Pastor Notes April 14, 2024
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April 15, 2024We welcome the parents and families celebrating First Holy Communion this Sunday at St. Malachy. For our second graders receiving the Eucharist for the first time—aside from their anxiety approaching this moment—may they each have a presence of gratitude for receiving Communion, for sharing in the real presence, and for the desire to participate in the Eucharist each Sunday. Thank you parents for passing on the Catholic faith, for your prayers and Christian values you share as a family, and for allowing your child to receive the Sacraments.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus said. “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in you hearts?” In the midst of our Easter Season—reflecting the ultimate gift of our Christian faith—Jesus confronts the disciples within their fears, anxieties, and concerns. Apropos, considering our own concerns and questions regardless of how firm our Catholic faith may be, how triumphant the Easter promise. Thus, Jesus approaches us as he did his disciples in today’s gospel passage, not chastising but seeking to affirm our faith and the reality of God’s presence within all creation (especially in the midst of our doubts or fears). Reflecting the hope of this triumphant season of Easter hand in hand with our personal concerns and struggles, I share the thoughts of two individuals of faith.
Sr. Rocio Perez has served the struggling in Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic and most recently, Haiti. Serving at a training school for illiterate young women Sr. Rocio shares her thoughts: “I struggle with this sometimes. I know that God is all powerful and all loving. But sometimes I ask him, ‘where are you, Lord? You see all the misery that people are in. And so many are crying out to you, praying and fasting But still we wait and don’t see you. Where are you?’ Really, though, I do know that God is here, sustaining us daily in so many ordinary looking ways.
Often I don’t see him because I’m looking for the wrong thing—some dramatic intervention, some spectacular miracle or instant solution. But God is present everywhere and, in a special way, in the worst poverty. And so I see all my girls and their families caught up in a great mystery: misery, suffering, abandonment. And God is there. . . .God is there. No matter where I begin, my prayer always centers around the girls. . . .I know God is with me even when I can’t quiet my mind. He knows what I’m mad. He understands that I get easily distracted, preoccupied.”
George McPhee lived for many years at St. Monica’s Home for the Abandoned Elderly, afflicted with leprosy. Blind and disfigured, his personal motto remained the same throughout the burden of this disease: “Giving good encouragement.” His prayer reflected the same. “Loving Father, thank you for your love and mercies. Thank you for your goodness in every way. . . .Give us strength and courage to accept our suffering, remembering that Christ was sinless yet he suffered on a cruel cross for the sins of the whole world. . . .You see that we are weak sometimes; we don’t really love you as we should. But when we fall, you never get vexed. You are always ready to help us get up and go forward again. . . .Use us all as your instruments. Help us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and show us what little part you want us to play. Lead us to serve you in Spirit and truth, so that we will run the race to the end and hear you call us home at last. Amen.”
Our Easter Season is not simply a liturgical time of year—or triumphalism; rather, it is a reflective period acknowledging the ultimate promise within in the midst of our everyday humanity and relationships, our achievements and fears, our encouraging moments and moments we are discouraged. George McPhee and Sr. Rocio reflect an ‘Easter faith’ acknowledging our God who purposely offered us his Son’s life, suffering, and Resurrection, intertwined in our daily path and echoing the words before us, “Peace be with you.” Always.
Thank you for your kind thoughts and words, prayers, cards and gifts for my birthday. Two years past the Medicaid induction, life gets much less dramatic. Your kindness is a reminder of the goodness of life, and the graciousness of faith. At my age I consider the quip from Charles Barkley (former NBA player and TV commentator) as he grows older. “Getting older is like the game of golf. I know I’m on the back nine, but don’t know if I’m on the tenth hole or the eighteenth.”
God Bless, Fr. Tim
FYI: “How old would you be if you don’t know how old you are?” (Satchel Paige)
