A Word from Your Pastor September 30

Moses couldn’t do it alone.  He tried, but it was wearing him out.  God arranged some help – adding the assistance of 70 elders who were given a share in the spirit God had poured out on Moses.  When the younger generation expressed surprise at this, Moses prayed: “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!”  The rest of salvation history tells the story of how God answered this prayer.

We are living in a time when it is clear that no one of us has all the gifts and talents needed to address the challenges we face.  But all of us together, in interdependence, have what it takes, if only we are united in the Spirit.  The world continues to separate us from one another and from our better selves.  We make judgments and fail to allow proper time for understanding and discernment.  Like Moses, we tend to be overworked and stressed out.

Unity is what will free us to overcome all that stands in our way.  “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately” was Benjamin Franklins wry quip in the face of argument for the American Revolution.  In order for the “great experiment” to succeed, we need once again to be reminded that we are “E pluribus unum,” that is “one from many.”

Jesus’ mind and heart belong to us.  When we open our spirits to His way of discernment, we find ever new paths toward unity and peace.  The solutions to all the problems we face will not come from our own devices.  We need what only the Spirit of God can offer.  Whether we are in church or out in the world, we need God and one another.  May our hearts be open as the Spirit of Christ is poured out upon us so we may be the prophetic witnesses we are called to be.

A Word from Your Pastor September 23

Humility comes to us in only one way: we must be put in our place.  Humus is the part of the soil – the ground beneath our feet – that is the decomposition of plants and animals that have given up their own life principle.  For us to be made humble, we have to be deconstructed.  Our own shaping of the world around us must correspond not to our own preferences, our wants and desires, but to God’s plan for us.  God’s Will is always for our good.

Humus makes new life possible, because it gathers in for new plants and the animals that feed on them the water and nourishments that allow life to grow.  So when we are humbled, we are cooperating with the grace that God supplies to enable us to grow into the Life that He offers.  We are truly “grounded” in our own being because we rely not on what we have created on our own, but on the building blocks of what God creates us to become.

Is your Faith being challenged?  Are you having to revisit what you thought you had already figured out?  Are you hearing an invitation to allow what is happening around you to humble you?  That is the meaning of the chaos in which we find ourselves these days.  Each one of us must respond to God directly, asking Him to open our minds and hearts to His plan for our lives.

This weekend we begin our Parish School of Religion (P.S.R.).  St. Timothy School has been in session for a full month.  The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (C.G.S.) is also underway.  These educational opportunities are to assist parents in their duty to raise their children in the ways of Faith. 

As our catechetical efforts enter into full swing, all parents are reminded that the only way our children learn and internalize what is taught is to observe it also in their families’ practice of the Faith.  God calls us to be present at Mass each Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation in order to give Him His due.  Gathering as a Christian community, the family of God, hearing the Word, celebrating the Eucharist and being sent forth into the world to share what we have received are our Catholic way of life.  We owe it to God and to our children always to be attentive to our duty.  May we begin this new season well and be a sign to the world of the truth of the Gospel.

A Word from Your Pastor September 16

Being Catholic is a great gift.  At times, due to the “bad publicity” and the “scandals” that are in the news, we can be tempted to doubt this gift.  At such times, we need to remember and to remind ourselves about the central aspects of our Faith: our Creed, the Sacramental Life we share, the Call to Holiness (through the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes), and the Life of Prayer that puts us in contact with God Who IS Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

There is no other Faith or Religion that has these elements in fullness.  We may not always live up to them, but they are our birthright – the Life that is given to us through Baptism.  If we attend to history, we will recognize that each one of these has been discovered through the course of the ages, going all the way back to our Jewish roots, and made ever more explicit through the Life of Jesus and the Salvation History lived out in the Church.

Relying on God, we can be renewed in our awareness of the gift of Faith and in our commitment to be a living sign of the truth of the Gospel.  We acknowledge our complicity in sin and our trust in the Mercy of God that frees us from sin, making available to us the Salvation won for us by Jesus Christ.

Sins committed by members of our own family impact us more and are more painful for us since we know we are called to do better.  It is so also with the Church.  On the other hand, there are times when we do show our best face to the world around us and serve as the witness of sacrificial Love that is ours in Jesus Christ.

The celebration of the Blue Mass, sponsored by our Knights of Columbus Council #14345, was a wonderful reminder to us of our capacity to witness to the wider community the finer instincts in all of us.  It was an honor to have so many members of the various organizations of first response, as well as Bishop Frederick Campbell, at St. Timothy.  Thanks to the Knights for their effort to bring this about.

A Word from Your Pastor September 9

“The Ephphetha,” which we hear about in the Gospel today, is one of the rituals that follows the pouring of the water in the Rite of Baptism of infants in the Catholic Church.  The celebrant touches his thumb to the ears and lips of the newly baptized child and says these words: “May the Lord soon touch your ears to receive His Word, and your mouth to proclaim His Faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”

We can recognize this as one of the actions associated with the Sacraments of the Catholic Church that comes clearly and directly from the Scriptures.  If you pay attention to your Bible and to all the words and gestures of the Rites of the Church, you will be able notice more of these.  We are steeped in the Scriptures because the Scriptures flow from the very Life of the Church and return to renew and deepen that Life from age to age.

Over the past several months, it has been almost eerie how closely the Scriptures assigned to each day at Mass have spoken directly to the events going on around us.  We are called to live the Faith today just as it has been lived in every generation.  Our Baptism equips us to put the Word into practice.

We are to hear the Word, to understand it and allow it to penetrate our hearts, and to allow it to be evident in our lives.  We are to proclaim our Faith in the Word, by what we say and by our actions.  Praise of God is the response that flows from a lived experience of the Word.  We who live the Word praise God for the new Life that has been shared with us.  Those who observe our lives and who see the correspondence between the Word of God and our witness praise God and seek to share the Life given to us in Baptism.

In these days, we are reminded of our responsibility to open our ears and our mouths to speak the Truth in Love.  Our children especially deserve to see a coherent witness.  Parents must live the Faith they have promised to share with their children.  Church leaders must be clear signs of the power of God’s Word by a witness of life that is evident inside the Church and beyond.

May the Lord Himself soon touch our ears to receive His Word and our mouths to proclaim His Faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.

A Word from Your Pastor September 2

Many years ago, I read a book by M. Scott Peck called The People of the Lie.  (The same author first became famous when he wrote a book that started with the line “Life is Difficult.”  That book was named The Road Less Traveled.)  In The People of the Lie, Dr. Peck expresses a hard truth: there are some people that are so caught up in their own lies that they must be considered “evil.”  There is no way to get them to change their ways.  They treat others as objects and feed on the pain of others.  They are narcissistic and never see beyond their own skin.  The only thing that can be done in relation to them is to limit their influence by creating a fence around them.

I mention this “hard truth” because it may well be that we have reached something like this in what is going on around us with regard to scandals.  Who exactly “the people of the lie” in these realities are is not always easy to determine.  The fact is, when such persons are operating, they often spin such webs that good people are taken in by them.  In order to avoid being taken in, each one of us must re-center and rediscover the fundamental truths that govern human relationships.  Some of these are “hard truths,” but we cannot step back from facing them.

If your Faith rests on anyone other than Jesus Christ and His Church, you must reach down into your own heart more deeply to listen to the Voice of the Shepherd.  He will speak to your heart.  Evil exists, but Jesus has already conquered all evil.  The devil and its demons are certainly at work, but their voice is also clearly discernible.  Anything that would lead you away from Jesus, the Church, the Sacred Scriptures and the Sacraments is false.  Now is not the time to draw away from God, but to draw closer to Him than ever before.

There is darkness in the world.  But the Light of Christ has come into the world and it shines upon us.  We will discover that as we let go of our own selfishness and false images, as we allow the other gods that we have been tempted to serve to lose their hold on us, we will see more clearly.  The Holy Spirit is available to us.

We are the People God has chosen to be His own.  Poor in spirit, we will discover new riches.  Please stay close to God and to one another.  I am sorry for the burden that has been placed upon you by those who live the lie.  Thank you for your witness.  Let us continue to walk together in Truth and Love.

Focolare Word of Life for September 2018

“Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls.”   (James 1:21)

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