From the Pastor's Desk: February 16, 2020

From the Pastor’s Desk:                                                                                                         
February 16, 2020
    
This Sunday marks the third week of our reflections upon Jesus’ preaching on the Sermon on the Mount.  The Beatitudes is the “Blue print” of Jesus’ mission and fundamentals of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.  As His disciples we are called to live, not by any standard, but by the standards given to us by God.  In today’s Gospel, Our Lord teaches us that all the commandments have a purpose and reflect a wisdom that can shape our lives for the better if we choose to observe them from the heart.  Jesus calls out those who observe the commandments superficially and without heart.  God’s Commandments reflect God’s wisdom, and that not only makes them good choices, but the best choices, even if sometimes in the uncertainty of faith we have to trust in God in making His choices our choices.
 
Our life, from here to eternity, is built on our choices.  As human beings we have an incredible gift in freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility.  In the world today, many define freedom as a passport to do whatever…whenever…with whomever...let’s live...and let live.  We tend to follow our own bliss blinded and indifferent to what is to come– consequences that closely follow our every choice.  And this you cannot avoid! Therefore, to be an authentic, true, faithful citizen of Christ's Kingdom, we must choose with integrity and character of the heart- that is harmony and solidarity with God's heart and His plan for our lives.  St. Paul reminds us of this, that we have been created by God out of love and all He wants in return is our love.  He wants it, but love is incredible in that you can’t make someone love you: it’s the greatest and freest choice you can make. Nobody who has chosen not to love is ever truly happy!
 
Jesus never told us that the Christian life would be easy.  On the contrary, He tells us that to be His disciple, we would need to pick up our Cross each day and follow Him and His self-giving love along the path of the ordinary events of our daily lives.  His promise, however, is the purpose of our relationship with Him as life gets difficult and challenging, Jesus will give us all the help we need to follow Him along that path.  The greatest help of all is the Lord Himself, the Word-made-flesh, with which He feeds us with His Word and Sacraments.  As Jesus says- it’s not enough for us to merely not commit the external sins of the flesh like murder or adultery, but we also have to focus on our hateful or lustful thoughts of our hearts.  Today offers us an incredible opportunity to evaluate our relationship with Jesus by responding to the loving grace of God to amend our thoughts, our eyes, our hearts, our relationships with family members and others, our marriages, so that together with others, we may live by God’s standards and come to experience the possibilities and dreams that God has for each one of us.  It is our free choice to act on His wisdom today, freely to choose to keep His words and commandments.
 
On Saturday, we hosted a Dream Event as a part of the Dynamic Parish initiative.  The hopes for the event were to unleash the God-given power of dreams in every participant’s life and within the life of our parish community.  We wanted to trigger a game-changing moment in the faith lives of at least 1% of the adults and young adults who attend the Dream Event and to spark a desire for all attendees to have a dynamic conversation with God about their dreams.  I am most grateful to everyone who came to the Dream Event! Our parish is one of 61 Dynamic Parishes throughout the nation who were invited to participate in this pilot initiative program.  It is an awesome opportunity for us to be strengthened in our conviction to be Catholic and a member of the parish community and to work together to become all that God plans for us to be-- a Dynamic Parish.
 
May the Lord open our hearts this week to His message for us; that we will not be merely satisfied with exterior success, but rather to condition our hearts– the place where the Lord looks and where the authentic discipleship is born.
 
With prayers,
Fr. Andy