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Pastor's Letter-- January 10, 2021
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And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.” …At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.
The reading today ends with the words of the Father over the Lord Jesus. These words are huge and should be prayed about in depth for every one of us. That’s why I included the next verse above. The first thing Jesus does is He goes to the desert (wilderness) to get away from everything and think about what the Father is doing in Him.
Have you ever let these words, spoken over you in your Baptism, to sink into the core of your being?
The words of the Gospel of Mark at Jesus’ baptism also are the foundation for the beginning phrase of our parish’s mission statement: driven by the missionary zeal of St. Thérèse. The Holy Spirit drives us into discovering the fullness of our identity and into our work for the Lord and His Church. The openness to the Holy Spirit is critical for living the Christian life. May our parish always be open to the new ways the Spirit will drive us forward as it drove the Lord Jesus and drove our patroness!
Continuing our reflections through the Parish Pastoral Plan, we delve into the second Core Value of the Parish Plan – Joyful Receptivity. The short phrases we want to live in our parish are: (1) Learning to hear God’s voice; (2) Trusting that everything is grace; (3) Dreaming God-sized dreams. Again, I would like to expand upon these bullet points.
Learning to hear God’s voice. We live in a society rife with noise and distractions, hindering our ability to hear God’s voice or give attention to it. And the pressures of modern life, along with choices we make in utilizing our time, can create a lot of static that deafen us to God’s voice. The prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 19 doesn’t hear God’s voice in a strong and violent wind, an earthquake, or a fire, but in a gentle whisper. That is why being silent and listening in personal prayer is so vital. And that is why hearing the Word of God at Mass and reading and praying with Scripture can be so fruitful. All help us to hear distinguish God’s voice from the dissonances of societal voices that vie for our attention and thus for our heart.
Trusting that everything is grace. Those words – everything is grace – from our patroness St. Thérèse, are so simple and so profound, as is the case of much of what she said. Grace doesn’t mean easy, or perfect, or simple, or unchallenging. It means that everything is a blessing from God. If it is something we have prayed for, the blessing is obvious. If it is a misfortune, then the blessing is in the healing, peace, compassion, mercy, understanding, wisdom, discernment, etc. which God may be calling us to on the other side of the misfortune. Grace always calls us to a new place, something new and better, always into a deeper relationship with Jesus.
Dreaming God-sized dreams. How often do we define ourselves by our limitations rather than our possibilities? Or “it is what it is” rather than “it will be what it can be”? In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So why wouldn’t we want to imagine peace for all? The eradication of poverty, hunger, discrimination, violence, war, and every other form of injustice? A culture of life and love in our homes, community, nation, and world? A God-sized dream imagines Little Flower as a family, not just a parish. A God-sized dream imagines us all as disciples of Jesus, not just ten, or twenty, or thirty, of forty percent of us.
St. Thérèse, the little flower, pray for us to live from our Christian identity in baptism!
