Pastor's Reflection
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 23, 2023
Dear Friends,
As you noticed coming onto the property this weekend, the parking lot has been re-sealed. A large project for sure. It is just one of many maintenance needs and projects happening during these months. Parish life is never dull nor still but very busy. Thank you for your ongoing financial support to help keep our parish facilities in good working order facilitating our worship and praise of God and the living out of the Gospel.
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 16, 2023
Dear Friends,
In our first reading this weekend, the Lord says, “…my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” Certainly, these words evoke the book of Genesis, the images of God creating the heavens and the earth. When God speaks, what He speaks comes into being. We can also see here that when God’s Word becomes flesh and blood, Jesus Christ, Jesus fulfills the Father’s will totally and achieves our redemption.
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 9, 2023
Dear Friends,
I pray that these summer weeks are affording you some rest and relaxation. Who do you know? Who knows you? I have often heard it said that it is not so much what you know as who you know in regard to the things of this world. What about the spiritual world?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks some remarkable words, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” In other words, if we want to know God then we need to know Jesus for we cannot get to the Father except through the Son. And this is not informational knowledge, knowing about Jesus. Rather, this is interpersonal, relational knowledge. The knowledge of encountering Jesus personally.
