January 2016

Septuagesima Sunday (C) – January 24, 2016

From the Pastor /

Today’s Gospel reading takes us to the synagogue at Nazareth. There children would be taught, and adults would gather to pray and sing and discuss the scriptures. It is the sabbath day and Jesus is invited to read. Apparently He deliberately chooses a passage from Isaiah, long regarded as referring to the Messiah. Then, as was the custom, He sat to preach. Jesus uses Isiah’s prophetic words as His own statement of intent: He has come to “bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free.” Jesus is a man with a mission: He has come with good news. The Gospel of St. Luke makes it clear that sharing this good news is an essential part of following Christ. The good news first delivered in the little synagogue at Nazareth spread throughout the then-known world, because people passed it on, passed it on, until it finally reached Rome itself. St. Luke’s Gospel has been specially identified as the Gospel of the compassion of Christ: Jesus reaches out to those in need, sits at table with the outcasts of His day – sick people, criminals, those who were poor. The Jesus of St. Luke did not come to to call those who were righteous and respectable, or who thought they were; He has much more time for those who are sinners and know it. The Jesus of St. Luke keeps strange company; His life begins in a stable with a pose of low-grade shepherds gathered round Him; and it ends with His being nailed to a cross between two criminals.

Each time we come to Mass that episode in the synagogue is being repeated. Today Jesus is here, today He’s bringing us good news, today He’s assuring us that He loves us and wants us to be His friends. Above all today He is proclaiming that the time of “God’s favor” has arrived. As we reflect – we can also take the time to thank God for the precious gift that has been given us in the Gospel of St. Luke.

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II Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) – January 17, 2016

From the Pastor /

The vast majority of us live – or have lived – as a part of some kind of family or household. For many of us, too, this daily or household experience is further complicated by the fractures, diverse choices and more complex family relationships that are increasingly a part of our societies. We can often find ourselves called to love the one we really don’t agree with, or the one who seems to have come in and disrupted what we had been used to. Opening our need to Jesus and His mother, and opening our hearts to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, transforms our mistakes, our squabbles, our brokenness and emptiness. The deeper our faith in these “ordinary mysteries,” the more often we can turn first to God in prayer, in all our household difficulties. And the more often, too, we will meet God’s grace and power in our own homes, and understand them as “domestic churches.”

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Lord’s Baptism (C) – January 10, 2016

From the Pastor /

We move the clock forward nearly 2000 years to find a happy couple bringing their newborn infant to the church to be baptized. A crowd of family and friends have come to witness the event and to share in the happiness of the day. As the parents hold the child over the font, the priest pours water over the child’s head, saying, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He anoints the child with oil on the forehead and says some prayers. Is this the life-changing experience foreshadowed by the baptism of Jesus? It has to be said that for most of those witnessing the baptism described here, will be a fairly bewildering ritual, but for those of us with faith something extraordinary is taking place. In this way we are born again of water and the Holy Spirit and enabled to enter the kingdom of heaven. It took Jesus 30 years to grow in wisdom, in stature and in favor with God and with people before the events of His baptism changed His life. The voice from heaven affirmed that He was truly the beloved Son of God. He knew that He had been sent to bring Good News to those who were poor. Maybe now we should spend some time pondering on what baptism really means for us. We have been exposed to the cleansing water of rebirth and renewed with the Holy Spirit. We have been forged in the furnace of fire of God’s love join Jesus in His mission to bring God’s saving love to our world. So now what are we going to do?

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Holy Family (C) – January 3, 2016

From the Pastor /

What are our values? We may well need them in this Christmas period. Many families have a wonderful time at Christmas. Different generations can get on each others nerves. It is then that Christ’s values can keep a family together. St. John, in our second reading today, reminds us of the love that God our Father has “lavished upon us”, and calls us to put into practice the commandments that Jesus gave us, to “love one another as He told us to.” If we live out that love in our domestic lives, we will truly be happy and holy families. So much depends on what values the family live out. For Christians, family life is holy only when it embodies the values for which Christ lived and died. When we have these values we can happily celebrate at Christmas dinner – and when put them into practice when the mood changes and the party is over.

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