Pastor’s Pen
THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
A WORD FROM FR. BOB
Dear Church Family,
I need help! I need you to help me to be built up in the body of Christ. Just the other night when I heard all the beautiful music at the Cathedral led by Simeon and Danny, I knew this was the spiritual treat I needed to help me grow spiritually to listen to the songs of longing and help and blessed assurance and that all would be well no matter what and that I would just have to keep my eyes and my heart fixed on You. Then I need help as I hear the ancient Israelites coming back to living in the Promised Land after the Exile and Ezra and Nehemiah are there to draw all the people together to teach them and they receive the word of God with great emotion and feeling. They know that they have a new way of living and they wake up to a better way of living than they had just been through. So, they too were part of a body that was growing and they needed one another. Then as a result of all that Ezra and Nehemiah said, “Celebrate! Go celebrate. Drink fine wines and rich foods and be joyful in the Lord.”
All this then leads to this Gospel of beginning for Jesus. Very powerfully, He begins to reading the sacred message which is really Jesus telling us that we should take this sacred message and apply it to our life. So, He reads, quoting Isaiah, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has appointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. (These words can be said by our God to us.) He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” So, we proclaim that message so often because that is what we are about, just spreading the Good News. First of all being filled with it ourselves and then wanting to spread it to many, many others because it’s the Good News! So, Jesus starts His ministry in this very dramatic way and we are this community like the Body of Christ, each one offering our own gifts and talents so we come together and we reflect on the sacredness of the message and know that we are the message—we are the Good News! So, Church, enjoy being the Good News! Alleluia!
Love, Fr. Bob
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