Dear Friends,
This weekend is the beginning of Vocation Awareness Week. As I mentioned last week, Father David Friel will be the main celebrant at our 12 Noon Mass. A luncheon with conversation and fraternity will follow the Mass for young men interested in learning more about the priesthood and their personal walk with Jesus. At that Mass, we will also pray for all the members of our parish family and your loved ones who died this past year, our annual Mass of Remembrance in this month dedicated to praying for the Holy Souls.
We hear in our Scriptures this weekend about two widows. The one in Zarephath whom the prophet Elijah encounters and the one Jesus observes outside the Temple walls in Jerusalem. Both are very poor, in terrible need themselves and both are women of remarkable, head-turning faith and trust in God.
We all tend to look for this-world solutions to our problems. We tend to be individualists who think we can handle problems, challenges, obstacles ourselves. We often hear people say something like, “I have this.” In a society of great wealth and financial resources, it is easy to believe that more money will solve problems. The world of advertising seeks to convince us that happiness can be bought. Of course, that is not the case. How many folks with tremendous financial resources do not have peace or hope or fulfillment? Everything in this world passes away.
These widows remind us that humility allows us to trust completely in God who is generous beyond our imagination. Their self-surrender, their giving from their very substance, all that they had, reveals their total confidence in the presence of God in their lives. They challenge us to live as dynamically and as dramatically as they lived. Faith so profound and so deep frees us to be all that God calls us to be and satisfies our deepest longings. May our faith continue to ever grow stronger, following the inspiration of these two widows.
With the changes in the weather, we are looking forward to Fall, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with the prayer that everyone will be healthy and able to enjoy gatherings of family and friends safely. Finally, we offer a word of thanks to Mollie Carey for her service as our Communications Director. Mollie has returned to the business world and another position. We wish her every success!
God bless you, God love you,
Monsignor McCulken
