Pastor’s Pen
A Word from Fr. Bob
Dear Church Family,
Probably as most of you know especially on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we have morning and evening prayer and reflections on the day’s Sacred Scriptures. The book we use is called “Give Us This Day”. We pray these prayers every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
I was especially impressed by the reflections for today in this book by Peter Nixon. He was reflecting on the idea of, “Something Greater Here”. He started off by being aware more and more of the crisis of homelessness in Oakland, California. More and more people are homeless all the time and they set up informal camps under bridges and freeways. He said, “As I walk to my office every day, I feel increasingly overwhelmed.” He often passed half a dozen people asking for help. He didn’t know how to greet or help each one, especially when there is another one after him and another one and another one. But, he said, “Even if I just helped one. A single act of charity seems like using an eyedropper to put out a wildfire.” Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the problems of our brothers and sisters.
In today’s gospel, Jesus successfully heals a man who cannot hear or speak. Just think of the many, many others at that time that had that same impediment. Yet the crowd proclaimed that Jesus “Makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Today’s prophecy recalled from Isaiah, reminds us that something greater is at work. Even though Jesus’ miracles are important in themselves, they are also signs of how God is acting to heal and transform a world consumed by human sins and injustice. Many conclude that “When we act in Christ’s name to bring His mercy to others we never act alone and our actions are never insignificant.” They reveal and make present the truth as Martin Luther King Jr., once observed, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I’m especially struck by the words of Martin Luther King “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I see that as knowing every time we do good deeds like helping another person, just being present, just keeping going about daily actions in our family of loving our children and grandchildren and doing a little extra for them and just tending to them, all that makes great sense and I just feel that all these are good deeds on the moral arc, that is long, but bends toward justice. We celebrate all the good things we do in the Lord’s name as being so important in the long scheme of things. Praise God! Keep doing your good deeds and expand them in any way you can.
Love, Fr. Bob
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