One of my younger sisters, Mary Cay, in responding to a string text messages earlier this week where my family was sharing photos and messages about the fires in the Pacific Northwest wrote this, “Holy cats!!!!!!! This year is something else!!!!! Wow.” Amen.
St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans shares these words of hope and grace with us as a Church, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit; whoever serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by others. Let us* then pursue what leads to peace and to building up one another.” (Rm 14:17-19) It has been one of those weeks and yes, one of those years where we await the second hurricane in less than two weeks to cause devastation, where in many parts of the country fires are ravaging the land, where political intrigue and violence seem more common than debate and discussion or in other words “Holy cats!!!!!!! This year is something else!!!!! Wow.”
As Catholic Christians how are we called to respond? When everything seems out of control, how do proclaim, “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”? There are no easy answers but one consistent answer that calls us back again and again to life giving service. It is prayer. I know that many people will say, “Is this the answer to everything?” and quite frankly, yes. It is the same as asking what do we need to live and are given a simple one word answer, “air”. It is the foundation of a relationship with something greater and life giving, a relationship where we are drawn out of our limitedness and invited into the eternal work of love.
The small quote from Romans reminds us of this. If we, in response to tragedy, in response to hatred and violence, in response to suffering, only respond with the “food and drink” necessary for the day, then we absent our lives from the healing and caring for the greater person. It is important that we reach out to the immediate needs of our brothers and sisters, but in responding we are called, as Christians, to also reach out in prayer…in the blessings and mercy of God that draws us into a longer and sustained blessing of the other.
Pope Francis, on the first day of his apostolic visit to Columbia, shared with the Catholic Church how we are not an organization of this’s and that’s but the person of Jesus Christ. Pope Francis said, (the Gospel is not) “a programme at the service of a trendy gnosticism, a project of social improvement, or the Church conceived as a comfortable bureaucracy, any more than she can be reduced to an organization run according to modern business models by a clerical caste.” (Pope Francis in Columbia 2017)
This idea of being of service, not as a project but as a person allows us to hear the second part of the quote from Romans with greater clarity. Our service should and must be one of prayerful engagement with the deepest needs of our brothers and sisters. It is the blessing St. John Paul II shared with us in “Rosarium Virginis Mariae” as he meditated on the power of the rosary in our life, “In Christ, God has truly assumed a “heart of flesh”. Not only does God have a divine heart, rich in mercy and in forgiveness, but also a human heart, capable of all the stirrings of affection.” (#26) This is what each saint understands and in our call to holiness (sainthood) we too must strive to grow in: to become the heart of Christ in the world we must, in prayer, know the heart of God’s love for us, to be active in hearing the call of God in our lives where we are engaged in heart to heart service. To be drawn into the deep waters of faith where we hear and move in active service of our brothers and sisters.
In other words, prayer is not a cold and sterile act that removes us from the world but rather it is a heartbeat, the call to active service in the sharing of our time, talent and treasure and sons and daughters of the living and true God. Prayer is the food feeding the dreams of hope changing “Holy cats!!!!!!! This year is something else!!!!! Wow.” from a statement of fear and doubt into hopefulness, mercy and love. This is the true mission of life where Pope Francis reminds of Jesus’ Gospel message, “We are called to set out on mission not with cold and abstract concepts, but with images that keep multiplying and unfolding their power in human hearts, making them grain sown on good ground, yeast that makes the bread rise from the dough, and seed with the power to become a fruitful tree.” (Pope Francis in Columbia 2017)
God bless
Fr. Mark

(Quotes from Pope Francis come from Catholic News Agency’s article http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/pope-francis-lays-out-his-vision-for-churchs-mission-in-latin-america-61182/