-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 on the back of the parish bulletin or at www.saint-albert.org/lincletter
-I will be celebrating mass at 5:30pm on Saturday, 8:00am & 11:00am on Sunday.
Play-Doh Fun Factory
When I was a kid one of my favorite toys was the Play-Doh fun factory. It was the machine that you put the Play-Doh into, affix different apertures onto the front of it and then you squeeze the doh through it and it would come out to make stars, circles, squares, different animals etc.
That fun factory is a basic image in my mind of how reality, or truth, takes different shapes. We might also see it as more thing, the changing shape of some reality. I am of course talking about salvation today on this fourth Sunday of Lent. Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us today that salvation takes the shape of the church, the people of God, the body of Christ in the world. Is that true for you? Do you see understand and counter your salvation and eternal life in the body of the church, your relationship to the church, your celebration of life in the sacraments of the church?.
Our “Church@Home” focus last Sunday was on “Christ crucified“ in which we came to understand that the love of God takes the shape of sacrifice and we see it and know it in Christ crucified. This week's call turns our reflection to Christ's resurrected body, the church. Pope Francis has famously said “if your first name is Christian your last name must be Church.“
It is by faith and baptism in the church that we come to know the great love of God and our salvation. To quote Saint Augustine on this point “there is no salvation outside of the church. My question today is "To what extent do we understand and appreciate our relationship with God as taking the shape or the form of the church?
