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.