January 18, 1998Second Sunday in Ordinary Time |
PASTORAL THOUGHTS...
In the vesting room, the priests keep a small booklet
that serves as a guide to the Mass to be celebrated, the
Divine Office directives, and a listing daily of our
deceased priests, for whom we pray always. At the start of
the Ordinary Time, that is the end of the Christmas season,
when we now wear Green Vestments frequently, the following
meditation appeared. It is worth your reading time.
Father Bob
Wasted time is not a prized commodity in 20th Century
American Society. We are a people ruled by the clock.
Time is money because time is to be filled with purposeful
controlled activity which is productive of things which can
be sold. We are convinced that we must be in control of
time. The last thing the productive American would want to
do is waste time playing around the realities that do not
produce a saleable commodity.
But the Creator of heaven and earth is described by
the scriptures as the original and best of players.
Creative activity is playful, and creative people do not
feel that what they do is a job. Creative people also have
a sense that their creativity and all that they fashion in
the creative spirit are gifts they have received. The
Christian can speak of this and the contemplative vision
which sees all reality as gift or grace. Our thankful
response we call worship or eucharist.
We cannot speak of Ordinary Time without speaking of
Sunday. The every seven-day celebration of the Lord's Day
is the basic structure upon which the Church year is built.
The great liturgical seasons of Advent-Christmas and Lent-
Easter are more expansive celebrations of particular
aspects of the one paschal mystery which we celebrate every
Lord's Day. These special seasons focus our attention upon
critical dimensions of one mystery, a mystery so
overwhelming that we are compelled to separate out its
various elements for particular attention. These seasons
in no way minimize the critical importance of the Sunday
celebration throughout the rest of the year. Ordinary Time
is not very ordinary at all. Ordinary Time, the
celebration of Sunday, is the identifying mark of the
Christian community which comes together, remembering that
on the first day of the week the Lord of Life was raised up
and creation came at last to completion. Sunday as a day
of play and worship is a sacrament of redeemed time. How
we live Sunday proclaims to the world what we believe about
redeemed time now and for ever.
What happens in our churches every Sunday is the fruit
of our week. What happens as the fruit of the week past is
the beginning of the week to come. Sunday, like all
sacraments, is simultaneously a point of arrival and
departure for Christians on their way to the fullness of
the kingdom. This is not ordinary at all. This is the
fabric of Christian living.
Religious Education
Little eyes are watching you.
Intently focused on what you do.
Taking in the way you pray.
Watching for Jesus' presence today.
This little rhyme may help you to become more aware of the PRESENCE of Jesus
among us. It is this Gift of God that the celebration of Eucharist loudly
proclaims through our actions and words. We give our full attention to the
words and actions of the Priest who represents the Risen Christ, the head of the
Mystical Body of Christ, the gathered believers. Together with our head, we
offer praise and thanksgiving to God the Father for the gift of salvation. Our
attention and responses
are joined to the Risen Christ to give true worship of God, through Him, with
Him, and in Him we are unified by the Holy Spirit and give all glory and honor
to God who created us, redeems us and sanctifies us.
AMEN!
Pastor's Column
For the next six weeks or so we are back in
"Ordinary Time," that section of the liturgical
year when we focus on putting into practice the
particular mystery or event in Christ's life that
we have just celebrated.
We have gone through the Christmas Season
with its five major feasts: Christmas ("The
Word became flesh"), Holy Family and Mary
Mother of God ("and made his dwelling among
us"), Epiphany ("and we have seen his glory"),
and The Baptism of the Lord ("the glory of an
only Son coming from the Father, filled with
enduring love.")
Now it is time for us to take ownership of
this great happening in our own lives ("Of his
glory we have all had a share -- love following
upon love") and to commit ourselves to enflesh or
manifest or make plain-and-clear this Word to
others.
On this second Sunday in Ordinary Time we
focus our attention on the wedding feast at Cana
to highlight the fact that the life and mission of
married couples is one of the basic human ways for
Christ to show the world how much he loves us.
St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians,
"[Marriage] is a great foreshadowing: I mean that
it refers to Christ and the Church" (5:32).
Matrimony is the call by God to reveal
through the bonding of human love how Jesus Christ
himself is relating with his people to form unity
here and hereafter. So, the love between husband
and wife -- in its sexual, relational, familial,
and social dimensions -- is meant to be an image,
a mirror, a model, a sacrament of how Christ
interacts lovingly with his people.
This approach to matrimony to make God-with-
us convincingly present and active to the world
through human love doesn't happen automatically.
It takes hard work and patient effort to fulfill a
three-part promise: active participation in the
Body of Christ; a persevering two-sided, other-
centered love for one another; and a positive
power to influence others by loving God and one
another.
My thanks to all the married couples of the
parish who day after day become this sacrament of
matrimony and manifest the loving Christ to a
world desperately in need of real love.
--Father Benet OFM
Father Len writes,
Jesus worked his first sign that the Reign of
God was present at a wedding feast. This gives a
special place to the tradition of celebrating a
marriage. It shows the communal nature of this
celebration and the preparation that was expected
of the wedding couple. This is a good time to
think about our community's celebration of
marriages. Are we preparing for them in a timely
way? Do we even know who is preparing for marriage
so we can support them with prayer and in other
ways? How is the grace of the sacrament still
working in our families? The church believes good
marriages show the Reign of God is present. Maybe,
the miracle today is that we still have so many
good marriages.
NO TIME FOR FASTING
Water turns to wine, and wine to blood. This
is one of the central Christian mysteries, how
an ordinary drink becomes miraculously
transformed. The mystery speaks of thirst, of
both the body and the spirit. We know we
cannot survive without water, nor can our
spirit live apart from Christ. In the cup we
share, we experience the celebration of the
wedding feast. The bridegroom comes; this is
no time for fasting! The renewed practice of
receiving both body and blood in Communion
reminds us of the sobering question Jesus put
to his first disciples: "Can you drink from
the cup of which I will drink?" Our action is
our assent.
MESSAGE FROM FATHER BOB R.
The miracle at the wedding feast of Cana is the focus of today's
Liturgy of the Word. The Church has always seen great meaning in
Christ's presence at this wedding; Jesus confirms the goodness of
marriage. The marriage covenant is a binding agreement between the
two that follows the pattern of the Covenant between God and the
Chosen People and the New Covenant between Christ and his bride,
the Church, as St. Paul tells us. To put it simply, Christ will
continue to love us and be faithful at all times, no matter how we
are responding to the Lord at any given moment.
Some questions for those who are in a marriage covenant: In my
marriage, do I remember that I am called to form a communion of
love with my spouse? How do I work on this challenge on a daily
basis? How do differences in personality, policies about money,
views about sexuality, work inside and outside the home that affect
our love for each other? What challenges from our culture affect
our attitude toward children and the ideals we have for our
children? What role do fidelity, love, and prayer play in our
daily married life? In what way does God's fidelity to us help us
to be faithful to each other?
PRAYER: O God, give all husbands and wives the strength
to live in fidelity to their marriage promises to love each other
and be open to the raising of children. May every Christian
marriage strive to reflect the absolute and loving fidelity of
Christ to his Church. Fill them with abundant and lasting joy.
Amen!
A week from Monday, February 2, 1998, is the Feast
of the Presentation. This is the day the Holy
Father has designated as World Day of Prayer for
Consecrated Life. Remember in grateful prayer the
many years of service and fidelity given in love by
consecrated men and women who work to further the
mission of Christ in the world.
What is Consecrated Life? Simply, it is a way
of living according to the evangelical counsels of
poverty, chastity and obedience. You might be more
familiar with the term religious life. The
priests and brothers and sisters that we call
Franciscans, Dominicans, Mercy Sisters, Jesuits or
Paulists or Christian Brothers, or Maryknoll
Missioners--these all live lives consecrated to God
and to God's people through the promise to live a
poor, obedient and chaste life. So are the nuns
and monks who live in monasteries and dedicate
their lives to prayer and work.
There are also other forms of consecrated life that
might be less familiar to you. The women and men
who choose to live out their commitment while
living in their own homes and working in the same
types of employment that we are familiar with.
They do follow the same evangelical counsels of
poverty, celibacy and obedience to religious
authority. These are members of Secular
Institutes. May the Church be blessed with many
more people called to consecrated life.
PRESENTATION OF THE LORD
Forty days after the birth of Jesus, Mary and
Joseph took Him to Jerusalem and presented him
to the Lord as the law of Moses required. While in
the temple, they encountered a man named Simon
who called Jesus "a Light to the nations and the
glory of Israel."
On the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, it is
a tradition to bless candles not only for the church use
but for the home as well. Blessed candles can be
used for special dinners at home or when the family
gathers for prayer.
TO HELP PREPARE FOR GOD'S WORD
Readings for next week,
January 25, 1998 are:
Copyright © 1998 Liturgical Publications of St. Louis, Inc.
Last modified: 1/17/98 6:26:47 PM