A Letter from Fr. Paul - November 6, 2016

Thank you for your prayers while I was away last week. My niece’s wedding went well. My brother is not doing well so please continue to pray for him.

Saturday morning, November 26, beginning at 9 am Br. Silas Henderson SDS will give a morning retreat in preparation for Advent. He has given this in 6 different parts of the country and it has been well received. Please mark your calendar and plan on taking advantage of this opportunity to begin Advent and the Church year in a spirit of reflection. We appreciate Silas’ willingness to share his gifts with our community.

Our readings this weekend deal with the ever present question of what happens when we die. Is there life after death or is it simply all over? It was only a couple hundred years B.C. that belief in an afterlife began to grow among the Jews. At the time of Jesus, the Sadducees did not believe in life after death; the Pharisees did. The question to Jesus was a trap: whatever He answered, one side would be alienated and angry.

Jesus’ answer is very clear: God is a God of the living, not the dead. The word used by Moses when he talked about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph clearly indicated the present, that they were still living. The point is God has a relationship with us, a relationship that started when He created us, and NOTHING will break it. No matter how far we stray, He is waiting for us to turn to Him again. And that relationship does not stop with death. As we hear in the preface of the funeral Mass: for the faithful, life is changed, not ended.

As we approach the end of the Year of Mercy and another Church year, let us thank God who is always “in relationship” with us, no matter what we do, and pray for each other that we may be ever more attentive to strengthening that relationship, so vital to our happiness and well-being.

-- Paul James Portland, SDS