FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK
Dear St. Mary’s Parishioners:
The Christmas celebration always leaves me with goosebumps. We behold the bright lights that pierces the darkness, no matter the density of the fog. The smell of evergreen trees permeates the room as their colors stay true, living up to their name. The banquet of food at our dinner tables makes us feel like royalty, dining sumptuously in our stoned castles, albeit in the suburbs. We rejoice, we sing, we laugh, and some of us even cry. We miss our loved ones during this time of year. Something about the Christmas season touches the soul deeply, regardless of where we are in our walk of faith.
I dare say Christmas reminds us that we are made for relationships; we are made for love. Never forget that. We constantly all bemoan the fact that Christmas has become commercialized. The pressure we feel to buy the perfect gift for that perfect someone can suffocate us from the true meaning of the season. Yet, even that constant complaint points to the intuitive gut reality that we know we are made for infinitely more. And it’s true, we are more than mere consumers; we’re made for communion. God knows this. After all, he created and designed us. He’s woven each of us intimately in our mother’s womb as the Prophet Isaiah reminded us, "The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me." (Cf.Isaiah 49:1)
Keep this always in mind when we try to make sense of ourselves, the world, and even our precious religion. We are made for love. As a Catholic priest, I’ve been privileged to prepare souls to die. Families call me to enter into their darkest hour. Never once in all my years of priesthood have heard anyone on their deathbed bemoan this or that thing they could never buy. They never talk about how many bedrooms they have or the karats of their shiny gold necklace. Never. They always talk about love, their spouses, their parents, their children and most fundamentally, they talk about their relationship with God.
Here now the beauty of the Christian faith doth shine. Love itself will become incarnate. Truth itself will take on a baby face: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (Cf. John 1:1-14) Ahh the goosebumps!
A Slave of Jesus Christ,
Fr. Brian J. Solive
