Weekly Reflection

Septuagesima Sunday (C) – February 13, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Blessings, today’s Gospel speaks about, it is Jesus’ encourage me to: firstly looked at my own misery, hunger, tears and contempt, with which I would come…, and secondly, I would look at the agglomeration of misery around me. With this look at poverty, God becomes the greatest value and treasure with His kingdom and the other man – my neighbor.

We can see how some people do everything to achieve wealth at all costs. They can do harm a neighbor for money in various ways. Just to such Christ says: “Woe”. Material goods should be drawn into the service of the Kingdom of God and the other man living next to me. Who adores these goods and uses them, not watching God and neighbor, this deserves “Woe.” Money is not cursed, but a heart which stuck to the money. Even the poor are not blessed if they think about the bread only, and never about God. The rich people are not cursed because they have everything, but because they don’t need God. We are not allow to use material goods for purposes of goals which are opposite to the love of God and man; you cannot get rich by using an uncertain situation of your neighbor. A Christian – with the spirituality of the poor – always feel in solidarity with the poor and hungry man, with a crying and persecuted … not because of humanitarian reasons, but because faith in the Merciful God, who gave His only Son to redeem all of us. Thus, the heart and a life attitude decide about the blessing and curse, not poverty or wealth.

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V Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) – February 6, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Many people think that the meeting with God will be an extremely joyful moment. Today, we are glad to talk about the goodness, grace and mercy of God, forgetting  completely of His holiness. Meanwhile, God’s goodness is a holy goodness, and God’s mercy is a holy mercy. We cannot forget about it. Whoever forgets, will create God on the image and likeness of himself. The prophet Isaiah experiences – first of all – God’s holiness and his sinfulness on its background in meeting with God. Putting together God’s perfection with his imperfection, he sentences death on himself. Isaiah does not see a chance of life after meeting the sanctity of God. He is scared with his sinfulness. Only after cleaning his lips by the archangel – the prophet may continue a further conversation with God and undertakes to perform a specific task. Our meeting with God will be a meeting with the Light penetrating our whole life, from bith to death, showing all its lights and shadows. This light will penetrate our hearts, thoughts, desires and imagination. We will stand in the truth. None of us can hide anything. God will not condemn us. We – like Isaiah – will pass judgment on ourselves: Woe to me. I am lost.

Similar experience was shocking to Peter, when he saw a wonderful fishing. He fell to Jesus’ knees, asking: “Go away from me, Lord, because I’m a sinful man”. He met with the power and goodness of Jesus, and saw his sins immediately. We have to remember that before we see goodness, grace and mercy of God, we will experience His holiness and our sinfulness. This sanctity tells us to make efforts to avoid sin today, so not to make the meeting with God difficult for ourselves. God’s holiness calls us for continuous purification from what diminishes us, makes us miserable, embarrasses. God’s mercy is holy. It never condemn anyone. It reveals the truth. A sinner issues a just judgment on himself at the God’s Court. Just only one our sin is enough that we will not find a place in God in the face of God’s holiness. A Christian cannot forget that God is holy.

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IV Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) – January 30, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

The right atmosphere for the maturation of Christian faith is love and that does not measure with a human measure. This measure is Jesus Christ himself, who passed through life quiet, humble, patient, doing good. The Apostle Paul characterizes love: “Love is patient, gracious…” Love cannot coexist with  jealousy, arrogance, anger or desire. Love is the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit. The value of all other virtues is limited compare with love. Only love connects in itself traditional values of Hellenistic culture: nobility,  righteousness, prudence, courage; only a true love, which model was given to us by Jesus Christ – has an everlasting value.

To get love means to gain holiness. It marked out love from others charisms and human abilities, which only “partially,” and only if they go hand in hand with love, help a man to achieve his deepest call, which is the eternal happiness in God.

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III Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) – January 23, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Today’s liturgy tells us about reading the Book of God’s Word at the assembly of faithful. This is a gathering of the Israelites with a living Word, which in the case of first reading is announced by Ezra, while in the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself develops a scroll of the book and reads it to everyone. Today, however, let us pay attention to something very important: the book is read for everyone, and not privately whether to the small group of “initiates”. The word is directed not only “to me”, but even more “to us”. God wants to not only save a single man, but also to strengthen His Church in unity. The same – the answer to God’s Word is not just a private matter, but it is to pursue yourself in communication with those whom God put me next to me. 

Also, this refers today’s second reading about members of the body, so that everyone in the Church can feel as an important part, regardless of age, education or position. Every man in whose heart God sows His Word is important, not because of his values, but precisely because he is a part of the body, as in today’s reminder of St. Paul on the nature of the Church as a compound organism. So let’s take today’s Word of God from the mouth of Jesus himself, but not only as a private person, but as members of His body – the Church. Let us do it for the greater God’s glory and also for ourselves, because united through the Word we feel that more unites us than divides, and that we really create one Body.

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II Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) – January 16, 2022

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Did Jesus in Cana at Galilee want to fascinate and to “buy” first disciples with His extraordinary talents, to enjoy people with an unexpected delivery of good wine, and by the way to create a good taste to us? Certainly not! Jesus never abused His power to make tricks or to make His life easier. His miracles had always a character of “signs”: they expressed something, and they taught something, and not only make a sensation. It was the first Jesus’ miracle, so it had a program’s character and announced later events.

Mary encouraging servants to obey Jesus indicates that in the work of salvation it is necessary to trust Jesus. Servants could not understand the command, and even could recognize it as a whim of a moody guest and simply ignore the request. And yet they subordinated and brought hundred liters of water from the wells. It probably cost a lot of effort. If they refused, Jesus could not make a miracle, at least not in this way. He wanted to teach us that God needs human cooperation in the work of salvation, that He doesn’t do it without our participation. And what is most important belongs to God, but the effort of man within the limits of human opportunities and competences is necessary.

Above all, it is about the effort of faith. The faith is born in the long process of recognizing God, experiencing His action and power, in the spiritual closeness between God and man. The mature faith must be a personal relationship between man and God, not just a formality or performing certain gestures and duties. Only trust and obedience to God is a breakthrough from which we can say that someone really believed, that is he/she entered the path of the mature faith. And trust and obedience works in life: through actions, decisions, attitude, way of thinking and proceedings. And only then God will be able to change us internally – like a water into wine.

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IV Sunday of Advent – December 19, 2021

Frackville, From the Pastor /

The last Sunday of this year’s Advent is the first day of celebration. Advent ends. Christmas begins. Four candles are lighted on an Advent wreath. It’s not a decoration, it’s a clock reminding us of how great gift the time is. We live in time. No moment comes back. Every hour is a gift and a task. Each day brings new challenges and new grace. New hardships and new joys. How much do we respect our effort? No doubt a lot. But if the time would not be given to us, it would not be anything. Together with time and its passing, everything is a gift. We can multiply and improve this gift. 

Therefore, when something ends, something also is a beginning. That is why Christians should be happy. What is the biggest gift? The time? No. The biggest gift is the coming of God’s Son in the time and the space of our earthly history. It was announced by the prophets. The biggest gift is that God the Father gave us His only Son, and the Son gave himself. Since that time we start to count passing of years. It is not an important mistake of time – the reference point itself is important: the day on which God said His “yes” and Mary replied “yes”. Soon she went on the road and went with a hurry to Elizabeth, carrying th Mystery yet invisible to eyes. Many people passed the young Miriam carrying Jesus’ already conceived. How many of them felt that this beautiful and smiling girl is not someone ordinary? How many felt the presence of God? 

For sure Elizabeth: Blessed you are among women! – she cried – Blessed fruit of your womb! She guessed by herself? No. This is the third gift of God: the evangelist says that the Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth. I would like to have a heart as sensitive as she, so I wont miss the biggest gift. To not miss the moment when Jesus will stand at my door. I need the gift of the Holy Spirit. Faith is not naivety. On the contrary – the naive is that it seems that everything can be explained and prove. We know that the faith is God’s gift. So you can always multiply it. You can also, unfortunately, turn off this spark of faith, and to lose the gift. While a man lives, while the time of earthly life flows, while we light up further candles on an Advent wreath, while you can free yourself from naivety and self-confidence – there is a hope to ignite the spark of faith. 

The last days of Advent, are for Christians, for me and for you, days of gratitude: to God of Father – for giving us His Son. To God the Son – for the fact that He wanted to be one of us… that He had a mother, a donkey, Bethlehem … and after years – the cross, to actually be one of us to the very end. To God the Holy Spirit – for the fact that with a gift of faith, He allows us to see further than the most courageous human expectations. The days of great gratitude are about to begin …

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III Sunday of Advent – December 12, 2021

Frackville, From the Pastor /

People gathered at the Jordan River were shaken by the words of St. John the Baptist, they also felt the near presence of Jesus. They stood and cried: “What should we do?” St. John said: Love your neighbors with your attitude and word; a man is the greatest value of the world. The world without humans would be nonsense and nothing.

Advent is a time, where we especially have to sensitize our hearts for the needs of a second person. Living in the Church community, we have to think about how we will experience our Christmas time. Are we going to have sad, crying, unhappy and broken faithful? Such sense have words: “If anyone has two dresses … and who has food, let them do so.” Because we are children of one God.

But St. John the Baptist goes deeper. He reminds about the greatness and dignity of man. “Do not bully no one … do not oppress anyone”, that is love your neighbors. In the community, such as the Church, there is a place for all people: and this newborn who will be baptize soon, and the elderly who cannot do anything on his own. For healthy and sick, strong and weak, for everyone! Today in the world, and also in our country, what is weak, fragile, which seemingly does not bring profit is reject, and a faithful person, living in a godly manner and life according to the Jesus’ Gospel feels anxiety, breaking and humiliation.

St. John the Baptist does not demand that people – like him – will go to the desert to live an ascetic life, but calls and encourages us to see another person, and to understand that Christ also comes to the earth for other people.

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II Sunday of Advent – December 5, 2021

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Today’s Gospel evokes the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord, straighten the paths for Him, every valley should be filled, each mountain and hunts, the winding roads let them become simple and bumpy with smooth roads. And all people will see God’s salvation.” This meaningful picture of work related to the equalization and preparation of roads shows an extremely artistic way what to do in human life: a complete internal change. Our daily experience tells us that the tasks which we have to do or the effects of professional work every day, you can easily verify, evaluate and reward. However, when we penetrate into the heart of man, we are thinking about this work, which is called “work on yourself“, it turns out that achieving specific effects and their evaluation is not so simple and obvious.

I encourage that the Advent time, especially the confession preparing us for Christmas celebration, did not leave anyone indifferent on calls to prepare the Lord’s ways in our lives. Just as the setting of a new road demands a specific, planned work of many people, so our way to God needs an internal commitment that will not stop on saying of several learned sentences, but through specific resolutions and actions will lead us to authentic improvement.

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I Sunday of Advent – November 28, 2021

Frackville, From the Pastor /

Who prays better – thick or skinny? Absurd question? I think not exactly. Although it cannot be answered, checking the importance of a man, but you can say that overweight and underweight can also be an obstacle on the way to God. You can consider whether spiritual exercises do not like these exercises that affect the body. 

“Watch out for yourself that your hearts are not heavy due to gluttony, drunkenness and temporal worries.” In one sentence, the Gospel gives us a simple, but also very universal: remember that the body and spirit combine with each other. Heart rate, i.e. the lack of a spirit, commitment, reluctance to take anything or simply gradual falling into a laziness very often combine with a lifestyle of human life.

If we wanted to translate this one sentence about the gluttony, drunkenness and worldly concerns to the contemporary language, you would have to realize that the problem becomes extreme. In the US are fast foods, in which for a few dollars you can eat to fall, without any restrictions. On the other hand, the figures of models that do not know what normal nutrition means. In one and the second case, we are losing a man – a spirit who is to revive him.

So – that the human heart would not be heavily “due to temporal worries”, and attention to the external appearance would not sleep the spirit, which turns towards God, you need – simply – keep the moderation: in drinking, eating, watching TV, sitting on a computer and navigating on the internet, reading books…

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XXIII Sunday in Ordinary Time – September 5, 2021

Frackville, From the Pastor /

We can meet more often young people, who – like the deaf man from today’s Gospel – need someone, who will touch their eyes, ears, hearts and mind, and then will say “be open”, with the full force and conviction. They come out from such houses and environments, in which they lose trust in the other. They are living in conviction that they are unnecessary to anyone, they are in a state of resignation. Only, when they see that there is another world and people, who thanks to faith, walk through life with joyful heart, they start to think if their life could be different.

What’s happens to the deaf man, whom Christ restores health, recalls a situation of a man, which after years of life emptiness – suddenly discovers that there is another world and other life, which he knows. His ears start to open, the tongue starts to talk, and – using the words of today’s Gospel – he starts to “speak correctly”.

If the expression “to speak correctly” can be use as a kind of summary of this change within a man, one could say that it affects the essence of human life. As long as we remain in darkness, in the wrong environment, or even in a bad situation, we say and think different than God wants. Only when we may leave and go a little bit behind the current state of affairs, we see that there is another world, where is a completely different life.

Let the Gospel to be read today in our churches leads us in two directions. First of all, let us ask ourselves, if we don’t need a completely new opening on God and the other man. Secondly, let us try to see people, who expect someone who will bring them to Jesus, and they could hear a simple, but firm call “open up”.

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