Dear Friends,
Welcome to the Spaghetti Dinner weekend! The fall Dinner always happens in the midst of falling leaves
and football. I hope you can come over and join us for some great food and friendship. The team always needs
your help to serve others, so if you have a little time to give this weekend, it is greatly appreciated.
I apologize for the chill that is in the church. We moved daily Masses into the school and rectory this
past week and they will continue in those locations until we get the new furnace working. The hope is to have
heat in the building by November 1st. We are three weeks behind schedule because of the surprise uncovering of
asbestos in the dirt in the crawl space. The project should have been completed by now, but we are going to have
to endure at least one more weekend of cold before the heat is on. Just dress as if you were going to a fall
football game when you come to Mass!
I am deeply grateful to all who have generously donated to the new furnace fund. Every gift means we
will have to borrow a bit less to pay for the project. The asbestos remediation costs added an additional $23,000
to a project that was already running just shy of $200,000. With everyone helping, we can make this a
manageable debt for the parish to handle. Thanks!
The readings this weekend remind me of why we so desperately need to be a part of a church and why
we cannot be Christians by ourselves. It requires the wisdom of a community to truly understand and live what
Jesus taught. Jesus’ Father is not known by everyone and is not easily known. The reason is not that the God of
Jesus is weird, but that our understanding, our education, and our imagination are marked by the limits of this
world’s experience. We are so self-centered and marked by a fear of death that we cannot even begin to imagine
the kind of love God has for us. God’s love for us is so hard to understand because it is not necessarily what we
want. Our wanting and our desires are limited by our earthly experience. Look at the reaction of the disciples in
today’s gospel. They are talking about earthly ways of being while Jesus is talking about heavenly ways of
acting. To them, Jesus’ teaching is a strange thing – suffering? death? resurrection? humbleness? offering of
self? Their minds have been dulled by earthly desires. They seek an earthly glory and an earthly ease of life.
Jesus summarized his teaching by saying, “the time has reached its fullness, the Kingdom of God is at
hand; change your hearts and believe the good news.” Too often we interpret “change your hearts” (or in the
Greek original “metanoia”) as Jesus setting up a good moral order which would be required to participate in the
Kingdom. Rather, Jesus is inviting us to learn to fix our mind on God’s absolute goodness and love whereby we
can learn to leave behind the person that we thought we were and begin to be a person who lives formed by the
desires of heaven.
Look at all the conversion stories of the saints. They were formerly fixed on earthly success and God
invited them into heavenly success. Frances Cabrini leaves her Italian homeland to care for poor immigrants
striving to make their way in the United States. She sets up schools and hospitals for the poorest of the poor; for
the people no one else wanted. Ignatius of Loyola stops being a rich kid soldier to form a new force to educate
others for the kingdom. Francis of Assisi leaves the wealth of his familial home to be a beggar for Jesus and
radically embrace the gospel. Damien of Molokai journeys around the world to live in a leper colony. Oscar
Romero chooses to side with the poor and is assassinated for his voice of love for them. And on and on go the
stories.
Being a part of the church reminds me that this conversion is ongoing. That I need others to help me
change my heart so that it remains fixed on the things of heaven. I need others to encourage me to live in love
and not in self-centeredness. I need prayer to help me see how I can be more open to love those who are hard to
love. Alone I would soon forget the heavenly vision and values and would return to the things of this earth.
Together, with you, I can live the life that Jesus invited me into. Where “whoever wishes to be great among you
will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not
come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Peace,
Fr. Damian