Becoming Like Children

Dear Parishioners,

Wouldn’t you just know it? Several weeks ago it was hot outside and inside the church, so we switched the HVAC to the AC mode, and the weather turned colder. Sometimes you just can’t win. However, if you were part of our Flocknote system, you would have been notified and advised to bring a sweater. Flocknote is proving to be a wonderful tool for keeping you up-to-date. If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s easy to do. Just text “stjane” to 84576, and then follow the instructions.

This past weekend, we had a number of our young people make their First Communion. They all looked so nice and were so excited to receive Jesus for the first time. It was very awe inspiring to see their child-like faith and trust in God. Unfortunately, we all lose some of that as we grow older and become distracted by other interests in life. We would be wise to regain the attitudes of those young boys and girls. After all, Jesus said, “Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 18:3)

Fr. Carl

“Do not be afraid of people saying that going to Mass on
a week day is only for those who have nothing to do….
Are you ashamed to serve God for fear of being despised?
~ Thoughts of the Cure D’Ars

“INSIDE OUR SACRED SPACE”

Week 8: Images, Statues, and Relics

Statues and pictures of Jesus, the Blessed Mother and the saints adorn nearly every church. Catholics don’t pray to or worship statues; rather we venerate, we admire, respect and seek to imitate the individual emulated in the statue. We worship our living Lord, Jesus Christ, not his statue. The saints depicted in our churches lived lives of heroic virtue and are now in heaven, where they can intercede for us before God. The statues, pictures, even the stained-glass windows, tell about Jesus and the Scriptures. These images have long been an important educational tool, especially in the first 1,500 years of Christianity when few people were literate. Relics are treated in a similar way, as best explained by St Jerome (340-420): “We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyr in order the better to adore him whose martyrs they are.”

  
***This article “Inside Our Sacred Space” was originally published in the OSV Newsweekly, www. OSV.com, on January 8-14, 2017 and is used with permission of the author D.D. Emmons. ***