Christ’s peace be yours!
Just when I thought I was finished with school, the Lord said thus: Not so fast! Because within my first month in the Pastorate, we have finished not one, but two sessions of Vacation Bible School!
So many thanks and prayers of gratitude are due for Melissa Boyle, Michaela Stanton, their teams of so many volunteers, and our outstanding peer leaders for their faith, joyful leadership, and humbling generosity from setup to tear-down, for weeks on end! So many labors of love for Jesus and the Kingdom and the hearts of our children and their families! The faith and generosity on display in the spiritual family of our Pastorate has been the most humbling and inspiring thing for me being here so far, so thank you all for that witness. For those of you who weren’t able to “scuba” and dive deep in friendship with God during VBS, fear not! Here’s my own little synthesis and reflection on the highlights:
- God is a friend who is real! We know in faith that God is at once the hidden, eternal, awesome God in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). But He has also revealed Himself in His Incarnate, Beloved Son Jesus. Jesus remains with us in so many ways in the Church, but especially hidden under the veils of the Blessed Sacrament – His Body and Blood given up for us and given to us to be received, to be adored, and to enliven us as true food and true drink.
- God is a friend who loves! As we hear in the first reading this Sunday, to the grumbling and utterly spent Israelites in the desert, God is kind and merciful. God provides for and feeds his chosen ones again and again, even when they think that the slavery in Egypt from which God delivered them was better than their seemingly aimless wanderings. God loves us and meets us: in our doubts, in our grumbling, in our sin. Come to Him; let Him love you; let Him save you.
- God is a friend we can trust! Just as the Israelites were instructed to collect enough manna to last them for one day, so too the Lord Jesus asks us to do: live in trust one day at a time. God wants you to flourish, to be fully alive in His love. He has come that we may have life and have it abundantly (Jn 10:10). Receiving and living abundant life takes trust as we are taught, fed, and led by Jesus.
- God is a friend forever! Contemplating this point and looking to our Eucharistic Lord, our Eucharistic Friend, I’ll share a word from a speaker at the recent Eucharistic Congress that, I think, captures this theme: “No darkness is stronger than the light of the Eucharist… no sin is greater than the merciful love of the Eucharist… no hatred is greater than the charity that burns in the heart of the Eucharist… no violence is greater than the peace that springs from the heart of Our Lord… no deception is greater than the truth that springs from the Eucharist.” (Mother Adela Galindo, SCTJM).
- God is a friend for everyone! History is “His story”, that is, God’s story. In His sheer, loving goodness, God created us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him and to reveal His glory. And even when the plan seems foiled, the “Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it,” (Jn 1:5). “God is for us,” (Rom 8:31). This is really Good News that everyone must hear. May the Holy Spirit embolden us in this mission lovingly entrusted to us by Jesus to proclaim in word and deed. “Only love that is visible, is love that is credible.” (Mother Adela).
Thanks, God!
Let us pray for one another.
Fr. John
