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Day: March 25, 2006

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A church closes – more is lost

The following is an excerpt from East Bay Newspapers on the closing of St. Casimir’s Parish in Warren, Rhode Island.

St. Casimir’s Church closure still pains Warren parishioners

Tough void to fill

A small community is what brought former St. Casimir parishioner Barbara Godek to St. Thomas the Apostle Church. But it also took her time to find a new parish, and the warmth of the church she spent 45 years of her life at was one of the many things she lost when it closed its doors late last year.

“Finding a church, it’s like buying a pair of shoes. You try on a few but they just don’t seem to fit,” Ms. Godek said.

Another thing lost was the Divine Mercy Novena Sunday group that consisted of nearly a dozen Rosary women —” Ms. Godek’s fondest memory. But the group is inactive in other church’s and she finds no place puts as much emphasis on prayer as St. Casimir’s once did.

“We didn’t mind praying hours after hours for different things and different people. You don’t get that at other churches,” Ms. Godek said.

Members of the church’s Rosary Society were close. They met the Sunday after Easter for the Divine Mercy Novena, which celebrates a picture of Christ said to spawn miracles. People in Poland placed the photo in their homes during wars in hopes of sparing their family from bombings.

The Rosary Society, the feasts, the Polish music, the smiles, the prayers and the sermons remain simple memories.

“It’s sad and it was a very difficult thing,” Ms. Godek said. “We lost so much at one time that it was hard to cope with —” we’re like Moses in the desert.”

The simple faith of these people has been injured. Not only that, a community that practiced intercessory prayer is gone. It certainly won’t be reconstituted in the mega parishes with their focus on the bottom line. Yes, Ms. Godek, much has been lost. It’s just sad, discouraging…

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe (in me) to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”

Homilies

Fourth Sunday of Lent

God puts up with us. Because of His mercy, he patiently awaits our conversion.

What He desires, while being patient with us, is that we all come to believe in Him and come to eternal life.

The Father desires that we know in our heart of hearts that Jesus is His Son, come to earth, raised up on the cross, who suffered, died, was buried, and Who rose again from the dead. Not only this, but to know that we have life through Him.

Moses was directed to raise a figure of a serpent on a stick so that those who had been poisoned might be cured by looking at it. So God sent His Son to be raised on the cross so that all of us, poisoned by sin, might have life in His light.

My brothers and sisters,

When the chosen people disobeyed God, and not only disobeyed but mocked Him too, God’s righteous anger was raised.

The Second book of Chronicles tells us:

the anger of the LORD against his people was so inflamed
that there was no remedy.
Their enemies burnt the house of God,
tore down the walls of Jerusalem,
set all its palaces afire,
and destroyed all its precious objects.

God allowed the land to go fallow. There was no life in Israel. Life there ceased and all the people were carried off as was their livestock.

For a reality check, picture the State of New York. A beautiful place. Trees, hills and valleys, magnificent cities and farms. Picture it all gone, empty. The farms have gone wild. No person or animal can be found. The cities are empty and burned. No one dares set foot there. All is emptiness and lifelessness.

The time of fallow and exile brought home the reality of life to the Jewish people. Life, and the fullness of life, is in God alone. Life is in doing His will, in living His commandments. God is life and light.

The words of today’s psalm are poignant. The people of Israel cry and bemoan their loss. They sit in Babylon and long for the joy of the Lord in Jerusalem. They long to sing to the Lord once again. But they could only cry and long.

By this process they were formed. They redeemed the fallow land by their penance, and the Lord God relented of His anger.

—Until the land has retrieved its lost sabbaths,
during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest
while seventy years are fulfilled.—

And after seventy years, Cyrus, the King of Persia said at God’s command:

Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of His people,
let him go up, and may his God be with him!—

Can you imagine the joy? It should be the kind of joy you feel when you go to sleep Saturday night. Tomorrow we go to the House of the Lord.

God has given us nothing but His ultimate gift of love, His Son. He also gives us His infinite patience.

St.Paul tells us:

God, who is rich in mercy,
because of the great love he had for us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions,
brought us to life with Christ

Yes, we are alive in Christ Jesus. Alive and preparing ourselves to meet Him. This tremendous gift is not of our doing. For God loves us so much that He allows us an eternity of preparation. He puts up with our transgressions, allowing us to seek His forgiveness. He gives us the grace we need to seek His mercy and to live up to His expectations. This is salvation. The real, living, font of salvation.

Paul tells us here:

For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;

Oh, what a tremendous gift. A gift what we can never be worthy of, a gift for which we can never be thankful enough.

Therefore, let us look upon Him who has been pierced for our offenses. Jesus, who has been sacrificed so that we might be sanctified. Jesus, who has died so that the doors of heaven might be opened to us. Through these open doors flows the bounty of God’s grace, flowing clean and pure into our lives.

Each day and each week, every hour of the day, we must move forward to better live in the light.

Jesus said:

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light
and does not come toward the light,
so that his works might not be exposed.
But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,
so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

Work then in the light of God, and in cooperation with His grace which strengthens you, bringing you out of darkness. God will put up with us and gives us every opportunity. He has given His Son and His grace for our journey home. Now is the time to accept this gift. In faith say yes to Jesus Christ and choose to live in the light of God.

Amen.

Saints and Martyrs

Athanasius – On the Incarnation of the Word

An except from St. Athanasius – On the Incarnation of the Word for the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

8. The Word, then, visited that earth in which He was yet always present; and saw all these evils. He takes a body of our Nature, and that of a spotless Virgin, in whose womb He makes it His own, wherein to reveal Himself, conquer death, and restore life.

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes to our realm, howbeit he was not far from us before. For no past of Creation is left void of Him: He has filled all things everywhere, remaining present with His own Father. But He comes in condescension to shew loving-kindness upon us, and to visit us.

And seeing the race of rational creatures in the way to perish, and death reigning over them by corruption; seeing, too, that the threat against transgression gave a firm hold to the corruption which was upon us, and that it was monstrous that before the law was fulfilled it should fall through: seeing, once more, the unseemliness of what was come to pass: that the things whereof He Himself was Artificer were passing away: seeing, further, the exceeding wickedness of men, and how by little and little they had increased it to an intolerable pitch against themselves: and seeing, lastly, how all men were under penalty of death: He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery –lest the creature should perish, and His Father’s handiwork in men be spent for nought — He takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours.

For He did not simply will to become embodied, or will merely to appear. For if He willed merely to appear, He was able to effect His divine appearance by some other and higher means as well. But He takes a body of our kind, and not merely so, but from a spotless and stainless virgin, knowing not a man, a body clean and in very truth pure from intercourse of men. For being Himself mighty, and Artificer of everything, He prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple unto Himself, and makes it His very own as an instrument, in it manifested, and in it dwelling.

And thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death He gave ‘it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father — doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness, to the end that, firstly, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone (inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lord’s body, and had no longer holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, secondly, whereas men had turned toward corruption, He might turn them again toward incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from floe fire.

9. The Word, since death alone could stay the plague, took a mortal body which, united with Him, should avail for all, and by partaking of this immortality stay the corruption of the Race. By being above all, He made His Flesh an offering for our souls; by being one with us all, He clothed us with immortality. Simile to illustrate this.

For the Word, perceiving that no otherwise could the corruption of men be undone save by death as a necessary condition, while it was impossible for the Word to suffer death, being immortal, and Son of the Father; to this end He takes to Himself a body capable of death, that it, by partaking of the Word Who is above all, might be worthy to die in the stead of all, and might, because of the Word which was come to dwell in it, remain incorruptible, and that thenceforth corruption might be stayed from all by the Grace of the Resurrection. Whence, by offering unto death the body He Himself had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from any stain, straightway He put away death from all His peers by the offering of an equivalent.

For being over all, the Word of God naturally by offering His own temple and corporeal instrument for the life of all satisfied the debt by His death. And thus He, the incorruptible Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature, naturally clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the resurrection. For the actual corruption in death has no longer holding-ground against men, by reason of the Word, which by His one body has come to dwell among them.

And like as when a great king has entered into some large city and taken up his abode in one of the houses there, such city is at all events held worthy of high honour, nor does any enemy or bandit any longer descend upon it and subject it; but, on the contrary, it is thought entitled to all care, because of the king’s having taken up his residence in a single house there: so, too, has it been with the Monarch of all.

For now that He has come to our realm, and taken up his abode in one body among His peers, henceforth the whole conspiracy of the enemy against mankind is checked, and the corruption of death which before was prevailing against them is done away. For the race of men had gone to ruin, had not the Lord and Saviour of all, the Son of God, come among us to meet the end of death.

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