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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Welcome to each of you as we gather together to celebrate the
Fifth Sunday of our Lenten Season! Can you believe that next Sunday
is Palm Sunday already? Having Lent and Easter earlier this year
sure has made the time fly by. It’s time for us to make our biggest
sacrifices, offer our best prayers, and perform our most
compassionate works of mercy during these last two weeks of Lent and
the Tridium, leading up to Easter. I am away from the Parish this
weekend with our RCIA folks on their retreat. Please keep us in
your prayers. My thanks to Fr. Richard Doerr and the priests at Our
Lady of Mt. Carmel who are pitching-in to help Fr. Dale and us out
this weekend, in my absence.
This Fifth Week of Lent we work on our generosity. The
Gospels don’t show us Jesus writing checks to His favorite charity.
We don’t hear about Him putting His tithe in the collection box at
the Synagogue. Jesus didn’t stock a food pantry for the poor, at
least not that we read about in the Bible. But we do know that
Jesus was extremely generous. He was constantly pouring Himself out
for us in His service, in His compassion, and out of His love.
Jesus was a very generous person. He was always giving His time,
His healing power, His wisdom, and whatever was needed to those
around Him. I think of the Feeding of the Five Thousand as one of
the ultimate examples of this. Jesus could have sent all those
people home hungry that day, and yet He recognized their need and He
gave them more than enough to eat. He even provided leftovers!
Clearly, ours is a God and a Lord Who knows how to be generous
towards His people.
When we have been the beneficiaries of God’s great
generosity, how can we NOT be generous in return? Today, we as
Catholic Christians have to work to be generous. In a world that
tells us thousands of times a day that we are to think of ourselves
first and foremost, today’s Catholic Christian has to break out of
some pretty dominate thinking, to put God and others before
ourselves. For the vast majority of us, this is a lifelong
struggle. In a world where it sure looks like “everybody” is
grabbing as much as they can just for themselves, how do we become
“givers” and not persist in being “takers”? We’ve got to think
about this. The Fifth Week of Lent is a good time to do this. Our
hearts must be softened. You can not be a generous person with a
hard heart. Compassion is at the center of generosity. And
compassion is the hallmark of Christianity.
What would it take for you to be more generous? How could
you help others more? How could you give back to God more of your
time, your talents, and your treasure? Do you give covering your
own tail? Or do you give and live and love generously? Our God has
been mighty generous with all of us. His giving to us is exactly
what has to inspire all of us to generosity. Think about this and
pray about this, this week. As we get closer to Easter, our hearts
should be welling up with love and generosity. Let Jesus change
your heart this Lent. This change is a lot more important that what
we have given up for Lent.
Next weekend, when you come to Mass, we will be beginning all
of our Masses with the Palm Sunday procession and blessing of the
palm branches. As we have done the last couple of Palm Sundays, all
Masses will begin in the Church Narthex. You are invited to pick up
a palm and wait in the Church Narthex for the beginning of the
procession. If you are not feeling well, or in a wheelchair, or
pregnant, or “advanced” in years, please feel free to go on ahead
into church and take a seat. The blessing and the procession do not
take long and we will all be in to join you shortly.
And if Palm Sunday is next weekend, of course, Holy Week is
right around the corner. We’ll talk more about Holy Week in next
week’s bulletin.
Congratulations to the men who made the Christ Renews His
Parish weekend last weekend, and to the guys who both made and put
on the Cursillo weekend down at St. Bernadette’s in Indianapolis
last weekend. We are proud of ALL of you guys. Keep up the good
things that God has begun in you! The Women’s Christ Renews His
Parish weekend is the weekend after Easter, March 29th
& 30th.
Ladies, if you’d like to go, please contact the folks listed inside
this bulletin this week.
Have a great week! Let us keep one another in our prayers.
God IS doing great things in our midst!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the
other.
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