A Word from Your Pastor December 11

Dear Parishioners:

The readings of Advent are so rich! If we would only allow our hearts to be open to their message and to respond with the kind of Faith that witnesses to the Truth of God-with-us!

Can you hear St. Paul’s words to the Thessalonians as addressed to you personally?

May the God of peace make you perfectly holy
and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body,
be preserved blameless for the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The One Who calls you is faithful,
and He will also accomplish it.
(I Thessalonians 5:23-24)

This past week, we celebrated the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, which reminds us that God can get to the basic goodness that is in our human nature and allow it to shine forth. This coming week, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which reminds us that Heaven is concerned with our land and the Faith of little ones. Soon we will enter more profoundly into the Mystery of the Incarnation, the wondrous Gift of Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God Who takes our human nature to Himself.

Our Parish will experience the Sacrament of Reconciliation this week through a Penance Service on Wednesday, December 14. Now is the time to allow the Spirit of God to give you the Peace that only God can give. Will you embrace the holiness that is yours by right through your Baptism? Will you allow Jesus Christ to touch you with His Healing Mercy so that you may entirely, spirit, soul and body, become free from sin by the grace of the Sacramental Absolution available to you through Confession?

God is Faithful. He proves this again and again. He can make us faithful as well, but only if we respond to the invitation to grace. God is faithful to what He promises. He has said it and He will do it. Will you allow Him to do what only He can do?

We will have several priests with very compassionate hearts available to offer you the Mercy of God at the Penance Service on Wednesday. Please come and bring your friends and enemies. Children, bring your parents and grandparents. Promise them you will clean your room if they clean theirs!

Entering into our Golden Jubilee: Getting to know Saint Timothy.

But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them.

For some of these slip into homes and make captives of women weighed down by sins, led by various desires, always trying to learn but never able to reach a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so they also oppose the truth--people of depraved mind, unqualified in the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their foolishness will be plain to all, as it was with those two. (II Timothy 3:1-9)

The “last days” began with the Incarnation and especially with the Suffering, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. St. Paul reminds St. Timothy and his community that the struggles in the pagan world and the persecutions they are experiencing are all part of the terror of the last days. But something is more terrible than these outside troubles: sin that comes from a selfish and self-centered heart does more damage to souls than anything else

Paul’s list of attitudes and behaviors present in the last days makes a good “examination of conscience” for all of us: Are we “self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to our parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” and do we “make a pretense of religion but deny its power”? Can we see ourselves in those who opposed Moses, when he came to deliver his people from bondage in Egypt?

Sin is defeated by Faith. Putting Faith in God means being willing to be led to knowledge of Truth. The truth of ourselves as sinners in need of God’s Mercy is the most basic Truth of all.