God is the Seeker
My Dear Parishioners,
As Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen wrote, most of the world’s religions ask us to go searching for God. These religions teach that God is the One who is sought after and that we then are the seekers. They teach that God is the One who is lost and that we are tasked with finding Him.
Our Catholic Faith, however, teaches the exact opposite. We teach that God is the seeker and that He came looking for us. We teach that we were the ones who were lost, and that God found us in His Son, Jesus Christ: For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. (John 3:16-17).
Please notice the verbs in this important passage: gave, sent, saved. God came looking for us. He came looking for us because He loves us and wants to have a relationship with us: But to those who did accept Him He gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God. And the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. (John 1: 12-14).
Our Catholic Faith also teaches that God is always close to us. In fact, He is so close to us that we can even taste Him in the Host we receive at Holy Communion. Think of that the next time you approach the altar to receive Holy Communion!
For further reflection on the miracle of Christmas, I have included some quotes from the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen in this letter.
I would like to again thank all who helped to clear the giving tree and all who helped to support our recent food and diaper drives. So many feel God’s love through us and these important outreaches. I would also like to thank all those who have coordinated these important outreaches and ask for continued Blessings from Heaven upon all for your generosity.
I wish to extend additional “thank yous” to all who played any part in making our annual Christmas Bazaar and Pancake Breakfast and our Christmas Concert the successes they were. These are important community builders and opportunities to grow our relationships with each other.
I know many preparations for our celebration of Christmas are already underway. I am looking forward to our second Christmas together and to our celebration of the birth of Our Blessed Savior.
Sadly, we all have friends, family, and neighbors who have been away from the Church for one reason or another. They are lost. God is looking for them. We are the eyes that God is using to search them out. We are the months that God is using to invite them back.
So, I am asking all of you, for the love of God and neighbor, to please extend a personal invitation to them to join us this Christmas.
Your personal invitation may help someone who is lost to return to the Faith and to return to having that beautiful personal relationship with Jesus that we have as Catholics.
May the Intercession of all of God’s Holy Angels and Saints be with us as we continue our preparations to remember the Birth of Our Blessed Savior, and in the words of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, God love you!
Fr. Michael J Pawelko, Pastor
Christmas Reflections
by the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J Sheen
The True Meaning of Christmas
Once a year, at Christmas time, everyone is happy and loving, kind and generous. But one wonders if they know why they are happy…..Through our own fault we had lost our resemblance to God Who made us. By being born of parents, we are not sons of God; God is not our Father unless we share His Life….When He came to this earth, it was not to give us a code, it was not to give us a law; it was not to have some secretaries write books that we might read as we read Plato or Socrates. It was rather that we might be endowed with His Divine Life and be, not just men, but heirs of Heaven and sons of the Eternal Father. On Christmas Day, this process began for men of good will.
No Room At the Inn
But when finally the scrolls of history are complete, down to the last word of time, the saddest line of all will be: “There was no room in the inn.”…The inn was the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But there’s no room in the place where the world gathers. The stable is a place for outcasts, the ignored and the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born in an inn; a stable would certainly be the last place in the world where one would look for him. The lesson is: divinity is always where you least expect to find it. So the Son of God made man is invited to enter into his own world through a back door.
The 2 Births of Christ
There are two births of Christ, one unto the world in Bethlehem; the other in the soul, when it is spiritually reborn. Men think of the former much more than the later, and celebrate it every year; but the spiritual Bethlehem is equally momentous…. It was the second birth that Saint Paul insisted on when he wrote from prison to his beloved people, the Ephesians, asking that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith and that they be rooted and grounded in love. This is the second Bethlehem, or the personal relationship of the individual heart to the Lord Christ.
True Mark of Humility
Exiled from the earth, our Lord is born under the earth, for the stable was in a cave. He was the first caveman of recorded history, and there he shook the earth to its very foundations. Because he’s born in a cave, all who wish to see him must bend, must stoop, the stoop is the mark of humility. The proud refuse to stoop. Therefore they miss divinity. Those, however, who are willing to risk bending their egos to go into that cave,
find that they are not in a cave at all; but they are in a universe where sits a babe on his mother’s lap, the babe who made the world.
Never Expected
God walks into your soul with silent step. God comes to you more than you go to Him. Never will his coming be what you expect, and yet never will it disappoint. The more you respond to his gentle pressure, the greater will be your freedom.
On obedience and faith
“What does obedience do for us? Obedience gives us faith. Are we reacting against Christ and his Church, or are we accepting its authority? Faith comes from that kind of submission. Remember that when our blessed Lord was born, Herod consulted the scribes… He said to the scribes, ‘Where is the Christ to be born?’ . . . They said, ‘He is to be born in Bethlehem.’ Did they go? There was not a single scribe at that crib—not one. But they knew. Our faith today can be a kind of creedal assent, instead of a living act of the will, conscious of the fact that we are submitting to Christ, as Christ submitted to the heavenly Father. Notice, too, that at the crib, only two classes of people found their way to Christ when he came to this earth: the very simple, and the very learned—the shepherds who knew that they knew nothing, and the wise men who knew that they did not know everything.”
Jesus’s Gift to Us
He lies upon straw on earth and yet sustains the universe and reigns in Heaven; He is born in time, and yet He existed before all time; Maker of the stars under the stars; Ruler of the earth an outcast of earth; filling the world, lying in a manger. And yet the proud man sees only a Babe. The humble, simple souls, who are little enough to see the bigness of God in the littleness of a Babe, are therefore the only ones who will ever understand the reason of His visitation. He came to the poor earth of ours to carry on an exchange; to say to us, as only the Good God could say: You give me your humanity, and I will give you my Divinity; you give me your time, and I will give you my eternity, you give me your weary body, and I will give you Redemption; you give me your broken heart, and I will give you Love; you give me your nothingness, and I will give you My all.