Dear Folks,

I write this on Tuesday, as the polls are open, and saying a prayer for our Commonwealth and county.

I know I have told you about how pilgrimages to the Holy Land make the faith come alive in a dramatic way that you can’t understand, still you see and walk in His footsteps.

And now today, sitting by a stream in Philippi, reading about the first baptism on the continent of Europe: Paul baptizing Lydia in Acts 16:14-15. Simple lines in scripture become so much more when you see the place and start to get a sense of the timeline and physical spaces.

It had me thinking that the faith is transmitted from person to person, not from book to person. In traveling the lands where Paul, John, Timothy, Polycarp, and Ignatius all lived and thought, it is apparent that the teaching came before the writing!

It is one of the things that boggles my mind about folks who claim to only believe what is written in the Bible. With the very expensive cost of even one copy of a gospel or epistle, would our Lord have intended that the earliest Christians only be the wealthiest who could afford to own even a part of the Bible? Wouldn’t He have given us a printing press if this was His notion?

Take note of Antipas, mentioned in Revelation 2:13, as already having been martyred in Pergamum! He gave his life before the Bible was complete, as did Peter, Paul, James and most of the Apostles!

The Word of God is living and true, because He is the eternal Son of the Father. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. I thank God for the graces by which He helps that come alive anew for each soul who knocks or seeks.

Oh, and I’ll attach a picture of us offering Mass by the stream where Lydia was baptized.

Pax,
Fr Mosimann