-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this week's LinC Letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass at 5:30am on Saturday and 8am and 6pm on Sunday
What's New
With the beginning of Advent we start a new liturgical year of grace 2017. The question for us may be, "is there anything new?". The repeated annual liturgical calendar is a religious symbol for us as Catholics in which we are called to hear the invitation to conversion. Conversion is a fancy word that means "changing the direction in which we were looking for happiness".
In what direction have you been looking for happiness? How successful has your search for happiness been? Do you see on the horizon a new direction in which you might find true happiness? Maybe it is a direction which you have resisted in the past because it appears too difficult, to radical, to pious, too religious, too disruptive to your life? That resistance is precisely the powerful "self" that refuses to die.
This Advent, this new year, may be the opportunity of grace to go ahead and follow the Lord's call into that direction which you have been resisting but which promises true, deep, and lasting happiness.
1 comment:
I'm reading a book by James Alison and he suggests that "our being able to change heart is made possible by our believing in the good news. In the degree to which we learn to fix our mind on God's absolute vivaciousness and effervescence, goodness and lovingkindness, without ambiguity or violence, we can learn to leave behind the person we thought we were, participating actively in the bringing to being of a new person, not formed by the desires of this world."
And that's the trick - the desires of this world are so much a part of who we are that oftentimes we don't even recognize them. That's why the "dying to self" statement strikes a nerve. It's the challenge that speaks well to what it really means to love - "the sort of love that requires sacrifice, especially so that someone else might live."
Post a Comment