July 16, 2023 – Reflection
How good God is! I am so grateful to be serving as one of the new parochial vicars (that is the fancy official Church way of saying “associate pastor”) of the Four Parishes One Faith family, which has been so welcoming. I look forward to meeting the many of you with whom I have not yet had the privilege of greeting and getting to know.
I wanted to share with you words of Pope St. John Paul II which really challenge me to reclaim
the importance of Sunday as the Lord’s Day: “The custom of the ‘weekend’ has become more widespread, a weekly period of respite, spent perhaps far from home… All of this responds not only to the need for rest, but also to the need for celebration which is inherent in our humanity. Unfortunately, when Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of a ‘weekend’, it can happen that people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see ‘the heavens’. Hence, though ready to celebrate, they are really incapable of doing so. The disciples of Christ, however, are asked to avoid any confusion between the celebration of Sunday, which should truly be a way of keeping the Lord’s Day holy, and the ‘weekend’, understood as a time of simple rest and relaxation.” (Dies Domini 4). Sunday is not a time to get stuff done leftover from the week. It is a time to bask in the love of the Father – let’s have the courage to live as the children of God that we are!