The Hope of Easter

On Easter day, this year at the small St. Mary’s Parish, the church was packed to capacity with some standing in the back. There were so many families and lots of children and babies. The atmosphere was full of activity and energy. If only these people would want to come to mass every week. What a blessing that would be for themselves and for the church, the body of Christ.

I used to be one of those twice a year Catholics. Going to mass on Christmas and Easter was a pleasant experience that I looked forward to and enjoyed. The question is, why don’t Catholics attend mass weekly? There are a lot of reasons for this, but the bottom line is people are too full of and preoccupied with the world and living lives that are self-centered and not God centered. I lived that life and I was never truly happy or knew what real joy was. I spend the first 28 years of my life as a clueless and sinful Catholic, lacking in any depth of understanding of scripture or the catechism of the Catholic Church. I did have a guarded reverence and awe of God, from my youth, when I attended weekly mass. However, after going away to college, I quit going to church. I remember thinking that going to church was for families, and I was a single person, who like most other single people, preferred living a life of sin rather than the virtuous life the church calls us to.

At twenty-eight years of age, and after breaking away from a toxic relationship, I found myself pregnant. I also found that I was not alone, because God was right there for me, picking up the pieces and helping me put my life back together. I have spent the rest of my life getting to know and love Jesus. True love and joy is only found in a relationship with Jesus.

I would like to share an excerpt from “The Hope of Easter” written by Pope Francis, found in my Magnificant.

"We, like Peter and the women, cannot discover life by being sad, bereft of hope. Let us not stay imprisoned within ourselves, but let us break open our sealed tombs to the Lord- each of us knows what they are- so that he may enter and grant us life. Let us give him the stones of our rancor and the boulders of our past, those heavy burdens of our weaknesses and falls. Christ wants to come and take us by the hand to bring us out of our anguish. This is the first stone to be moved aside this night: the lack of hope which imprisons us within ourselves. May the Lord free us from this trap, from being Christians without hope, who live as if the Lord were not risen, as if our problems were the center of our lives….Let us not allow darkness and fear to distract us and control us; we must cry out to them: The Lord is not here, but has risen! (Luke 24;6). He is our greatest joy: he is always at our side and will never let us down…. Today (Easter) is the celebration of our hope; the celebration of this truth; nothing and no one will ever be able to separate us from his love. (cf. Romans 8:39)"

Alleluia

Week 5 of Lent

Each liturgical season of the past few years, I begin with the desire to make it the best ever. I began Lent with that same intention. I failed my giving up coffee after a few days. Silly of me to give up a medicinal item. I must have forgotten how a cup coffee can sometimes ward off a migraine or at least take the edge off a migraine headache. Instead, I have been trying to give up small treats like eating out when I have work meetings or appointments in the city and avoiding unnecessary food items when I am grocery shopping. This is all small change in the big picture of life and poverty that so many people live in and hardly worth mentioning.

What I have enjoyed most this Lent is the mass readings. I am a big fan of Word on Fire and listen to Bishop Barron’s weekly homilies from the website https://www.wordonfire.org/  I discovered that you can listen to homilies that go back to 2001, and narrow your search by the “season” or one of five other categories of searches.  I have been listening to current and past homilies on each week’s readings across all the cycles. To do this you go to the main website. Click on resources on the top menu > Homilies> Season > Lent. It has been an amazing experience to drench in the Word this way. It’s a type of Lectio Divina, with Father Barron painting the picture of each biblical story. Father Barron has a gift for preaching that brings scripture to life and he has a way of putting it in the context of life today. Everything that happened in bible has relevance to life today.

In the past, I have struggled with Lent and Christ’s Passion because it is so brutal and unfair that Jesus had to die for us. I understand St. Peter’s wish for Jesus not to die.

Matthew 16: 21-23

21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Jesus had been trying to prepare the apostles for what was going to happen, but poor Peter could not understand why it had to be this way. This is where Jesus’s divinity is not altered by his humanity. Jesus always did the Father's will in everything. We, on the other hand, are constantly swayed off the narrow path by our human concerns. In this season of Lent we are asked to get back to the basics and identify, what are the stumbling blocks in our lives. What takes our focus off of God’s will for us?
Next week is Holy Week and we will again walk with Jesus through the scriptures and revisit his Passion and Death and Resurrection. This is the week that changed history. Don’t miss it.   

Paula

Happy Spring

Thank you Lord for this fabulous first day of spring in NH. It is sunny, no wind, 49 degrees, the lilacs are budding and the birds are chirping. I love being able to take a midday break and walk while all is quite in the neighborhood. We still have quite a bit of snow on the ground, but it does feel like spring. I was able to just be in the moment during my walk and let go of some difficult things that were on my mind all morning. 
I am back at my desk again, feeling relaxed and thankful for that quiet time with God and his creation that surrounds me.

Choose Life, Sirach 14:14-17

We are now in the second day of the season of Lent and I am thinking, what can I do/sacrifice for God this season. I am committed to giving up coffee and I am already counting the days till my next cup. Yes, that is a sacrifice, but so typical.  I’ve been getting email updates from Beth Gaby who is organizing the 40 Days for Life Concord, and thinking about committing some time to join their prayer vigils.

Next, I was reading morning prayers from the Magnificant, and found this scripture from Sirach reach out to me (below).

Somehow people think that abortion, euthanasia, and any other way that a person takes the life of another person is ok. This mindset shows how far away from God’s Word people have drifted or been influenced by a culture that accepts atrocities as everyday events. People are so desensitized to the evil in the world. The Ten Commandments are not suggestions from God, they are our marching orders. Anyone who thinks they can pick and choose which commandments they feel like embracing, is seriously deceived. We do live in a society where the media feeds those lies to the masses. If the masses don’t know the Word of God and embrace God’s truths, they are blinded from what is good and right and holy. God gives us free will to choose life or death. Which will you choose?

Word of God

Sirach 14:14-17

God in the beginning created human beings

and made them subject to their own free choice.

If you choose, you can keep the commandments;

loyalty is doing the will of God.

Set before you are fire and water;

to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand.

Before everyone are life and death,

whichever they choose will be given them.

Choose Life!

God Bless

Paula

"A person is a person, no matter how small"

A quote from Theodor Seuss Geisel's  (Dr. Suess) book, Horton Hears a Who! (1954)

• 
  "Don't give up! I believe in you all.
  A person's a person, no matter how small!
  And you very small persons will not have to die
  If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!"
  
  I heard this quote this morning, watching mass on EWTN and wanted to share this with anyone who has not heard it. The National Catholic Register wrote an article on this and has a picture of an ultrasound to illustrate the connection to every person's right to life.

"And yet sixty years later, the story perfectly captures the ethos of the modern-day pro-life movement with stunning, childlike simplicity. “I’ve got to protect them,” Horton realizes. “I’m bigger than they.” He pleas, “Please don’t harm all my little folks, who have as much right to live as us bigger folks do!”

(National Catholic Register, July 31, 2015)

Those of us in the "bigger folk" position who are more able and have a voice, need to protect the little ones who do not yet have a voice. 

Jesus' words about his little ones.
Matthew 18:10
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.

Matthew 18:14
In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.

Horton declares a truth about people; regardless of their size, age, or capacity. All people--especially children--deserve respect.

Please, look after and protect the little ones in your lives: the unborn, the disabled, the elderly, the marginalized, and the persecuted. 
God Bless,
Paula

Snow

Yesterday we were blessed with that beautiful frozen precipitation from above. While not everyone considers a snowy day a blessing, a lot of us do. The snow covered the gray and bare landscape we have been experiencing in yet another snowless winter in NH. I love the quietness of a snow storm, minus the snowplows that shake the house as they go by. I like shoveling the driveway. It’s good exercise and fills my dry sinuses with the moist and clear air that comes with the snow. I canceled a couple of appointments and decided to stay home and enjoy the “snow day”. It was a treat that I hope we have more of this winter season.

What does the bible say about snow?

Job 37:5-7New International Version (NIV)

5 God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways;
    he does great things beyond our understanding.
6 He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’
    and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’
7 So that everyone he has made may know his work,
    he stops all people from their labor.

Notice how snow is a gift from God and one of its purposes is to stop people from their labor.

Isaiah 55:9-11New International Version (NIV)

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

We need the snow to irrigate our land for the summer growing season and fall harvest. Be thankful for the snow. Just as God’s word feeds our souls, so we can do His will. 

Paula

Advent

Advent

Here we are in the third week of Advent. Here in NH we have snow on the ground and it’s freezing cold. 8 degrees right now and -7 this morning. We love the snow because it’s a Christmas tradition the “White Christmas”.

The other day I was watching an EWTN show “Conversations with Cardinal Dolan” and Elizabeth Ficocelli was a guest author and speaker who talked about the season of Advent. Elizabeth talked about her Six Tips to keep the Advent Season Holy. She uses the word Advent as an acronym for her tips.

A= Adoration, spend time with God in the presence of the Eucharist.

D= Divine Word, spend time with the holy scripture.

V= Virgin Mary, remember who is the model of virtue and Christian discipline and our intercessor with Jesus. 

E= Examination of the conscious, be sure to get to confession before Christmas

N= Neighborly, what can you do for others this Advent season? Give to the poor, charity etc. We are the hands, feet and heart of Jesus.

T=Traditions, celebrate through participating in Advent traditions, Jesse tree, advent wreath, special foods, music, lights on your house or window sills, etc.

Merry Christmas

Paula