In the Name of Love
to be first, be last!
Announcements for September 18, 2021:
We are offering Financial Peace University again this fall! The course's nine sessions will be held online beginning Sunday. If you're interested at all, send me a note.
Training for Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion will be held on Thursday, September 30th at 6:30pm. All Eucharistic Ministers and anyone who would like to serve in this capacity are encouraged to attend. Our training will also be streamed live and recorded for those unable to make it.
Our next Youth Ministry gathering will be Friday, September 24 at 7:00pm in Gordon Hall. All teens in grades 8 through 12 are invited to attend.
Our 2022 Mass Book is now open. For more information and to request Masses (limited to three requests for now) visit our Mass Intentions page online, check out the form in the narthex of the church, or give us a call.
Visit our Parishioner Portal for up-to-date announcements.
Dear Saints,
I have to admit I love a good Jesus paradox. We get one of them in our Gospel passage this weekend:
If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.
To be first, be last? How is that possibly true?
To get some sense of this last-being-first business we have to see that Jesus' mission, in broad terms, is to turn the world right-side up. This infers - to no one's surprise - that the world, in its current state of affairs, is upside down.
The Scriptures have something to say about the world's disorder. The chief source of corruption, we're made to see, is idolatry: By worshipping something other than God, man cannot exercise good and wise stewardship over creation.
Idols, a friend of mine said recently, are good servants but bad masters. Everything we have can be used for God's purposes, but if we center our lives on some created thing (including money, power, pleasure, popularity, or even some particular person, a relationship, or "success" in some worldly sense) then we will find ourselves enslaved to that counterfeit god.
To set the world right-side up, Jesus confronts and conquers the power of the idols. He pioneers the truly human way - the way of worship and service, the way of prayer and love - which he also makes possible for us. With God's Spirit at work in us and working through us, we find the freedom to live beyond the allure of power, pleasure, and prestige: When God is the absolute center of our hearts and lives, we are made fit to advance his rule of forgiving love, of restorative justice, throughout the world.
It's ours, then, to go the way of self-gift rather than the way of ego-inflation. To be most filled up, give yourself fully away in worship in service, in prayer and love. To be rich in the things that matter to God, be poor in the things of the world. To be first, be last!
I love you, my friends, and I look forward to walking this last-to-be-first way with you!
Christ's Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ
Preparing for Mass?
Check out this weekend's readings:
The Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Christ Among Children
Adam van Noort, ca.1600