A Word from Your Pastor - November 29 First Sunday of Advent

Dear Parishioners:

Advent begins a new Church Year.  So it can serve as a time for new beginnings and resolutions.  As Pastor, I have to be honest that in many ways the past year has been a year of great challenge in many ways.  My own heart has been stretched at times to the point of tears.  I am sure that many of you can say the same.

Let us begin again.  Let us take the opportunity of the passage of time to do what we can to leave old wounds behind and look toward the future.  In particular, let us prepare to enter into the Year of Mercy, which will start December 8^th.

One of the many blessings of this past year for our parish and for the Diocese of Columbus was the opportunity to participate in the Amazing Parish Conference held in Denver in April.  Since then, our Amazing Parish Team has been meeting regularly and reflecting on the ways we can focus our energies on the mission entrusted to us to make disciples as we are called to do. 

Welcome has become a primary theme.  How can we welcome others into an awareness of the Love of God offered through Jesus Christ?  Who are we called to welcome?  Who among us do not experience us as a true community of welcome?  What are the needs of our members?  What is the world’s situation telling us about our responsibility to care for others?

Some basic questions we will need to consider as a parish are these:  What makes us unique as a parish?  What is our responsibility given the mission territory entrusted to us?  What are the activities we are involved in that we need to continue?  What activities are no longer serving our mission and need to stop?  What ought we to begin to do that we are not currently doing?

These questions can also serve individuals and families in an examination of their discipleship.  How are you responding to our common call to be a community of welcome?

Advent is the season that prepares us to welcome Jesus.  We welcome Him first by welcoming the least among us.  Maranatha!  Lord Jesus, come!

A Word from Your Pastor - November 22 Solemnity of Christ the King

As we gather to celebrate Thanksgiving this week, we count our blessings.  When we are mindful of all that God has done for us and all that we have received from the generosity of others, we become ever more aware of our responsibility to show gratitude through our own service of our brothers and sisters in need.  The Church’s reminder to us concerning how to give return for what we have received is the teaching regarding the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.

CCC #2447.  The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities.  (Cf. Isaiah 58:6-7; Hebrews 13:3.)

Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting are spiritual works of mercy, as are forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently.

The corporal works of mercy consist especially in feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead.  (Cf. Matthew 25:31-46.) 

Among all these, giving alms to the poor is one of the chief witnesses to fraternal charity: it is also a work of justice pleasing to God (Cf. Tobit 4:5-11; Sirach 17:22; Matthew 6:2-4.):

He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none and he who has food must do likewise.  (Luke 3:11.) But give for alms those things which are within; and behold, everything is clean for you. (Luke 11:41.)  If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? (James 2:15-16; cf. 1 John 3:17.)

Let us give thanks to God for His gifts, and may we share abundantly with those in need  through the power of His Mercy at work in our hearts.  May we learn, too, to share the riches of our Faith with all who long to know God through us.

A Word from Your Pastor - November 15

A Word from Your Pastor

Dear Parishioners:

How are you preparing for the end of the world?  As we come to the close of a Calendar Year, and as the Liturgical Year ends and opens to a new Season, we are invited to contemplate the Latter Days.  The Catholic Church points out the “Four Last Things”: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell.  Each of us will one day meet our Maker and have to account for our lives on earth.  This is a sobering thought.  Yet it is not morbid.  In the life of Faith, it is an exciting thought.  We discover through Faith that we are destined for something beyond this world.

As our Catholic Faith points out, three Theological Virtues are given to us to assist us on our way to God: Faith, Hope and Love.  Faith gives us the capacity to receive the Truth that has been revealed by God and to respond to His Gift by a return gift of ourselves.  Hope helps us call to mind that God is always there for us and to put our trust in Him as our earthly life reaches its goal.  Love serves to share God’s own Life with us and we are enabled to enter into Eternity because the Love we have experienced goes with us.

In the days and weeks ahead, as we count our blessings and give God thanks for all He has given us, we also turn to one another with hearts full of gratitude for what we share.  Let us cultivate a spirit of welcome so that all may come to share our joy.  I want to be sure to thank you all for everything you are and do for the St. Timothy Community.  May your generosity of spirit be richly rewarded by God.

Jesus tells us that no one knows the day nor the hour when God will manifest Himself.  This is clearly so.  Yet we can live each day in joyful expectation of His Coming and in that way we will always be ready.  Let us be joyful and let our Faith lead us ever more deeply into an awareness of God’s Love for us.

Congratulations to our Second Graders who made their First Reconciliation this weekend and to all their families.  May Forgiveness and Mercy be ever a part of your life in Christ!

A Word from Your Pastor - November 8

Dear Parishioners:

Jesus invited His disciples to take a step into a deeper relationship with Him by asking questions.  At a moment of intensity, He asks His disciples “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29) This question is at the heart of all other questions.  We are asked to identify Jesus for Who He IS and in so doing we establish the very ground on which we stand.

Our age is a skeptical age.  It tends to discount anything that came before our age until it is tested.   It doubts what it cannot see.  It denies first and then seeks to manipulate things to go a predetermined direction.  Jesus calls us out of this way of thinking.  He invites us to see the world from God’s perspective.  He invites us to welcome God into our world freely by becoming part of what God is doing.  Jesus invites us to dream of what the world can be through His grace and to take concrete steps to let it happen in us.

The New Evangelization is the Call of the Church today.  From Pope John XXIII, who prayed for a New Pentecost to Pope Francis, who calls us to go to the peripheries, we are invited to become a welcoming community that leads the world to Jesus.

This week, I will be interviewing our Confirmands, the 8^th Graders who are preparing to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.  I will sit one-on-one with each of them to invite a deeper look at what God is doing in their lives.  This is always a revelatory moment.  I learn from them what is going on in the lives of their families in regard to Faith and how they are experiencing their own moment of discernment concerning commitment.  This is a privilege moment, and as  Pastor, I delight in this opportunity to speak heart-to-heart with each one.

Next weekend, on Saturday morning, our 2^nd Graders will be receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time.  They delight in the power of this Sacrament to allow them to experience the healing Mercy of Jesus as He forgives them their sins and teaches them to forgive others.

As our youth enter more deeply into the Sacramental Life of the Church, all are invited to set an example for them.  Take the opportunity to renew your own relationship with the Holy Spirit you received at Baptism and Confirmation.  Go to Confession, especially if it has been a while, and renew your commitment to the life of Grace and Holiness.  Aim high.  Be holy.  Love.  God cannot be outdone in generosity.

A Word from Your Pastor - November 1 Solemnity of All Saints

Dear Parishioners:

Happy Solemnity of All Saints!  This is truly a Family Day.  We acknowledge that we are part of a family that has a great destiny.  Glory in the Kingdom of Heaven is our aim.  By the action of God’s grace in our hearts and in our lives, through our cooperation with that grace, we are promised a place among the Saints in Glory.  Our identity is not at all anything that the world tells us.  Rather, our identity is “Saints in Training.”

Holiness is the call of all who are baptized.  We belong to God.  We are set apart to accomplish a great work in God’s Name.  When we allow this to be central to our self-understanding, something different happens in us.  We live no longer for ourselves, but for God and for those whom He has entrusted to us.

Being a member of the Communion of Saints, we acknowledge that we are responsible for others.  The Saints in Glory, the cloud of witnesses who have gone ahead of us, pray for us and spur us on to victory.  The Holy Souls in Purgatory, our ancestors in Faith still in need of purification before their entrance into the Kingdom, also pray for us and rely on us to pray for them since they cannot pray for themselves.  Other “Saints in Training” also rely on us for our example and for our support through prayer and action that will help them along the way to the Kingdom.

When we fix our hearts on Heaven, we see the world around us differently.  When God is truly first in our lives, we find that the delights of this world pale in comparison to the joy of a living and true relationship with Him.  The call to holiness is a call to a delight that will never end.

November 2^nd is the Memorial of All Souls.  On this day, we keep in mind those who have gone before us who are in need of the final purification to enter into Heavenly glory.  It is fitting for us to pray in a special way for those who have died in the past year and for all our benefactors.  A number of those who have been generous to the St. Timothy community and who literally built the Parish and the School have received their call to the Kingdom.  May they rest in peace.  May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace.  We remember them at the Masses of All Souls’ Day, especially the evening Mass sponsored by the St. Timothy Bereavement Committee.