This Sunday we hear St. Luke’s account of the Transfiguration of Jesus…right before the eyes of three of the disciples, Jesus’ true identity bursts forth and in one spectacularly luminous moment, Peter, James and John are themselves forever changed --“transfigured” -- with a growing awareness of the true identity of Jesus!

I believe that each one of us have our own “moments of transfiguration.” Moments in which we see or feel the very presence of God. They are moments when, “deep inside,” we come to know with a deeper certainty that God is present around us and indeed within us. That God is real. These moments of awareness hold the potential to transfigure our entire lives into something new, something wonderful, something beyond our imagining.

The real challenge for us is to learn “to live out of these transfiguration moments,” keeping these moments alive in our hearts and minds allowing them to continually transfigure us more and more into the image and likeness of God.

Each one of us carries within us experiences of the tenderness, mercy and love of God. So often it is the chaos of our lives that “dim” the luminous moments of encounters with our God. We can forget we ever had them in the midst of the rush and business of our daily lives.

Not all of these “transfiguration” moments are happy or joyful moments. Some of them come in the midst of great sadness, even in the midst of tragedy and death. I have had such “transfiguration moments” with people as they were dying -- luminous in-breakings of Grace that transfigured the dying person’s last moments. And, transfigured me as well!

Surely these “transfiguration moments” are happening right now in the lives of our sisters and brothers of Ukraine and South Sudan as they fight for their lives and their freedom. These transfiguration moments are happening in refugee camps around the world. The potential for these transfiguration moments abound as grace is all around us, and in us!

In the midst of all the political chaos which is purposefully being thrust upon us in an attempt to throw us off balance, fill us with fear and send us into anxiety driven inaction and silence. Let us raise our voices all the louder. Let us seek to reach out to each other, band together, continue to resist the dismantling of our Federal Government and all the aid programs that feed, provide healthcare and social services that save the lives of millions of children and adults here at home and abroad. Let us find concrete ways to reach out to and support government workers and contractors who have lost their jobs and all those whose jobs are at risk due to the forced government firings.

In the midst of a world filled with suffering, anguish and lost-ness, these transfiguration moments continue to exist all around us -- in encounters with the poor and the marginalized, with the immigrant and refugee, with all those workers who have been fired or whose jobs are suddenly at risk and their partners and their children, there is God, waiting, wanting us to reach out and take “the other’s” hand and for us both to be transfigured in the encounter.

Lent is a wonderful opportunity to look for transfiguration moments as well as to step back and recall those past moments of grace when the fullness of God burst into our lives…when we realized that we were not alone…that there was something more to life, more than what we can see or touch…more than we can imagine -- “God moments” -- that hold the possibility to bring about deep and lasting inner transformation!

When was my last “God moment”? How was I transfigured by that moment? What does that “God moment” call me to do? Who does it call me to be…in response to today’s chaos and suffering? Our every phone call, our every letter, our every protest and act of resistance, our every prayer, our every act of kindness matters! You, and I are filled with the Holy Spirit, let it lead us in our struggle for equality, for justice and for peace in our nation and in the world!
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Lenten blessings,
Fr. Tim

In this Sunday’s Gospel we encounter Jesus being tempted by the devil with temptations to power, fame and pride. Some Scripture scholars have argued that it was through his experience of forty days of fasting and prayer in the desert that Jesus came to a deeper understanding of his true identity and his mission.

The desert or the “wilderness” is, in the history of the people of Israel, both a place of danger and a place of encounter with God. As we begin Lent it is appropriate for us to reflect a bit on our own lives, our own desert experiences and our own temptations -- our own encounters with God.

Most all of us, as humans, are tempted by pride, arrogance, selfishness, anger and greed…the real question is whether or not we give in to those temptations.

For those who give in, they are often led to disgraceful acts of greed and ego, with catastrophic results. All we need to do is to read the headlines in the newspapers or listen to the nightly news -- Putin’s ongoing invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine is a prime example. We know he is wrong and we are able to judge the seriousness of his acts and the human suffering, death and devastation his blind ambitions are causing. And yet many of our current leaders in Washington are supporting his illegal war against a sovereign nation and even blaming Ukraine. We all know this is a LIE!

It is imperative for the survival of our democracy that we call out the lies and misinformation that is spewed by our political leaders, everywhere and everytime we encounter them!

For most of us, our sins are somewhat more contained: a white lie here and there…perhaps a small theft once in a while…a few carelessly chosen harsh words that wound.

Most of us are basically good people, trying to live as God has calls us to live. In the recesses of our hearts we know we’ve been tempted. We’ve seen people surrender to their baser desires -- enticed by money, recognition, or power -- take advantage of situations or people, neglect their responsibilities towards others, or treat others with disregard and disrespect. We read about it and see it in the news every day. We must stay vigilant and speak out and make our voices heard. Continue calling and writing to the White House and all elected officials. Put them on notice that we will not stand idly by and let them dismantle our Federal Government and our democracy!

During Lent as we are called to reflect on our own personal sins let us not forget the structural sins of our society…systemic racism, rampant greed, arrogance, pride and the vengeance that sometimes is feebly masked as justice.

As Jesus came forth from the wilderness of the desert proclaiming the coming of the Reign of God bursting forth in the world through the preaching of the Gospel, he forever linked “the Gospel imperatives” to the Reign of God.

To the extent that we live out the imperatives of Jesus: to love one another as he has loved us, to love our enemies, to actively seek to alleviate the suffering of the poor and the marginalized… to that same extent we participate in the building up of the Reign of God.

Lent is meant to be a time of reflection and of action! We are called to a conversion of heart…to turn away from selfishness and sin and all that gets in the way of our living as true disciples of Jesus Christ.

​What can I do, or stop doing, in order to become a more faithful disciple of Jesus Christ? What acts of alms-giving, prayer and fasting can I commit to this Lent that will help build up the Reign of God in the midst of a suffering world? Let us keep calling, keep writing, keep resisting, keep living our discipleship of Jesus Christ!
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Blessings,
Fr. Tim

In today’s Gospel Jesus seems to be questioning or challenging his disciples to be more aware of their own behavior before they go about judging the behavior of others. The image of having a log in one’s eye and attempting to remove a splinter from the eye of another person is quite ridiculous but clearly makes Jesus’ case to his followers.

It appears that Jesus is condemning his disciples of being too quick to judge others while remaining blind to their own shortcomings and missteps. They have missed Jesus’ example of being quick to forgive rather than to judge.

Even though they have been the recipients of the lavishness of Jesus’ mercy they themselves evidently have failed to, in turn, act as Jesus has acted. In this they have failed as students, for the teacher has taught the lesson but they missed the meaning.

He then goes on to instruct them that what is inside will be manifested on the outside… “a good person out of the store of goodness in their heart produces good…just as a rotten tree produces rotten fruit and a good tree produces good fruit.”

Jesus instructs them that the goodness or the rot of the heart will show forth in a person’s speech. It seems that in our age we do not value truth in speech -- we find it hard to trust the words of political leaders, church leaders, our newscasters. They often say one thing but do another. Most of the time we are able to spot dishonesty and the lack of integrity in someone’s words and none of us likes to be deceived.

Just as Jesus called his disciples to reflect on how quick they are to judge others so we too have the opportunity to remove the log from our eye in order that we might be able to remove the splinter from our neighbor’s eye.

And, as we prepare for the season of Lent, let us begin to reflect on the fruit that our lives bear?

​Blessings,
Fr. Tim

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you.” Jesus is not calling the disciples to become “door mats” but rather, he is attempting to make a key paradigm shift from violence to nonviolence.

He is challenging his disciples to be willing to go beyond what the law allowed -- such as “an eye for and eye” -- and embrace something much more difficult; to embrace “the other”!

Jesus is calling them -- calling us -- to embrace the one who is not on our side, the one who actively hates us and injures us. This paradigm shift he is calling them to is a shift that will turn their world upside down and inside out!

Love your enemies? Imagine being hearers of that for the very first time…it must have sounded like Jesus had “lost it”. How could he expect that his disciples would love their enemies and pray for those who mistreated them? And yet this is what he was asking of them…and asking of us as his disciples!

Jesus knows that love has the power to change an individual; that love is transformative. Jesus knew that in loving our enemies we would be transformed…and that…being loved holds the power to transform the one who is loved.

And it seems to just keep getting tougher…Jesus calls us to be merciful as God is merciful! Now he wants his disciples “to be like God”! How are we supposed to be able to live up to that challenge? It can overwhelm us and lead us to feel rather defeated.

How is all of this humanly possible? It seems too much! God’s goodness and mercy is so great, how can any human act be as good and merciful as an act of God? Some theologians say that God’s goodness and mercy comes down to “generosity” -- a generosity so grand that it created all known reality.

Our theology sees the incarnation as a self-giving act of God, to and for the sake of the world. And Jesus’ death as his resurrection are both acts of “Divine generosity” as is our salvation. So then this “generosity”, this “out pouring” of God’s self into the world empowers us, fills us, emboldens us and ultimately changes us to become our best self -- more generous, less violent, less bent on getting more and more for ourselves…it changes us into being kinder and more
loving to “the other”.

So, we work for racial justice and for ways in which our society makes room for the marginalized and for the immigrant and the refugee, rather than looking for ways to keep them out. This spirit of generosity calls us to let go of racist, misogynist, and other bigoted attitudes towards others and to work for true justice and peace in our homes, our communities, our nation and in our world.

Perhaps this generosity of spirit grows from first finding our own gratitude for being loved so deeply and passionately by
God, just as we are. And from this gratitude then grows our ability to be generous and merciful towards “the other,” who in truth is my sister, my brother.

So, at the beginning I spoke about Jesus ushering in a paradigm shift; moving us from a way of violence to a way of non-violence. But not laying down and becoming door mats because he is still calling us to stand with and for the poor and marginalized. And to respond to injustice by demanding and working for justice here and now, calling out hatred and cruelty for what it is.

So we continue to resist, we will not hate and act like bigots, racists and misogynist, nor be among those who refuse to welcome the stranger, as Christ has demanded we do! We will continue to boldly live our discipleship…aware, as Jesus reminded us of last week, there are those who will come after us precisely for living out our discipleship. But it will not deter us. We will stand together as disciples, emboldened and guided by the Holy Spirit that dwells within each one of
us, and we will overcome, and we will continue to build the “peaceable kingdom”; to build God’s dream for our world – not a project that’s main goal is to exclude and demean people’s human dignity, seeking to further marginalize those on the periphery of society, whose ultimate aim is to increase the power and wealth of the few at the cost of the many.

Let us respond to this time of national crisis by boldly living our discipleship and resisting that which we know is ethically
and morally wrong, keeping front and center the quest for building a more peaceful and just society.
 
So, let us ask ourselves this week: In the midst of all the chaos and turmoil swirling around us, for what am I grateful for in my life? From the Spirit of Generosity that dwells within me, to whom will I be generous and merciful towards this week?

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

This weekend’s Gospel presents to us Luke’s presentation of the beatitudes. In Luke, the sermon takes place not on a mountain side as in Matthew’s Gospel, but rather on level ground. So we have the Sermon on the Plane instead of the Sermon on the Mount.

But the differences go far deeper than simply the place in which Jesus gives his sermon on the beatitudes. In Luke, besides the blessings, there are “the woes to you who…” are rich, are full, laugh, whom all speak well of, “for their ancestors treated the false prophets this way.” It is a warning that good things are not coming their way even though things are going well for them right now.

So, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus names those who are blessed and those whom woe will come upon if they don’t change their lives. We normally focus on the blessings and not on the woes but the “woes” are there for a reason -- to warn us! To get us to reflect on our lives and how we are living with the poor and the hungry, how we are comforting the weeping and how we treat those ostracized on account of their discipleship of Jesus.

In Matthew’s account of the sermon of the beatitudes he says “blessed are the poor in spirit” while Luke writes of Jesus’ sermon as, “blessed are the poor”, a very different message. In Jesus’ socio-religious reality, his contemporaries believed the poor were poor because they had done something that angered God. And that the wealthy were rich because they had gained the favor of God, and were blessed by God.

In this Gospel, Jesus is preaching the exact opposite of this understanding of how God relates to human beings. Jesus is disconnecting poverty from sinfulness and curse. Luke’s Gospel is often referred to as the Gospel of the poor, or the Gospel of women, or the Gospel of the marginalized. It is so referred to because these are the categories of persons who are raised up in Luke’s Gospel, to a greater extent than in the other two synoptic gospels.

In both Matthew and in Luke, Jesus calls blessed all those who are hated, excluded, insulted or denounced on account of him. It is an important proclamation that Jesus utters, as in fact many of his disciples and the apostles will eventually be denounced, some imprisoned and others even martyred for their faith in Jesus.

Jesus promises them that in spite of what they suffer on account of their allegiance to him, they will not be abandoned by Jesus and that they are “the blessed ones”.

I think ultimately that the beatitudes and the woes we encounter in Luke’s Gospel challenge us and call us to holiness through reaching out to the poor and to all who are excluded and marginalized, to all who suffer in this world. And we are promised that to the extent that we reach out to the suffering, to the extent that we “do justice,” we will become more fully “the blessed of God” and find fulfillment and happiness in our lives through helping to build up the Reign of God!

As we take time this week to reflect on ramifications of this central Gospel message of Jesus Christ in light of all that is happening in our nation at this very moment, as we reflect on all of the lives that are being torn apart and forever changed by the new administration’s callous and unjust actions, let us focus on one or two of the beatitudes and ask ourselves: in what concrete ways might I live them out today? Who is grieving that I might comfort them, hungry that I might feed them, poor that I might reach out to them and offer a hand?

Am I willing to live out my discipleship by writing to and calling my local and national governmental officials to speak up on behalf of the millions of lives that are being put at risk by the cruel and thoughtless actions of those relatively few individuals who clearly care nothing for the future of our country nor the needs of its people? Will I call for Congress to stand up and protect the poor and the marginalized, and to defend our civil rights, and to safeguard our institutions and the federal financial safety nets that keep our vulnerable sisters and brothers from utter ruin? Let us live the beatitudes!

Our discipleship of Jesus Christ calls us to act now!

Blessings,
Fr. Tim 

We find ourselves living, perhaps better said “struggling” to make it through one day at a time in a country filled with fear and anxiety over what our futures hold…as individuals, as families, as communities and as a nation! We ask ourselves: what is happening to the order of our lives; what can we count on; how are we going to carry on with our lives? Scripture scholars believe that this is very similar to the geo-political reality of the people living in the Kingdom of Judah after the death of King Uzziah. His reign had been marked with constancy, economic growth, safety and an overall sense of wellbeing. But after his death people were fearful of the future and what would happen to them and what kind of ruler his son would indeed turn out to be.

It is into this socio-economic and political turmoil that the great prophet Isaiah was called by God and rose up to provide guidance and assure the people that God was with them and that God sent him to speak his word to them.

Times of transition from one governmental administration to another whether kingly or democratic in nature, often cause
fear, anxiety and uncertainty -- especially when those in leadership show no care or concern for lives and the welfare of those they are called to govern. When leadership acts in ways that show a lack of respect for the dignity of other human beings and disrespects the rules and laws of the land, they show themselves to be unworthy to be leaders.

It is precisely in these times when we are most in need of prophets’ words, and need to look to God for guidance on how to respond and how to move forward.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, is written to a divided and troubled Church. There are serious disputes over leadership and allegiance to different leaders. There are disputes over the Gospel itself and Paul is writing to them to call them back to return to the unity that they had once shared and to correct the errors that had crept into their preaching. He sought to do this by reminding them of the central message of the Gospel and of the way of life that discipleship in Jesus Christ called them to live. And it would be through living their discipleship that they would avoid falling into the wickedness and depravity of the city in which they lived.

And in the Gospel we have the story of the great call of the first disciples. Jesus preaching to a crowd of people along the shore of Lake Gennesaret and in an effort to escape the crush of the people, he gets into Simon’s boat and goes out into deeper water. Here he performs the miracle of the great fish catch, so large that it threatens to swamp the boat. But it seems that what is most poignant in this Gospel story is the response of Simon, James and John…“they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”

The focus of the passage seems to be found the final words, “they left everything and followed him.” It is the utter abandon
with which they take to Jesus and leave behind their family and livelihoods. James and John left their father there on the shore with the hired help; did they know what lay ahead for them, were they going just for a moment? Well, it would appear not as Jesus tells them that from now on they are going to be fishing for women and men. So he is proposing something totally new for them, something they likely had never thought of doing before.

Remember that in the Gospels, Jesus was preaching the inbreaking of the Reign of God, coming into their very presence in a new and exciting way. He was calling everyone to a new way of life --by loving God with their whole being and their neighbor as themselves. And we are called to the same, in the here and now.

We are called to speak out against those governmental actions and directives that harm and seek to diminish the dignity and safety of any of our sisters and brothers.

Amongst the list of human rights listed by the Church are the rights to:

food, clean water, adequate housing, a right to a good education, a right to a just wage and safe working conditions. A right
to health care, a right for immigrants and refugees to be treated with dignity and respect by the host country. Many of these rights are being violated at this very moment and a whole host of others.

And we know that hundreds of thousands of faithful government worker’s jobs are threatened by callous and immoral persons who seek to destroy all of the federal programs that support and uphold millions of our sisters and brothers, not to mention the millions of children and adults who will suffer famine at the loss of USAID feeding programs.

And so what does our discipleship call us to do when faced with such overwhelming discord and injustice? I think we are called to join peaceful protests, letter writing campaigns, phone calls to all elected officials, Democratic and Republican. For those who are not directly affected, think about reaching out to friends and neighbors who are being adversely affected by what is happening in the US Government today; we all know Federal Employees and contractors who are or will be affected. Think about how you might be able to help our immigrant sisters and brothers, especially members of our parish. We are currently working with multiple immigration legal services trying to connect them with those in need of their services. When someone is arrested or deported, or loses a job, they and their family may well be in dire straits and need help, even if it is a bag of groceries or some food cards -- reaching out to them is a sign that you see them and you care about them.

The truth is that lives are being destroyed and forever changed. We cannot stop all of it at this very moment, but we
can try to make a difference in those whose lives we can touch.

Our discipleship of Jesus Christ calls us to stand up and to seek to be heard and to work towards a different future from what we are seeing being laid out now -- a different future where all women, men and children are treated with dignity, respect and equality.

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

In today’s Gospel we have a scene of the holy family fulfilling an ancient Jewish religious ritual, consecrating their newborn
son to God. We call this the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. It is one of the Churches oldest feast days.

Historically it first was celebrated forty days after Epiphany on February 15th but was later moved to forty days after Christmas, to February 2nd. It is a moment in the life of the holy family in which we see their faithfulness to their Jewish faith, which in these days of rising anti-Semitism is important for us to take note of -- that Jesus, Mary and Joseph were born, lived and died as faithful Jews!

Until Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church along with other Christian Churches were openly anti-Semitic which led to centuries of persecution and ultimately to the holocaust. It does us well to reflect on this reality and to be willing to speak out against anti-Semitic statements and actions.

We find ourselves living in a time where there is a stark rise in, not only anti-Semitism, but in racism and bigotry of all stripes. There has been an astonishing rise in anti-immigrant and migrant sentiment not only here in the US but around the world. People of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ community, as well as women, are all feeling less and less safe in their own communities because of the rise in violent acts against them.

Most of these acts of violence are perpetrated almost exclusively by men who are often in some way associated with the
Christian Nationalist Movement or by other racist, bigoted motivations.

This weekend we also mark the beginning of Black History Month and celebrate The National Day of Prayer for the African American Family. The setting aside of this month and this weekend, in the midst of the most disturbing increase and attempted normalization of racism, bigotry, xenophobia and misogyny, calls for us to reflect on the core message of Jesus’ message of radical love of God and neighbor, and Jesus’ way is very clear as to who is our neighbor!

We need to reflect on the reality that Jesus taught his disciples to cross borders, to reach out to others who were different
from themselves. To be willing to let go of the stereotypes of the past, like that of the Samaritans, and to see ALL other people as sisters and brothers, as beloved children of God, worthy of our love, worthy of being treated with dignity and respect. It is a clarion call for ALL who call themselves Christians. There is no way around it.

Jesus made himself extremely clear: if we do not care for the least among us, we will suffer the loss of heaven. He gave no
qualifiers about the nationality, political status, gender, race or place of birth of the person in need. They are our sister and
brother, and we are called to love them and care for them, to bind up their wounds, to give of our time and resources, like
the Good Samaritan. And in doing so we live out our discipleship of Jesus Christ.

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

Witnesses to the Truth
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Folks, young and old and everyone in between, African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, every single one of us are being impacted by the new administration in Washington DC. We absolutely cannot pretend that it’s not wreaking havoc on our nation and particularly today our sisters and brothers, who are immigrants and refugees, the very people whom Jesus Christ says we are to welcome and to give shelter!

I would like to point out, that in Matthew 25, Jesus makes welcoming the stranger, sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry, NOT a suggestion, but rather makes it the condition for admittance to eternal life. And those who do not offer shelter and welcome to the stranger and the homeless, and do not feed the hungry and clothe the naked, according to the words of Jesus Christ, they have not done so for him, and will be cast out into eternal damnation.

And so while I know, “I am preaching to the choir,” I want to make it perfectly clear that if we are to practice our faith, we can only do so by welcoming the stranger, sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned!

Please let me be very clear on one thing, this is not “my interpretation” of sacred scripture it is a very plain and simple recitation of the very words attributed to Jesus Christ according the gospel of Matthew!

However, a judge in Texas, has closed down a Roman Catholic shelter for the homeless, claiming they are harboring and aiding and abetting illegal aliens! He, who claims to be a Christian, says they are in no way practicing their faith in the running of the shelter. They are claiming that they are in fact, practicing their faith through the very act of sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry. Through these acts, they claim they are carrying out the mandate of Jesus Christ. I would reiterate, that in Matthew 25 Jesus did not “suggest” welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, giving water to the thirsty and visiting the sick and the imprisoned. Jesus mandated doing these actions. He made these actions the conditions upon which we will be judged in the final judgment, when we come face-to-face with our God!

And yet these people are being denied the practice of their faith by this judge in Texas because the majority of the people
they serve are undocumented immigrants, strangers in a strange land… “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with
you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord
your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)

Let us stand up and be witnesses to the truth in the face of lies and disinformation!

The official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is that all human beings, regardless of their socioeconomic and political
status have basic human rights and those rights must not and can not be violated. When those basic human rights are violated, we -- you and I -- are called to stand up and speak out! It does not matter who the violator is, or violators are,
we are called by our discipleship of Jesus Christ to stand up and speak the truth on behalf of all of those whose, God given,
human dignity and human rights are being violated.

When immigrants and refugees are broadly painted to be criminals and unsavory people, we know it is a lie, and those
who say it are liars! So let us speak the truth in the face of lies and disinformation and through our actions, be witnesses to
the truth, and let us all, everyone of us, be judged by our words and our actions, be they unwelcoming, hateful, and self-
seeking or be they welcoming, compassionate, and grace filled!

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

This weekend we hear about Jesus’ first public miracle, an important moment that speaks to his identity as the Messiah, the Son of God.

As the scene of the Wedding Feast at Cana unfolds, Mary seemingly “pushes” Jesus out into his public ministry, ignoring his reticence to perform a miracle in the midst of the crowd of guests gathered for the wedding feast.

It seems to me that it was a moment when Mary called on Jesus to let his true identity shine forth for people to see! Jesus may well have felt that it was not the time, but he eventually responds to her request.

In the Gospel of John, “signs” like the turning of the water into wine are very important as they point to the identity of Jesus as both human and divine.

John clearly states in the second to last chapter of the Gospel that he has written about all these signs that “you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and through believing you may have life in his name.” Coming to know who Jesus is and believing in him brings us eternal life.
St. Paul is also interested in identity – he writes passionately about our identity as members of the living Body of Christ. Paul challenges each one of us to reflect on, what is our gift?…what is our charism?
The gifts that each of us are given are given to us specifically by God! The gifts that are given to us are not for ourselves, but for the sake of the whole – to help build up the Body of Christ!

On this Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, I cannot but help to think his gifts: of charismatic leadership, bold vision, a deep faith and ultimately sacrificing his life for the cause of racial equality…a man who shared all he had, including his actual life, for the sake of the very soul of our nation.

As the struggle for racial justice, equality, and recognition of the human dignity of all persons continues, we must ask ourselves what are my gifts that God has given me for the sake of this struggle, and for the building up of the Body of Christ, and how will I put those gifts into action in the coming weeks and months?

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

The word epiphany comes from the Greek, meaning to “appear” or to be “revealed”. In some cultures the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord is referred to as “Little Christmas” or “the Feast of the Three Kings” and is the day of exchanging gifts with friends and loved ones.

Regardless of what we call it, it is a day on which we tell the story of the arrival of the magi, or the three kings, who have come from afar to see the newborn king and to offer gifts.

Epiphany is a time of celebrating the acknowledgement of “a new beginning”. A time to celebrate the Reign of God bursting forth in the midst of creation!

For sure we dwell for a while on the visit of the magi and the wonder of their journey…led by only a star that shown brightly in the deepest of the night sky. It is a time of wonder and awe…a time to allow ourselves to enter into the story and reflect on our own journey… our spiritual journey. For the magi, the signs were in the heavens…a star that led them to Bethlehem, to a shabby little stable where our God took on human flesh and came among us as one of us.

Perhaps the magi’s real wisdom was that they knew that they didn’t know everything. They valued learning, they looked for signs, and they paid attention to their dreams…they expected God to talk to them! They believed that they encountered God in their daily lives. Ultimately the story of the magi is a story of encounter, an encounter of the greatest kind…an encounter with God!

And so the Feast of the Epiphany is a time to ask ourselves: am I open to “following a star,” am I open to paying attention to the signs of God’s presence in my daily life? Do I make time to listen for God’s words spoken to me in my life? Where do I most often encounter God in the ordinary routine of my daily life?

The magi came bearing gifts…what gift of self, or of my life, might I offer to God, and to my sisters and brothers?

I pray you all a most happy, healthy and blessed New Year!

Christmas blessings,
Fr. Tim