JOURNEYING TOGETHER TOWARD THE LORD

Beloved parishioners, 

I hope you are making steady progress, by God’s grace, in your faith walk with the Lord. I feel the call to do something new for this segment of the New Year. Whenever there is not much to update about happenings at the parish I will take a theme from the weekend's readings and give a brief reflection. I request that you spend some time reflecting and praying with this theme throughout the week, in the same way as I am. I would like you to share whatever insights the Lord puts in your heart. Please take some time to write down your reflection and send it to me in an email. With your permission, and without mentioning names, I will then pray over these reflections and share as appropriate with the entire parish so that everyone will benefit from this movement of the Holy Spirit. I look forward to what the Lord is about to do with this opportunity to journey together as we all strive to deepen our faith and grow deeper in our relationship with Jesus.

For this week, I will reflect on Our Calling and the temporality of Life.

The Christian always lives as though everything in this world is provisional and in flux. Just as no one builds permanent structures on a bridge, the Christian is not to build a permanent home in this world. This is because our homeland is in heaven. We are pilgrims on a  journey of continued conversion to the Lord. The sense of the  temporality of earthly existence helps us to prioritize our life and to give our energies only to those things that are important.

This thinking finds some support in the earlier writings of St. Paul, from where our Second reading for this weekend was taken. The structures, relationships and values of this world are not, and should

not be taken as ultimate. This is not to suggest that they are unreal, but that

they are only pointers to the ultimate, which awaits its consummation in the Kingdom of God. It is to this Kingdom that Jesus calls us and bids us to invite others. We have already become members of this Kingdom by our baptism. But to remain in this Kingdom we must constantly reorient our gaze and desires to the Lord so that we are not caught in temporal pursuits that can derail us. May we never turn aside to created things and forget our identity in Christ. Amen.

May Jesus bless you, and may Our Lady protect you!

Fr. Julius