Love does all kinds of strange things to a person. When the lover is absent the beloved finds themselves staring into space. In quiet moments they wonder what they are doing. Is it raining there? Did the meeting go well? Are they thinking about me? We describe the origin of this uniquely human experience as falling in love. It points to an experience that is beyond our control, perhaps even beyond our understanding.
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For Love is strong as Death, longing is fierce as Sheol. Its arrows are arrows of fire, flames of the divine. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor rivers sweep it away. Were one to offer all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised. (Song of Songs 8:5-7 NAB)
It is a surprise to discover these words in the Bible. Some would like them removed in place of something less imaginative. It is even more surprising that God loves us this way. St. Paul points to the same thing in the New Testament:
At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1Corinthians 13:12-13 NAB)
We understand this experience from a human point of view. It is much more difficult to understand from a heavenly vantage point. Jesus teaches us love from many perspectives:
As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:9-14 NAB)
As we approach the last days of Lent there is one experience that drives all of what we do in these last weeks. It is perfect love that we are offered from the Cross. Open your heart to experience the presence of your loving God.
The Building
By the time you read this there should be panels set in place, as the new building takes shape. The transept extension should be moving into the finish stage. There is still much to be done, including the new East side parking lot, but the progress, which has been struggling to dodge the rain, is moving forward.
Of course, the financing for the transept extensions and the “pastoral center” is secure. As we conducted our campaign during lean times that need has been provided for by a new mortgage. This is, however, the limit that the Diocese will permit us to borrow under current budget numbers. Making the Pastoral Center a priority opens the use of the current administration building for youth and children’s ministry, as well as an expanded kitchen. Additional remodeling will be on a cash basis, as we cannot borrow more money.
Please be encouraged to give to the new building campaign. The success of our parish cannot be realized unless everyone participates.
This has been a busy time for our whole parish and for the Catholic Church throughout the country. In our parish the building project is progressing in a rather dramatic way. It is rare that things are the same each time we come to our parish facility. Our General Contractor, Hill and Wilkerson and all their sub-contractors and our architects, Alliance Architects, are doing a wonderful job, as they have with all the projects that they have directed in the past. By now you can get a better idea of what the project represents. It is so gratifying to see the original plans for the expansion of the Church actually being used. Usually expansion plans get modified or abandoned. We are able to see how this has been designed all along. Thank you for your financial support of our project. I hope that you will be able to say that with God’s grace we have done this TOGETHER!
Thank you as well for your patience in finding ways into the facility during the construction. I hope that the makeshift signs are doing their part. With so many children in our parish, it is very important that “leash laws” be enforced. We are happy that people are interested in the construction and want to stand at the courtyard fence to watch what is happening. Please, do stay on “our side” of the fence.
There has been unhappy news regarding the Health and Human Services directive concerning health care mandates. The focus of the problem is a violation of the free exercise of our religion. Here is the current position of the UnitedStates Conference of Catholic Bishops:
“First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans — nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion…. All the other mandated “preventive services” prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease. Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate altogether.
"Second, we explained that the mandate would impose a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider such “services” immoral: insurers forced to write policies including this coverage; employers and schools forced to sponsor and subsidize the coverage; and individual employees and students forced to pay premiums for the coverage. We therefore urged HHS, if it insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders—not just the extremely small subset of “religious employers” that HHS proposed to exempt initially.
“Today, the President has done two things. First, he has decided to retain HHS’s nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including some abortifacients. This is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern. We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty.
“Second, the President has announced some changes in how that mandate will be administered, which is still unclear in its details. As far as we can tell at this point, the change appears to have the following basic contour: It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate. It would allow non-profit, religious employers to declare that they do not offer such coverage. But the employee and insurer may separately agree to add that coverage. The employee would not have to pay any additional amount to obtain this coverage, and the coverage would be provided as a part of the employer’s policy, not as a separate rider.
“Finally, we are told that the one-year extension on the effective date (from August 1, 2012 to August 1, 2013) is available to any non-profit religious employer who desires it, without any government application or approval process.” (USCCB Press Release, February 10, 2012)
For more information, please go online to
www.USCCB.org or www.usccb.org/conscience. These links will help you contact your member of congress. It is especially important that you support the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (H.R. 1179, S. 1467). Also see www.catholicnews.com for updated information. Many disreputable people will try to enflame a bitterness. The cross of Christ is our way. We must love our enemies.
Sometimes it seems that the work of the parish goes on no matter what. The weather turns bad and we are sure that the accomplishment of the work of offering the Mass will fall to only a few. The first Mass is lightly attended and it seems that our suspicions were confirmed. In the end the numbers are the same as an average Sunday! The same is true for the finances of the parish. We might expect because of the down turn in the economy or some other reason that a smaller number of people are giving less. That is true but not to the degree that we would expect.
The one truism concerning evaluating the success of our projects is that in the end they all seem to work themselves out. We continue to be timid in our expectations, otherwise known as being fiscally conservative. I wonder, however if that is not the greatest obstacle we face. A miracle is something that has its origin in a surprise. God does them all the time. It is not just that the supernatural is involved but that it does not go according to our expectations. Finally, in the end the project is accomplished and we simply forget our doubts. Perhaps it would be good to remember the doubts in order to learn from them. We projected failure or scaled back because of trends. Perhaps, we even hoped for failure so that we could be proven right. Failure is easier than success. Pessimism is easier to justify. To believe in God’s intervention is hard, especially in these times. To believe in the combined force of God and people, well, the devil most assuredly does not what us to remember the way in which God has always carried us through.
The real question for us is not, “will our parish and our diocese and our nation (!) be successful?” Of course we will. We have always been successful in the past, not because we attribute this to our own strength but because we know God is with us. What we do is in response to His plan, not ours. If it were up to us we would be looking for the easy road, for the next vacation. The question is not about the success of the parish. It is about our personal involvement. Will we be involved? Will each of us be able to say with God’s help we did that? Will we be able to stand before the throne of God and respond favorably to the questions concerning our being part of the parish’s work, or the diocese, or making our nation strong. Or did we simply let the opportunity slip by because someone said “yes”, even though we said “no”.
There is a pledge card included as part of this Good Steward mailing. You know what to do. If this is your first time to say “yes,” give at a level that will bear the fruit of growing in God’s grace. Become a part of the work of the parish.
Notice that the pledge card represents three funds. The general operations are the everyday expenses: salaries and electricity, etc. The next two funds concern our building, the “Building Trust” and the “Capital Campaign.” The Building Trust is debt payment on the Church building and the Capital Campaign is the new construction. In addition to the General operations of the parish which all of us use, we should at least choose one of the other funds in order that we have a share in advancing this work.With God all things are possible.
