Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

It seems like God has been trying to hit me over the head lately with a message. After considering the themes of peace and justice at our annual diocesan interreligious gathering on the 29th “In the Spirit of Assisi,” and celebrating the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on the 4th, reflecting on the theme of the Culture of Encounter that our Holy Father Francis continues to speak about—then at conferences last week with Evangelicals as well as Buddhists, the question of Christian mission and values kept surfacing.

We have a clear mandate from God that, in order to be faithful to living in his image, we identify ourselves with the poor and the most lowly and forgotten in the world in order to follow him. Two weeks ago we heard, “He became poor that we might become rich.” When all are assembled before the throne of God on that last day what is the final test determining our entry/nonentry into the Kingdom? It is all determined by how we responded to the needs of “the least” of our brothers and sisters (Mt. 25), whom Jesus claims also as his brothers and sisters, and with whom he completely identifies himself: “what you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.” Jesus is saying: I am the poor. I am the lost.

Our Sisters and all those who have embraced the vocation of the religious life aren’t living a radical extreme response to the example of Jesus: they are normal. We are the ones who aren’t paying attention. We must pray for many vocations for our Sisters because our blindness is so great where the world and our attachments to it are concerned.

St. Francis embraced the poor, and willingly embraced poverty itself as his “sister.” Pope Francis has taken some amazing steps to realign the office of the Vicar of Christ to be more Christ-like. When we encounter another, he says, we must first see the person, not the situation, the sin, the confusion, the illness. The person. Not what a person has or doesn’t have.

Jesus told us we already know the commandment of loving God above all things. But I give you a new one, he says. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, I always thought this was a strange thing, because we were always taught that self-love wasn’t the best passtime. In Christ we have a new understanding: we must love our neighbor as we love ourself—not because we are so loveable, or even deserve to be loved—but because our neighbor and our self is the same thing. Loving kindness and compassion is a sharing, not a service we give to somebody. It is a sharing in the experience of life, a celebrating of joy, a suffering-with to help carry mutual burdens and difficulties.

We call them corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and we teach them to our kids. But not because they are good things to do in our spare time. They are who we are. And this identity needs to flow out of our hearts into the world.

Change our hearts, Lord. Make us like you.

I wanted to briefly mention, too, that we had some fruitful meetings last week with parents at Holy Cross about the continued attention we are giving to security and safety in our school, in response to this crazy world we are living in. Emergency plans, security measures and personnel training are well in place, as well as video technology and heightened awareness of what is going on around us. We don’t want to create an environment of fear, but rather a place where confidence and a sense of trust is established in knowing that needed measures are taken to keep everyone safe. Our parents were very pleased with our presentations.

You may notice in the next few weeks some additional cameras in our buildings. They are not because we sense any threat; they are just common sense. We have begun working on plans and procedures for the safety of the church, as well, and will get back to you soon. Thank God we have so many professionals in health care and security in the parish, and they are so willing to help us do it.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Do you desire to reconnect and participate fully in the life of faith that is your birthright by virtue of Baptism? I believe this is a deep desire that all people have, as we are “wired” for relationship with God as spiritual creations. But so many people are misled and lose the way. If this has happened to you, please read this with the tenderness with which it is intended; if you have a son or daughter who no longer believes that faith needs to be a lived expression, please copy this page and mail it to them. If I knew their names and addresses, I would write this to them myself.

Recently a woman came into the office — I am not including any details here in order to respect her confidence, but it could be any number of people I have met in the past ten years. She had suffered for years at the hands of an abusive spouse, had just tried to “keep it together” for her kids’ sake, had lost any sort of hope in the future, had become basically a shell of a person who dreaded the next impossible hurdle. She recently had gathered up enough nerve to get out of the impossible relationship in which she found herself, realizing that what she had, whatever it was, was not a marriage. Not in the sense of the Church as a sacrament, something forged in fidelity, permanence and openness to life. She came to the office without hope, dreading what I would say about what she had done. But she said that she was ready to do whatever was necessary to come back to God, if that meant working through the often-difficult soul searching of the annulment process.

We spoke about her situation at length. It came to light that she, a Catholic, had never been married in the Church, something she had regretted all these 25-plus years. She said she knew the entire time that what she had done wasn’t right. She had found herself drifting, outside the Church without an anchor. “What do I have to do,” she asked while crying,”to make this right?”

It was an amazing moment. She had not realized that she wasn’t married at all in the eyes of the Church, as Catholics must be married in the Church to be validly married. “All that is required,” I replied, “is confession.”

She looked at me blankly. “What do you mean? Everything is so hard, everything in my life is impossibly hard. How is it possible?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” I said, “how mercy and forgiveness is so hard for us but is so easy for God. The difficulty of our tears and our desire to return to him brings us his love where, for us, it would be impossible.”

Communion is restored. She got her life back that day and is back on the path God started her on so many years ago. Maybe her suffering can be a healing for you.

Today is pro-life Sunday. You can save someone’s life: life is so very precious to God. We often think of the unborn who are so terribly undesired and killed out of fear and a lack of hope. This is so against the witness of God himself toward us when we are undesirable. We think of the elderly whose lives are shortened for convenience and in the name of “quality of life” which ultimately is neither. We think of the poor, those whose lives depend upon us for the bread they need to survive today. And we think of those who have come to despise their own life because, in their aloneness, they have forgotten how the relationship of another can make possible the miracle of forgiveness and love where once, alone, it was not possible.

Today we reach out to all those who find their life confusing and difficult, a challenge too heavy to confront. No sin is too great, no separation deep enough to overcome the love of God who continues to touch and change his creation. And you have the job to deliver this Good News to them. Go, do it.

God bless you.