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From the Pastor's Desk: July 10, 2022
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From the Pastor’s Desk: July 10, 2022
We are to love God and our neighbor with all the strength of our being, as the scholar of the Law answers Jesus in this Sunday’s Gospel. This command is nothing remote or mysterious—it’s already written in our hearts, in the book of Sacred Scripture. “You have only to carry it out,” Moses says in this week’s First Reading. Jesus tells His interrogator the same thing: “Do this and you will live.”
Christ's lesson is so simple! "Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, and you will live." It is within everyone's reach to live out this simple lesson. It is actually the summary of the entire gospel, the entire meaning of life, with such eloquent simplicity!
In all honesty, for whatever reason we are not satisfied with simplicity. We complicate our own lives for the reasons we do and do not know. Way too many times we are like the scholar in the Gospel passage- we pester Jesus for clarifications, "Yes, but who actually is my neighbor?"
Jesus didn't lose patience with the questioning scholar, and he doesn't lose patience with us. He gives us the parable to explain the meaning. And through the centuries, He has generously given further explanations: the words and examples of thousands of saints, the teachings of the Church in every age, and the nudges of our conscience.
But we still complicate our lives; we still find it hard to learn the lesson. It's almost as if part of us doesn't really want to learn it. Why? What holds us back from deciding once and for all to make Christ's standard our own? Each of us has our own brand of selfishness, and selfishness creates comfortable shadows in our lives. When we get too used to them, the simple, bright light of Christ's truth hurts our eyes. But in our hearts, that simplicity rings true. We see the brilliant, clear portrait of the Good Samaritan, and we understand it perfectly- "Go and do likewise."
The month of July traditionally honors the Most Precious Blood of Jesus. It is the Blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, which cleanses us from sin—therefore the Church developed a devotion to Jesus' physical blood and its mystical power, just as it did for His Sacred Heart from which His blood poured out on the Cross. The Precious Blood of Jesus courses through the Church spiritually, giving eternal life to the Body of Christ through the sacraments. Many saints had a devotion to the Precious Blood of Jesus, especially St. Catherine of Siena. Devotion to the Precious Blood spread widely through the preaching of Saint Gaspar del Bufalo, who was a 19th Century priest and the founder of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood. This devotion was later approved and recommended by the Holy See. The feast day of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus is July 1st. (The Catholic Company)
This weekend over 35 youth and chaperones from our parish, together with Fr. Xaviour, are in Orlando at the Steubenville Youth Conference. This special time dedicated for our youth is a wonderful opportunity for them to rediscover their faith and to grow stronger in their desire to live a life of discipleship. Please keep them in your prayers so they would learn to see their neighbor in each other and grow in the fundamental commandment of God to “Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself,” to find fulfillment in their lives and to have Christ at the center of their lives always.
“You want to perfect life, and perfect truth, and perfect love. Nothing short of the infinite satisfy you, and to ask you to be satisfied with less would be to destroy your nature…Why do you want Life, Truth, and Love unless you were made for them? How could you enjoy the fractions unless there were a whole?” -The Wisdom of Fulton Sheen
Have a blessed week!
With prayers,
Fr. Andy
