Christmas 2021
Christmas 2021 Dear Parishioners and Friends of Old St. Joseph’s Church: Christmas is here. And, although we continue to face uncertainties and challenges caused by the worldwide pandemic, as well as unsettling divisions in the world and in our own society, the great...Co-Laboring
Co-Laboring A Grace for this Week: To live and to work willingly as the hands and feet, heads and hearts, of the risen Lord living and working today in us. Co-laboring Co-laboring is our post-Resurrection call. Jesus did not come into our world and simply set it...The Pascal Mystery
The term “Pascal Mystery” refers to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus—as a kind of continuum. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the figure of Jesus is a victim, helpless, under the control of the Jewish and Roman authorities. He suffers. His suffering, however, is redemptive—it has a larger purpose and end to it. In John’s Gospel we have a different portrait of Jesus: Jesus is the Messiah, the king of creation, and nothing happens to him which is not allowed by him. In both points of view a terrible injustice takes place and his friends, family, and followers are helpless to do anything about it. We are passersby or onlookers and cannot influence the action.
Call
Opening ourselves to gratitude shows us that there is a call built right into our human being, as children of God, formed in God’s own image and likeness, in community with one another as brothers and sisters, and charged with stewardship for our world. Opening ourselves to healing shows us how, at some long past time in our history, that call was frustrated, and the power of its attractiveness became lost on us. Developing a relationship of friendship and love with Jesus enables us to rediscover God’s image and likeness within ourselves, and this leads us to want to share God’s love with others. Turning to our fellow human beings in solidarity reawakens in us the gift of the other and the joy of working with a shared purpose toward a common good. It is within the framework of these experiences that we seek to be able to look and listen for—and hopefully respond generously to—a possible new call of God coming to us today in the course of our lives and work.
