Blog & Pastor Letters

Imagine your son takes your precious items in the house and sell them without your knowledge. It could be your 2022 Ferrari FF model or your jewelry worth a fortune. You bought your Ferrari as a gift to yourself after retirement after thirty-five years of meritorious service to your nation. This car means so much to you because you enjoy driving around town and you feel cool among your friends.

Most of the sins I confess when I approach God through the Sacrament of Reconciliation are sins I committed on the way to approaching Him in the Eucharist.

Listen, I’m not proud of this, and I’m not making excuses. But it’s really hard getting a family of five out of their beds and into a church pew on a Sunday morning. Everyone has to be wearing clothes (usually clothes they don’t particularly enjoy).

Jesus guided Peter, James, and John up the mountain to pray. There Jesus was transfigured before them — showing his glorified self with his face changing in appearance and his clothes becoming dazzling white — a foreshadowing his heavenly appearance. What a glorious moment for all to behold, and for us two thousand years later to witness as we read the detailed description offered through the Scriptures. The Lord’s “face shone like the sun,” (Matthew 17:2), and “His garments became white as light” (Matthew 17:2); “dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them” (Mark 9:3).

We forget that to be human means to accept our growing pains. We are incomplete, works in progress. Our lives are never entirely integral, whole, and perfectly constructed creations but a diverse collection of broken pieces. If not welcomed with love, our necessary incompleteness can propel us to consistently, and sometimes compulsively, seek control and satisfaction.

It seems that, in many ways, we would be hard-pressed to have better readings for the Sunday before Lent begins. These teachings of Jesus—on judging others and the fruitfulness of our lives—help round out the sixth chapter of Luke and what we now know as Jesus’ “sermon on the plain.” Here, we find Jesus inviting us to reflect on the movements taking place within our minds and hearts, particularly with regard to how we relate to other people.

According to the introductory lines of the Open Doors Report (2021) titled Freedom of Religion and the Persecution of Christians, ‘the persecution of Christians is getting worse – in every region in which we work – and It is getting worse fast.” The analysis of this statement shows that religious extremism is becoming worse in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia. And North Korea is the worst place to be a Christian. By far, the report indicates that the rise of Islamic extremism in sub-Saharan Africa dwarfs when compared to the violence in the Middle East. The persecution of Christians from across the world is fueled by factors such as Islamic extremism, religious nationalism, tribal antagonism, denominational protectionism, communist oppression, aggressive secularism, organized corruption, and totalitarian paranoia.

Parents can interpret the behaviors of their children. From early childhood, parents can decipher the kind of behavior their children will assume as adults. By watching their kids, they know who will excel in science or the arts. They can guess who is suitable for the Olympics Games, the French Open, or a Nobel Prize award. For some children, parents begin to see a Mother Teresa or a Padre Pio in their actions.

While visiting the St. Paul’s Cathedral London, I felt the power of God speaking to my heart. I tried to explain my feelings to my group but one of them pointed out that the cathedral does not belong to the Catholic Church. I laughed and I immediately thought about how we try to classify God based on denominational connections. Although the cathedral church is not Catholic, it does not stop Jesus from manifesting his power among those who call upon his name. The feeling I had while I was at the St. Paul’s Cathedral was a feeling of the presence of God. The music was inspirational; it sent me into thinking about my purpose in life.

Sometimes it is a struggle to see how each of the Mass readings correspond. Other times the threads between them interweave like a masterfully woven tapestry. Today’s readings, at least to me, represent the latter. Strands of being created for a plan and a purpose, prophecies shared and rejected, good people treated as evil, and connected to all of it, a God that loves without reserve — upholding, strengthening His beloved.

When I was a Dominican novice, I remember asking one of the older friars in our community to succinctly describe the charism of the Order of Preachers. He stopped, thought for a moment, and replied, “The Dominican is meant to have a preoccupation with the Word of God.” That has stuck with me throughout my years in religious life and helped shape my ministry as a priest. Would that we all have a preoccupation with the Word of God!

The life of St. Augustine of Hippo is filled with testimonies of his immoral living before he found Christ. As a young man wandering all over North Africa and around the Mediterranean Coastlands, he sought to find true happiness. He tested all avenues of finding happiness as a young man but found no true joy. In whatever he indulged in, he progressed to the next to suit his personal voids. During his wanderings, he travelled to Milan in Italy and entered a church where he heard the word of God that touched him for the first time in his life. He listened to Bishop Ambrose of Milan preach about Jesus and this attracted him greatly. St. Augustine changed his life and was baptized. He not only become a Christian, but he was ordained later as a priest and Bishop of Hippo.

One Sunday, I had only one candidate for baptism after Mass. The family arrived well before the Mass ended and took up positions in the front pews ready for the baptism of their lovely baby. Since I had the afternoon Mass, I dressed up appropriately in the sacristy and proceeded to the altar to start the initiation of this lovely baby into the Christian faith. The baby was dressed all in white, but he was busy having his lunch from a small feeding bottle and his face beamed with angelic smiles. I was later told that his father flew in from Germany to attend his son’s baptism.

The month of December has come and gone. The world did not end. Or at least we are still here moving around. The Mayans are gone and the calendar they left for us is hard to interpret. What can we say? A year comes in, and a year goes out, that is how life works. Such has been the cycle of life right from the creation of man. What has a beginning must have an end. The year 2021 has ended and we must brace up to delve into a new year with hope of better things to come.