What a treasure God gives us in the gift of life.  By the power of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, we are recreated in God’s love and one day will share eternal life with him in paradise. Doesn’t knowing that make you appreciate this life all the more?

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In a little farming village in China, about 200 miles south of Shanghai, lives an 88 year old woman named Lou Zow Ying. Everyone just calls her Grandma Lou. Since 1972, Grandma Lou has helped her family by collecting and recycling items found in trash cans and dumpsters. Now that, in itself, really isn’t anything special. But Grandma Lou is known throughout the region: As the woman who has rescued more than 30 babies abandoned in the trash. Continue reading “It’s All About Life” →

For young adults in the parish, out next lunch will be this Sunday, January 6 – please meet us outside the back of the Church after 11:30 Mass. Our group has a full spectrum of singles, married, and young families with events to accommodate all. To RSVP or if you have any questions, please email youngadults@mdpparish.com

“My good is to be close to God (Ps. 72.28).” Look around you my friends; this is  your family, gathered in our home, by the hearth  of God, waiting for the Lord.

I greet all my old friends as well as my new ones; friends who I have not seen for while. I welcome too our guests, those who are far away from home and those returned home from school, welcome, welcome home!

For the Christian Disciple, it is good to be close to God! Here, among God’s People, we find the happiness for which we long. This common experience, which is like no other, offers us a gift. It lies there, in the dirt, under animals; poor, simple and humbled.

Look! There is a gift for you! It is that Child Who has come to earth for a purpose. The Child wants to bring you a happiness no material wealth or busyness can offer. He offers you a chance to embrace your poverty by embracing humbly our humble God, Jesus. Not a God Who is far away, a God we cannot see, but God made a child, a little child: happiness has come to meet us, has come so close, it is within the reach of our eyes, the reach of our heart, the reach of our hands, hands that can embrace Him and hold Him close.

Augustine would say: “I knew that happiness was God, but I did not enjoy You,” because I filled my life with other things than You. In this technological age in which we have become drunk with information, knowledge has turned joyless. Our obsession with information has saddened our spirit and hardened our relationships when all the while our human nature yearns to be embraced.

The Child’s hands are outstretched so I can pick Him up and hold Him, touch His hair and kiss Him, to show Him how much I love Him.

Look into His eyes and see how much He loves you, how much He wants to embrace you.And in these two movements of the soul, mine and His, I encounter the infinite mystery of God; and realize that all the while I am looking at Him, He is looking at me. There is only One love, born before all ages humbled yet here before me as a Child to be loved.

Friends, no matter where you are in the spiritual life, no matter how deep or shallow your relationship with God has become, on this day embrace His love for you. Accept it! Cherish It! Be grateful, for He seeks us out and brings us here, to this moment, to make you happy.

Those of us, who confess to be Disciples of Christ, cannot hoard this Child in our heart because He does not belong to us alone. Go out and share this encounter with those who have lost their faith, those who no longer join us at home and those who have left the moorings of the good harbor and are now lost in a sea of short temper, confusion and false hope. Share with them what you have come to receive today. Give His love away to another! All of It away! Love one another as I have loved You. Speak His love for you everywhere and to every person, in your home, in your neighborhood, to those who like you and those who hate you, give where you go! Share until it hurts!

Don’t you see? It is in the giving that we find true happiness, contentment and deep spiritual meaning to life. We find purpose here in our home, among our family, at this Altar, and in that confessional box. Our purpose tonight and in our life is to ‘come and adore Him.” No job, no amount of money no special scholarship, nothing but Jesus lying here in this manger, hanging on this Cross both with arms outstretched to take us in and surround us with faith, hope and love, can make us happy and give us real peace.

Simple really. As simple as a child lying in the dirt of a stable surrounded by those Who love Him and protect Him from the cold hearted, the self absorbed, the angry and the rude.

You see “God’s sign is his humility. We become like God if we allow ourselves to be shaped by this sign; if we learn humility and hence true greatness; if we renounce violence of any kind and use only truth and love.”

We can change the world, my friends, if we change ourselves and be more conscious of what we are doing, how we are acting and the way we speak. In order to make this change we will need the Light that comes only from God, the light that so unexpectedly entered into our night (Benedict XVI, Christmas Homily, 2009).

Go home with a promise in your heart, that next Sunday, you will join other Disciples, members of the same family and shout out: “Come, all ye faithful!  Joyful and Triumphant!” Come here to our Bethlehem. Come and behold him, born the king of angels:
 come, let us together adore him for ‘my good is to be close to God.”

We gather here on Sunday because it is only here where the Family of God joins the Family of Mankind to worship the Father Who is our only true Peace. The prophet Zephaniah reminded us, “The Lord, your God, is in your midst,  a mighty savior, he will rejoice over you with gladness and renew you in his love, he will sing joyfully because of you.”

Christians through the centuries have died and die even today, because they bring their families to Mass and share with their children their devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. We can’t help ourselves; we find “The peace of God that surpasses all understanding” the God Who guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

It is now more important than ever to teach children, any child, that humans will only find true peace and happiness in the hope of a new and better life when we confess our faith in Jesus and His Church.

There are no words to describe or explain ever, man’s inhumanity to man. The violence suffered on children or any human being begins here in my heart, here in my parish, here in my neighborhood or here in my country. It begins by being inconsiderate, rude, and being unconscious of the common good. Self-absorption is the planting of the seeds of violence.

What we witnessed this weekend are merely the ‘signs of our times.’ These human beings bear the violence of our culture because they are one of the weakest. There will be others if you do not look and see!  Did not the Ghost of Christmas present caution us in the Dickens work Christmas Carol to beware of two things: ignorance and greed. And yet, we remain both ignorant and greedy.

Hope, my friends, is found only in God dwelling among us. This hope is found in our faith that humanity is touched by God and offers New Life to every human being.

As disciples of Jesus, we cannot afford to remain silent, even in the smallest, most remote corners of human life. The Holy Innocents call out to us to change our culture of death not just by the words of our mouth but also by the deeds of our life; the ‘what we say,’ and the ‘how we act.’

Every disparaging word on face book, every obscene gesture on the roadway, every inconsiderate act or greedy grab, every act of violence that enters our homes on the television or computer teaches violence and begins that slow denigration of human dignity.

‘What should we do’ ask the crowds in the Gospel today? Share, Jesus tells them, share your coat and share your food. Be satisfied with you have. Because in your sharing you will find great expectation for the coming of Jesus. This is what we celebrate in Gaudete Sunday: our great expectation of the Lord’s coming!

There is another sharing you need to do. Sunday is the center of your family life. Why? Because you confess that He brings you peace!! He brings us Charity!! He brings us the New Life that will truly set us free!!

You should share this encounter with other families, especially those Catholics who have fallen away and no longer confess their faith. Tell them!! Invite them and make them feel welcomed home! Tell them because they need to hear it from you, that hope is found only in God and your joy is rooted here at the foot of the Cross of Jesus.

Sundays are a day of rest, a day of learning about each family member, the day when we learn about God from the poorer and most in need. We say yes to Joy today because of our conviction that Jesus is its source. He makes all things new and we commit ourselves to complete this work with the Eucharist as our strength. Our communion antiphon will say it clearly, “Say to the faint of heart; be strong and do not fear. Behold, our God will come, and He will save us!”

Right now, at this moment, be determined to become more conscious not of the holiday but of the holy day that is upon us! And in the words of the final blessing, “As you run the race of this present life, may He make you firm in faith, joyful in hope and active in charity.” Amen!

We come together this first day of Advent to witness the opening of the Word of God. Over these next three days, we will have opened our minds and hearts in faith. We will listen to God speak to us in His own language and reveal to us a profound truth about Himself: that He is One, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Blessed Trinity is the Divine Family, which He now reveals to us in Jeremiah: “Judah shall be safe…Jerusalem shall be secure…and The Lord (is) our Justice.” We can recognize in these words our own desire to establish these divine qualities in our own family thus binding our human and divine families together. God embraces His People and re-creates them as His Family.

Within this new structure, God takes on the role of Father, the one who teaches and guides children in Truth. Psalm 25 defines how God sees Himself in our Family. “A Father is good and upright….He shows the way….He guides the humble to justice and He teaches the humble His Way.”

Our role as His children is to wait, to watch and to listen. Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians says, “You know the instructions we gave you…how you should conduct yourselves to please God.” Paul calls us to do even more and so we enter this Advent time of waiting at this Altar, the Footstool of our Father, “in anticipation of what is coming upon the world.”

See, we already wait. We are being taught, Christ the Church to Parents, Parents to their children, in God’s own language how to be ready. We gather within our families (the reflection of the Trinity) and we listen together to the words spoken for us this day: “Be vigilant at all times.”