Pastor’s Pen
St. Augustine Catholic Church
Sunday, September 12, 2021
Twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Times
Dear Church Family,
Our readings for today give us some hard words where we are challenged to be a follower of the Lord. We have to take up our cross daily and follow Him, no matter what. We might even lose our lives, but for Him we will truly gain it. We should challenge ourselves, our spiritual life, and our general way of living by all the more being filled with good deeds and intentions. “Setting our faces, hearts, and minds like flint” on the Lord, knowing that “The Lord God is our help!” because “If you don’t have good deeds flowing from your faith, what good is it?” Demonstrate your faith from your works!
In the Gospel, Jesus repeats the essence of the message from Isaiah from the first reading, when he teaches his disciples “that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed….” He goes on to say, “whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. ”Jesus isn’t just ‘talking the talk’, He is ‘walking the walk’, all the way up that hill to Calvary, not for His sake, but for the salvation of our souls, you and me. While at the time of His crucifixion, the cross was a symbol of death and defeat, God through His Son, Jesus has turned it into a sign of liberation and new life. We, as Christians, must continually face the cross as the terrible tragedy it was and discover in it , through our acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, through faith and repentance, the liberating joy of eternal salvation
Love,
Fr. Bob
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