God's Kingdom Come
faith like a child
Announcements for October 2, 2021:
The Diocesan Ministries Appeal is ramping up. Check out this 78-second video to see how your support of the DMA translates into food for those most in need. Click here to give today.
Bring your pets! Gather on the steps of the church at 12:30 pm this Sunday for a blessing of animals in honor of Saint Francis (whose feast day is October 4th).
We are thrilled to host the Blessed Carlo Acutis Eucharistic Miracles Display next weekend. Stop by the school on Saturday, October 9th (8:30-10:00am and 4:00-7:00pm) or Sunday, October 10th (8:30am-1:00pm) to view the display.
If you've been wondering about the recent success of OLMC School, you'll want to join us on October 15th for the first Light of the World Tour this year. Register now to discover the OLMC difference!
The Gala is back, and we're gonna party like it's 1999. (This time, with dancing!) As always, you make the event a success - sponsor the event or buy tickets/tables today!
Visit our Parishioner Portal for up-to-date announcements.
Dear Saints,
We've got a great Gospel passage this weekend to think through and meditate on. In it Jesus says:
Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.
Whether it's his content (entrance into the kingdom of God) or delivery (Amen is meant to grab our attention), Jesus intends us to see the seriousness of this instruction. Let's focus on what's going on.
In tackling some tricky questions, Jesus addresses Israel's inability to live up to the call of God. It isn't that God's design is in need of amending, he wants his opponents to see, but that their hearts have been hardened to him and his ways.
If this is what ails the People of God, the cure might surprise us. It's not to try harder; it's not to consider the consequences and white-knuckle it; it's not to strengthen the will for self-control (though, admittedly, these things have their place).
The remedy, rather, is to receive God's rule like a child. The solution is to put one's whole heart, all our confidence and trust, in Jesus and follow him into God's way of life.
The answer is to exchange our hardened hearts with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, consumed with love for his Father and aflame with the fire of the holy Spirit.
Through and with and in Christ we entrust ourselves to God our Father, and are made fit to bring his merciful rule to life wherever he has summoned us to be. This is the pattern of Jesus' own life, it is the pattern of the Mass, and it is to be the pattern of our own lives in Christ - kingdom lives seeking holiness and justice, powered by the Spirit, and cultivated by the habits of prayer and love.
I love you, my friends, and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Christ's Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ
Preparing for Mass?
Check out this weekend's readings:
The Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Suffer the Children
Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1800s