Dear Folks,

“God has no grandchildren.”

The context for this quote from my father was one of those serious talks… you know the kind, where a parent or grandparent gets that ominous tone to tell you something very, very critical. His message to his grandchildren was this: “You have been raised in the Catholic faith by your parents but you must decide for yourselves. As a man of science, I believed what I could see and measure. The faith can’t be touched, tasted, seen or manufactured. But you can ask for it, and receive it, because it is a gift from God. He will give it to those who ask.”

God has no Grandchildren: He is directly Our Father. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We are one family in the Holy Spirit. Or as paragraph 150 from the Catechism says: Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. God has no grandchildren: He will directly father His life within us if we say yes to him and ask for the gift of faith.

Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: “Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith” (CCC 162). The faith isn’t a culture we are born into, it isn’t something kept in a vault and put into a will for inheritance! It is your living relationship of Love with the Holy Trinity!

We are coming to the time of year when ministries get ramped back up, and Parish Life Weekend is two weeks away. How are you making the faith of our fathers, the strength by which you live? I know there is much more that could be said about faith, and these few lines are utterly insufficient. Read paragraphs 142-165 of the Catechism. And ask for the gift of an ever deepening faith lived out in works!

pax,

Father John Mosimann

Pastor