Dear Friends,
First of all, my deepest thanks to everyone who helped with the Spaghetti Dinner last Sunday. As always, it went very well thanks to all of you who helped with the many different tasks necessary to get the job done. The profits from the dinner go to All Saints School. Those of you at the dinner saw many of our students helping bus tables. They were just a few of the students who will benefit from your generous gift of time and talent. Thanks.
Second, an Easter season reflection. St. Paul claims that not only are we going to be resurrected bodily at the end of time but that we are resurrected spiritually the moment our relationship with God begins. Being a disciple of Jesus is not simply a matter of turning over a new leaf and working harder at living a good life with hopes of a reward at the end. It is rather about us now being united with Jesus in the Holy Spirit. We are to become sharers and participators in Jesus’ life and all the blessings that come from him. Spiritual resurrection means that we are, in a sense, living in heaven while still on earth, living in the future while still being in the present.
Once we understand what Jesus has done for us, once we know that the resurrection experience of Jesus is there for us as well, then we can see what Paul teaches in Romans, that the purpose of God’s salvation is that we be conformed to the image of God’s son, Jesus. How does that happen? Paul says it happens by dying to our old self and putting on a new self. He encourages us to put to death all that is earthly: immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed. We are to move from being a person only concerned about ourselves to a person who is concerned about others.
The future glory that we will share with Jesus in heaven is foreshadowed here on earth. In the readings we so often hear at funerals, St. Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. That is more than comfort for the mourners, it is also a reminder to us of how we are to live. We have been created in the image of God and so our lives here on earth are able to reflect God, the one whom we love. In a certain sense we become the image of whatever we love. Jesus says that wherever our treasure is there are heart will be. If our hearts are not focused on loving God, then we will start to look like the earthly things we have settled on loving. If we love anything more than God, we go against our own design with the result being different from what the world expects. The world describes success in terms of wealth, power, satisfaction, and recognition from others. If those are the things we love more than God, then we end up with a life that settles for so much less than we were created to be.
One of the desires of the great saints over the centuries has been what came to be called the Beatific Vision, a glimpse of the divine while we are here on earth. After St. Thomas Aquinas had a Beatific Vision, he declared that all the amazing writing and thinking he had done about God and the Church was worthless, just straw in comparison to what he had encountered in the Beatific Vision. Maybe you and I will not have the Beatific Vision until we get to heaven but that does not mean our lives cannot be filled with the wonder of God while we are still here on earth. You were created in the divine image, Jesus has set you free from the fear of death, you are a citizen of heaven now…do not let fear or the things of this earth get in your way.
Peace,
Fr. Damian