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Thirty-Second Sunday of the Year
12 November 2006
Dear Friends in Christ,
This Friday our parish begins nine days of preparation for the Solemnity of Christ the King. In your bulletin this week, you will find an insert which explains the novena and has the prayers that we ask each household to say each day during the novena. "The more you honor Me, the more I will bless you," Our LORD said to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, and we can never honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus enough!
Saint Paul tells us, Pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5.17). Saint Bernard of Clairvaux commented, "Prayer is a wine which makes glad the hearts of men." There are so many good things happening here at St Mary’s that it would take 100 years of bulletin columns to list them all. And there are so many of our parishioners and visitors who come here to seek solace from the challenges and the sorrows of their lives. As a community of faith, our prayer can give us the strength to face the difficult things in this vale of tears with the wine of gladness which is the grace of the Spirit.
During these nine days, pray, and pray hard: for every single member, every family in our parish, for all of those who come into contact with St Mary’s, for our city, our nation, and our world. Let us pray that we may all become disciples of Christ, saints who will be leaven in the midst of the world, that our parish may be that city set upon the hill which will direct men and women to God.
Church is not a supermarket where we take what we like and leave what we don’t like. Church is where we give ourselves totally, without reserve, for love, as Jesus did for us on the Cross. Taking time to ask Our LORD to help us as a parish and as individuals to do that, think about how much our part of the vineyard will bear fruit for the work of Christ’s mission to bring all people to Himself.
Praised be Jesus Christ!
Father Smith