Remain in My Love

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Remain in My Love 

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

Being chosen for a special assignment can do wonders for our self-image. In today’s gospel we hear Christ tell us that “...I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.” God’s way of doing things is a little different than the way things work in this world. Take Major League football or baseball draft choices. All the teams are vying for the best players to augment their teams. They need to have backup players who can step in and fill the position when a player gets injured or is having a bad game. That’s good strategy and essential for major league sports. It’s just not the way that God does things.

You see, in God’s plan every one of us had a role to play, specific work that is unique to us, something that only we can do. If we don’t do the work we are appointed, it doesn’t get done. So, people go hungry, remain lonely and isolated, life if fear and hopelessness, the good news doesn’t get spread…  Only we can give voice to how God is working in our life.  God has made us so unique that he doesn’t have a backup player ready to take our place to carry out the life-long work he has assigned specifically to us to accomplish.     

Understanding that we all have a role to play in bringing about God’s plan helps us to realize just how much God loves us and lets us see that he is there every step of the way to help us succeed. We are in every sense of the word God’s “friends” because he shares his plans with us and gives us the resources we need to accomplish the mission he calls us to do. The secret to success is “to remain in my love” he reminds us today.

The Feast of Easter which lasts from Easter Sunday to Pentecost, a period of fifty days or seven weeks, is a time to renew our hearts and minds and fine tune our lives so that we can experience that “complete joy” that only God can give to us. The joy that comes from God is a joy that is also unique to us and to our circumstances, tailor made for us, just as the mission that comes from God is strictly ours. May these last couple of weeks of Easter help us to know what God is asking of us and may we experience the joy that comes with being chosen by him to be his “First round draft pick”.

Happy Easter!!

Alleluia!!

Deacon Tom

Extreme Makeover

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Extreme Makeover

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B

One of the most passionate psalms we read in the Old Testament is Psalm 51 attributed to David. It’s the one we use today on this Fifth Sunday of Lent. David is tormented by his guild and wants to be freed from it. He wants it taken away and for him to be washed clean. Mindful of the damage he has done to Bathsheba, Uriah and his soldiers, to the people of Israel whom he shepherds on God’s behalf, and to himself, David turns to God and begs, “Create a clean heart in me, O God”.   Most of us can relate to David because we have been in his shoes. And we, like David, would like to have a fresh start, an “extreme makeover”, to renew and purify us through and through and, not in the least, to rid us of our guild, torment, and shame.

If we have been doing any introspection this Lent, we probably have encountered some of our flaws. That’s actually a good thing!  That’s one of the primary purposes of these forty days. But then comes more challenging tasks…. changing those bad behaviors that trouble us and gnat away at us…. And that’s very hard to do. It takes lot of time, effort, and resolve to change our habits and behaviors. Yet no matter how firm our resolve, we are going to need help, yes, help from above. So we turn to God and ask him to cleanse us, renew us, and give us a willing spirit to change our ways.

It is a fact of life that most of us carry around burdens from the past. In this we can easily identify with David. We find his failure in the Second Book of the Prophet Samuel, Chapter 11. When Nathan, the Prophet, confronts David with his sin, David turns to God where he finds forgiveness and comfort in the compassion of God.  And so can we. Sinners that we are, God is always seeking to create a clean heart in us so and to renew our weary spirits so that we can grow in his love and share in the joy of his salvation.  These last few weeks of Lent give us ample opportunity to confront our shortcomings and defects so that we can join in the Easter celebration as people who have been given a special blessing, an “extreme makeover” from the hands of God who loves us beyond our wildest imagination. Renewed and set right with God, we will then be eager to enter into the new life that lies ahead.

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom

This Little Light of Mine

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Deacon Tom writes ©

This Little Light of Mine

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Casting out the demons from the man in the Synagogue in Capernaum is how Mark recounts the early days of Jesus’ ministry. The people who witnessed this event took it as a sign of Jesus’ authority. Today our world is still plagued by demons that seem to have adapted well to our circumstances. And they are just as real and destructive and pathetic today as they were in Jesus’ time. We know them by the fruit of their works: hunger, poverty, war, ignorance, etc. and they continue to raise havoc with many of our brothers and sisters, keeping them wrapped up in fear and seizing them with a perpetual sense of hopelessness.

How are we who claim to be disciples of Jesus respond to the evils we witness either on our media or in personal experiences? Or asked differently, how do practice our faith in a positive manner? Are we minimalists, adhering to the practice of attending Mass once on week on Sunday?  Or, do we go above and beyond the minimum by engaging in the corporal works of mercy – you remember them, don’t you? … feeding the hungry; giving drink to the thirsty; clothing the naked; sheltering the homeless; visiting the sick; ransoming the captive, burying the dead on the corporal side. Or, perhaps you prefer helping others on their spiritual journey by teaching them, counseling them through their doubts; w warning them they have wondered of the straight and narrow; bearing wrongs patiently; forgiving offenses willingly; comforting the afflicted; praying for the living and the dead.  St. Thomas Aquinas regarded the works of mercy as various forms of almsgiving. Furthermore, he considered these works to be a duty, an obligation we owe to one another predicated on the golden rule to do to others, as we would have them due to us.

There are many ways in which followers of Jesus can respond in a positive way to the evils we see and experience in our daily life. What is important is that we do something to respond to the many faces of evil in our world. Doing nothing is not an option! We know the scriptures. We know what Jesus asks of us. AND, we know the consequences of choosing to turn our heads. We find them spelled out clearly in Matthew 25:41:"Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, in everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink. I was a stranger, and you took me not in; naked, and you covered me not; sick and in prison, and you did not visit me", etc.

It is easy to be overwhelmed with all the evil that we see each day. It is easy to think that there is nothing we can do to change it… that the problem is too big and we don’t have the means to stop it. That way of thinking is the work of the devil. Apathy, indifference, inactivity, feelings of hopelessness, inadequacy, or that we are too old, or too young and the like on our part tips the scales even more in favor of the evil one. There is a saying that we should call to mind should such thinking enter our minds… “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” As friends of Jesus nothing could be more truthful. Christ is the light of the world who came to chase away the darkness, the chaos, the evil in the world. By his life and his ministry he set the example that we are to be lights too, to cast away the darkness and to resist the evils in our world, little by little, each and every day.  May we always be faithful in following his example.

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom

What Are We Looking For?

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What Are We Looking For?

Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

Today, through the words of Sacred Scripture, we are witnesses to Jesus’ baptism by John and the beginning of his public ministry. Some of John’s disciples, prompted perhaps by John’s identification of Jesus as the “Lamb of God”, leave John to become followers of Jesus. When Jesus notices them he wastes no time in confronting them about their motives asking, “What are you looking for?”  What a great question for us to reflect upon as we continue our faith journey in these new and challenging times.

The disciples did not hesitate in their response. They wanted to know where Jesus was staying. Simple enough isn’t it?  At least on the surface that is. How do we respond to the question raised in the gospel today? What are we looking for? 

I believe we all have the natural tendency to pursue those things that we desire most in life, those things that we believe will give us the greatest amount of happiness and joy. We want the good things this life has to offer… material success and good fortune, a prestigious career, the praise and adulation of others, good families and friends, ad infinitum. But, as we may have experienced so often in the past, once we have what we desire, the happiness that we imagined is seldom realized or, at best, is brief and fleeting. Soon disillusionment follows and we begin the chase all over again!

Does that mean we are never to achieve true happiness in this life? Not at all! In today’s Gospel Jesus, “the teacher”, gives us some practical advice on how to find and maintain a spirit of true AND lasting happiness in this life. He invites us to join him as he begins his public ministry, to “Come and…see” the marvelous things he has in store for those who tag along with him as he preaches the gospel, the Good-News of the dawning of the reign of God. In the Gospels Jesus teaches us that it is by deepening our personal relationship with him that we “Come and see” that only he can satisfy the innermost longings of our hearts. It is only through Christ that we can experience healthy and mutually beneficial relationships have a sense of well being, be satisfied with who we are and what we have and to thus be filled with a joy and a peace that the world cannot give.

As we begin this New Year, may we respond to Our Lord’s invitation to “Come and see” as did Samuel, James and John, Peter and the first disciples so that, like them, we too may discover the truth that, above all else, Jesus is our hearts greatest desire. 

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom

A Wonderful Mystery

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A Wonderful Mystery

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Deacon Tom writes ©

A Wonderful Mystery

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B

St. Paul uses the one word that succinctly summarizes this Advent Season and the most holy event it precedes, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The word he uses is “mystery”. The Mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of God made man is the mystery of God’s abiding love for us. Because of this love, “Christ emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:7). Fully God, fully man, Jesus enters human history to reveal the fullness of God’s love for all creation.

We read today of two people who were drawn into this mystery of God’s self-revelation to the world. They are David and Mary. The Prophet Samuel tells us that David wants to build a dwelling for God. But God has other plans. Yes, David will establish a house for the Lord, but not in the way that David envisioned it. The household that the Lord will establish through David will be one that will last forever. It will be a household that includes Joseph and Mary and that finds its completion in Jesus who fulfills that promise by becoming a “dwelling place” for all.

On this Fourth Sunday of Advent our hearts are yearning for the Divine to come to us. We turn away from the noise and clatter to hear the deep silence within give way to the chant, “Come, come, Emanuel, come Emanuel”.

What is our heart’s desire this Christmas day?  What is it that will make us complete?  What will it take to fill our emptiness?  My guess is that material things can’t come close to satisfying the cravings of our human spirit. What we really want, what will satisfy our innermost longings are the gifts that only God can give us, such as: calming our restless spirits, consoling our loss of a loved one, filling us with an inner peace, bringing us true joy, and, perhaps, a bit of happiness. We are looking for help in to let go of old grudges and to jettison old hurts or memories. We are looking for spiritual or emotional comforts and healings.

It is not possible to imagine that the infant whose birth we await desires that we remain in the constant state of hopelessness and despair. On the contrary, He came to set us free from all that would keep us bound up. He came to proclaim, “release to the prisoners”. That includes freeing us from our own self-imposed bondage(s).

May the mystery of God’s love revealed in the Infant Jesus free us from all that keeps us from loving Him and from loving one another.

May you celebrate a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year filled with Christ’s Peace and Joy!

Deacon Tom