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Pastor's Pen

6/25/2017

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Here we are on the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time.  Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are over and now the Church heads in the season we call “Ordinary time.”  The word “ordinary” makes one feel that the excitement is over and the routine has begun.  It kind of eels like the day after your birthday or the week after the holidays or the days after that big wedding you’ve planned for the last two years.  Ordinary can feel like a letdown but it doesn’t have to.  It’s in the ordinary days that God comes to keep us company.  It’s in those ordinary days when we slow down that we hear the whisper of the God we love.  It’s in the ordinary days that babies are born, flowers bloom, children graduate, lovers marry, or our loved ones die and all the major movements of life continue through the ordinary days.

I think Jesus liked “ordinary” too.  He hung around ordinary people with ordinary lives and ordinary jobs (like fishing).  He didn’t look for the shining stars or the wealthiest or the brightest.  He was content with ordinary folks.  Even when he healed people and performed miracles, he did it in ordinary ways with mud on the blind man’s eyes, or with water at a wedding when there was no more wine.  Jesus seemed to enjoy using the ordinary to show us the Divine.  So maybe the ordinary isn’t so ordinary, but, actually, quite sacred.  And as we enter into the lazy, hazy days of summer, we may want to take some time amid our ordinary day to hear the whisper of God and appreciate the beauty of each day in our lives.  Let’s take time to hear the birds in the morning, to feel the warm breezes through the day, to enjoy the beauty of all the plants and trees in bloom, to relish the BBQs, the parties and all the get-togethers this summer.  Let’s appreciate family and good health and all the many parts of our life that seem so ordinary we often overlook them.  May God bless us with the insight to appreciate the wonder and awe of our ordinary lives!
​

Our prayers and best wishes go out to our Graduates this year.  May God continue to bless your journey through life!  We are so proud of you !
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Pastor's Pen

6/18/2017

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Happy Father’s Day
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It seems very appropriate to be celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi (Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ) and Father’s Day on the same weekend.  As we contemplate the love that we receive each week when we hear, “this is my body broken for you,” and “this is my blood poured out for you,” we can’t help but think of those men (and women) who have been “fathers” to us.  The Eucharist feeds us but then calls us to something greater.  It’s not enough for us to relish that love in the Eucharist and say ‘thank you, Jesus.” We are called to live out that love in the circumstances of our own lives.  I think about those faithful men who have worked at grueling jobs for years and years and have never complained but were grateful to provide for their families, I think of those men who had great plans for their children only to see those plans unravel as their child became addicted.  I think of those fathers who have lost a child and are never the same.  I think of the mothers who have had to be fathers, too, because the father of the family was absent.  I also think of those men who have fathered children and take no responsibility for their care.  I have net some of those men through my work at the Soup Kitchen.  They often say that their lives were completely out of control (usually because of drugs) and they thought it best to stay away from their children and not bring that madness to those they were supposed to protect.  Although it’s no excuse, it may remind us that when addictions and/or mental illness are part of the equation, there’s no easy solutions.  I can also say that those men who have been in recovery spend the rest of their days aching for the years they lost with their children.

Please know, fathers and those who have been like fathers, that your works has been sacred work and those you have raised will never forget you.  You have done the work of Eucharist and, like Jesus, allowed your body to be broken for us and your blood (your life) to be poured out for us and we will be forever grateful for that love!
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pastor's Pen

6/11/2017

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Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity.  This is always a difficulty theological topic to preach on.  How do we explain three persons in one God?  I always remember an Irish friar saying something like, “whenever I am feeling overwhelmed or frightened or in the need of some grace, I immerse may self in the Blessed Trinity.” I remember thinking, ‘what is he talking about?  And how do you ”immerse” yourself in the Trinity?” I’m still not sure but I think it has to do with the love between the Father, Son and Spirit.  The part that makes sense to me is that our God is always in relationship.  The relationship is the power and depth of the love between the Father and the Son that produces the Spirit and that love continues to burst forth through eternity.

St Augustine says, “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”  It’s that restlessness for communion that we are all searching for throughout our lives.  It is that deep need to be loved, with no conditions, that we long for.  When we have experience that sense of communion, even for a short time, we realize that is the most important thing in life.  It’s that relationship that pulls us in and produces in us the ability to love and have compassion for all the people in our life.  And when we pour ourselves out in love for another or allow another to pour themselves out to us, we are immersed in the sacred and Blessed Trinity.  When immersed is so great a love we begin to experience a taste of the Divine.  May we allow ourselves to be immersed in the love of the Trinity.



It is with sadness that we announce the death of Mary Woodfork.  Mary was the wonderful grandmother who came to Nativity with her granddaughter, Olivia, who is in a wheelchair.  Our prayers go out to the family in this difficult moment.  Visitation for Mary will be at Verheyden Funeral Home (Mack and Outer Drive) on Sunday from 3pm-6pm and she will lie in state at Nativity on Monday 10am with Funeral Mass at 11 am.  May Mary rest in the arms of God.

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Pastor's Pen

6/4/2017

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“Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of you faithful and kindle in them the fire of your life.  Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.”

​Do you remember that prayer? Many of prayed it as children on our Confirmation begging the Holy Spirit to come into our hears and change us.  This is not just a pious prayer but a call for radical transformation for ourselves and the whole world. It’s a prayer that invites the Spirit into our lives and calls us to be vulnerable to the power of that love.  On this day, we say this prayer and invite the Holy Spirit to fall upon us.  What we’re saying is change us, mold us, form us in your image.  Do what you must, Holy Spirit, so that we can be a living sign of your presence in the world.  To truly invite the Holy Spirit into our lives will mean that we will have to give up our upper rooms of fear, grief, prejudice, self-righteousness, apathy, pride, and you can name the upper room you find yourself in this year.  We all get stuck in upper rooms and they can often become quite comfortable allowing us to “settle in” and not challenge ourselves to go any further.  When we allow the Spirit into our upper room, the Spirit will blow open the door and help us to see the world around us.  The disciples, after receiving the Holy Spirit, could see their kinship with all peoples.  They were connected to the world in a new way because they saw with the eyes of God.  All understood their words, regardless of what language they actual spoke because the language of the Spirit transcends our dialects and customs and all that seems to separate us.  The language of the Spirit is compassion and mercy for all our brothers and sisters and the realization that we are all connected by the Divine.  Our diversity is a reason to celebrate and not divide.  We don’t have to stay fearful in upper rooms any longer but can come out and enjoy the beauty of all God’s children.  May this Pentecost be for all of us a reawakening to the power of the Spirit in our lives.  Come Holy Spirit and fill us so that we might be bold disciples in our world!

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