Congratulations once again to John and Norenne Krzan on their 60th Wedding Anniversary. May you have many happy years ahead!
We wish Deacon Mingwei Li a safe journey back to school and success this semester in Seminary. Deacon Ming will be back here at the parish around the Christmas season.
As I mentioned in last week’s homily, we cannot allow ourselves to think that we become automatically holy by receiving communion. We must be properly disposed and strive to live a life of Communion with the Lord every day. Many moons ago during a Vacation Bible school I was teaching as a seminarian, I taught what I termed the “Four Spiritual Food Groups” (I doubt it was an original idea) to help the young people learn about the faith. We ingest many things that are not good for our souls via the popular culture that we live in today. We all should be striving to grow by looking at what the “Deposit of Faith” has for us.
· Scriptures
· Prayer
· Saints
· Sacraments
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is great place to start to learn about these.
All of us should be life long students of the Scriptures. We should also take up the challenge of reading the Bible from cover to cover at least once in our life. We have been blessed in the Church recently with many great aids and programs to study the Bible and should take advantage of them.
“Prayer is, for me, an outburst from the heart; it is a simple glance darted upwards to Heaven; it is a cry of gratitude and of love in the midst of trial as in the midst of joy! In a word, it is something exalted, supernatural, which dilates the soul and unites it to God. Sometimes when I find myself, spiritually, in dryness so great that I cannot produce a single good thought, I recite very slowly a Pater or an Ave Maria; these prayers alone console me, they suffice, they nourish my soul.” ~ St. Therese -Story of A Soul, Chapter X
The above quote from St. Therese of Lisiuex shows us the nature of prayer. It also shows us the need to study the Saints. If we want to be good at anything, we need to look at the great people who have gone before us. Artists study great artists. Athletes find the best coaches. If we want to be great followers of Christ, we must do the same ... study His Saints.
The Sacraments are given to us by Christ via the Church to give us grace. Each once gives us a special grace to help us live a deeper life of faith. We should strive to prepare ourselves to be greater prepared to receive the two we can receive most frequently, Penance and the Eucharist. In the upcoming weeks I will talk about them.