Just a few quick notes—
Last Monday morning we had the wonderful feast of the Baptism of the Lord. One man came out after Mass and said to me, “I get it! It wasn’t just Him who got baptized, it was us!” He truly did get it. And we continue to celebrate Baptisms here. I had one last week, and one next week; and we have more lined up. We have a new wall rack for more than a dozen Baptismal Registrations.
With the Lord’s Baptism observed, we are in a transitional time of Ordinary Time in the church. We begin the Gospel of Matthew with Jesus’ appearance and the response of early disciples. It’s a fascinating time to use this to assess our own response to being His disciple. We celebrate these ear- ly Gospels until Lent begins February 22.
This is powerful when combined with the previous week, the Epiphany. I proposed then: Be good at what you do, as they were, as astronomers and seers. Whatever it is you do to make your way in the world, be good at it. Business, services, administration, education—we don’t need mediocre perfor- mance in any of these areas, and we won’t feel fulfilled at doing it. Beyond that, though, our human competencies are what leads us to a joyful spiritual life. The Wise Men symbolize this, as they used their extensive scientific knowledge to discover the star and its special meaning. Then they travelled to the crib, and there they were illumined. Then they went out to evangelize throughout their known world. So can we. If we do our work humanly, we will feel loved. .When we’re willing to reach out, to listen, to be grateful, we will experience love as God has always intended us to, and share it with others.
Speaking of doing generous service, we’ve resumed COFFEE AND DONUTS on the first Sunday of the month, after 7:30 and 9:30 A.M. Masses. It’s great to gather again for a few minutes after Mass in the joy of community.
As we met in Parish Council Tuesday night, we took a serious look at EVANGELIZATION This will include increasing our use of the FORMED videos, and a new training module as we’ve had before on spreading our faith outside our parish community to the whole region.