, it is to assist the other to face reality and to discern a response rather than to react.

Affliction is an invitation to engagement.  It calls us to realize that we are human beings in a limited world.  It invites us to enter into a sense of community and solidarity with others.  When we acknowledge our own need to be comforted and we respond to others’ outreach toward us, we move past the isolation that sets us apart.  Mercy is made real for us because we become comfortable in our own skin.

The hope of all the groups and organizations that gather at St. Timothy is that they can be a means for others to know that they are not alone.  Friendships that are real are forged through common experiences and simply being together.  When we gather at St. Timothy, whether for worship or for catechesis or for recreation and fellowship, we must be intentional about entering into a real encounter with one another that is open to God’s action in and among us.  Sometimes all it takes is a look or a nod, a sign that we are listening to one another and hearing the pain.

Family life, too, is where the Spirit manifests our capacity to comfort the afflicted just by being there with and for one another.  When sorrow comes or when opportunity knocks in ways that move us beyond our comfort zone, we are called to enter one another’s hearts.  We are to stand in solidarity with one another as we dare to grow.