The Need for Healing

Pastor’s Pen
St. Augustine Catholic Church
Sunday, March 7, 2021
Third Sunday of Lent

Dear Church Family,

As I write the Pastor’s Pen this week, be aware to start praying for healings for ourselves and for others and even the nation’s. There is such a need for healing. This week we have the George Floyd Police Reform Bill, banning controversial police tactics and easing the way for lawsuits against officers violating suspects’ constitutional rights. We just need direction. When we fail, we try to reconcile, so maybe that’s why a Bill is being named after him to bring some reconciliation and healing to our society. We are all in need of healing in some way. So, it is good that we can praise our God for giving us directions through the Ten Commandments and all that has been written about our Lord’s relationships with His people and His help to us to help us live an orderly life. So, we know that we are blessed even in the higher values to follow the Lord. We have a short little passage where “Jews and Greeks demand wisdom, but we just proclaim Christ crucified.” Knowing Him as crucified it may have been thought as a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who are called Jew and Greek alike, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Praise God!! So we say: the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. So, Paul is proclaiming a message of orderliness and what is important in how to live with the deeper values of life.

In the Gospel, there are a number of values of life. The first one is that Jesus is consumed with zeal for His house and it is being used in the wrong way. After He does this task of cleansing, He engages in a discussion that “If you destroy this temple, (meaning Himself) within three days I will raise it up. But the Jew He was talking with replied, “But this temple has been under construction for 46 years and You will raise it up in three days?!?” But He was speaking about the temple of His body and not the bricks and stones. Therefore, when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this and they came to believe the Scriptures and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Jesus also refreshed our way of living and loving and following good directions of life by believing all the signs and wonders that He performed which gave them direction for life. Jesus really knew human nature because the last sentence of the Word today says, “He. Himself, understood it well” meaning human nature.

So, Church, we are glad our society still strives for a better way. So hopefully, the George Floyd Bill will in some way help us to reconcile us so that we have a better understanding the injustices that are so prevalent especially this one which was so blatant. But we have direction and it is good for us to live a steady life of knowing what to do in all of these different circumstances. So, continue to carry on this week, praying for healing for yourself and others. Next week we will give the sacred anointing. It is always good for us to gather, even though it may be a small group of us. We are feeling much better about being safeguarded from the pandemic virus because I can call myself, ‘two-shot Bob’ because I have received my second shot and I hope you are on the same road. I’m feeling good about being protected and maybe I can start being a little bit human again with the people who are in my life and the people we want to help. So, Church Family, continue this Lenten journey and enjoy having a real sensitivity for the way God gives us directives from the Ten Commandments to the special wisdom of what it means to have a deeper understanding that we are all called to the power and wisdom of God.  Remember, the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. As we see Jesus trying to live His life among the people and give them good ways and understandings, we see why it is good to follow Him as a bold strong person to be aware of. Thank you again, Church, and thank the Lord again, for giving us good directions on how to live the Christian life. Thank you, Lord. Amen!

Love, Father Bob