FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK
Dear St. Mary’s Parishioners:
The red light on my office phone is blinking wildly indicating someone has left a voicemail. After I press the “check messages” button, the robotic female voice commands me, “Please enter your code”. I dial the four digit password. “New message received, left at 11:42am”. “Good morning Father,” says a young man. “My name is *Michael*” (name changed for privacy). “Does St. Mary’s have a young adult group? I’ve been looking for a group of Catholic’s my age. Our culture has become more and more godless that I feel I need to surround myself with people who are like-minded. Sometimes it can be lonely…” That last sentence, “It can be lonely”, struck me in the heart. It reminded me of when I was a young college junior at UC Davis. I was starting to take my Catholic faith more seriously at this point in my life but I was having difficulty finding peers who wanted to love the Lord in the same way.. Afterall, Davis, much like most college campuses, are notorious for being hostile to religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Christian beliefs are roundly mocked as intolerant and backwards, especially if you maintain traditional beliefs on the hot-button issues of our age, like abortion and human sexuality. Oftentimes you feel like a lone blade of green grass in the middle of dry desert dunes.
This sense of loneliness only seems to be growing wider. This past Tuesday, the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murth, released a new advisory stating that “In recent years, about one-in-two adults in America reported experiencing loneliness. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic cut off so many of us from friends, loved ones, and support systems.” Research consistently shows that “loneliness and isolation are linked to sleep problems, inflammation and immune changes in younger adults. In older people, they’re tied to symptoms such as pain, insomnia, depression, anxiety and shorter life span. In people of all ages, they may be associated with higher risks of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, addiction, suicidality and self-harm, and dementia.” (www.hhs.gov)
This should not surprise us. The Book of Genesis revealed that we are made in “God’s image and likeness” (Cf. Genesis 1:27). God is a Trinity of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are reminded of this very fact every time we make the sign of the cross over our bodies. God himself is a relationship of love. Therefore, our own happiness will only be found in love, not in material things or pleasure. We’re not created in the image and likeness of a fancy car or designer jeans.
Knowing our culture is desperately hurting for authentic Christian relationships, I have always envisioned my ministry as a priest facilitating stronger relationships. Now that I have the privilege of serving St. Mary’s, my eye is constantly looking for ways to build community. This is no small task. We’re all flawed human beings, bound to have internal conflict. But we must persevere nonetheless. It’s our God-given nature. As Christians, we are called “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love” (Cf. Ephesians 4:2). As one of these steps, I would like to invite all young adults ages 18-39 to our Memorial Day hike advertised on the cover of this bulletin. This particular age group is seeing the largest secularization process we've ever seen in our history. Each decade, young people in the US are becoming less and less religious. We must build them up one holy friendship at a time.
A Servant of Jesus Christ,
Fr. Brian J. Soliven
