Hi, there, People of God!
We’ve been shut down for a week here at St. Patrick’s in Muldoon. The threat is real. So do all the things that are being recommended. It does mean that we have become a bit more creative in how we are bringing the Word, if not the Sacraments to the masses. To wit:
- Livestreaming “CyberMass” on our parish Facebook page www.facebook.com/stpatsak/ Daily Mass is at 12:00 noon ADT, Weekends on Saturday at 4:00 PM.
- and on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCce6fxZKR1vqgyhuTO7e7VA
The office is shut down too, so we are all working from home as best we can.
Let’s all keep each other in prayer, as well as those most directly affected by the virus, and especially those who care for them.
The text of this weekend’s homily is below. You can see and hear it at the links above.
During this COVID-19 Inter-MISSION, it is normal to ask the question, “Why? Why is this happening?” Some of my well-meaning friends of other Christian traditions, and also some Catholics have shared with me that they think it is divine retribution for all the sinfulness found in society at the present time. The story of the Man Born Blind in the gospel this week obliterates such a notion. Seeing the man, his disciples ask, “Who sinned? This man or his parents?” It was a common notion in those days, based on Deuteronomy 5:9, that if anyone bowed down to a foreign god, the Lord would bring punishment for their “parents’ wickedness on the children…down to the third and fourth generation.” Jesus response is firm. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t his parents.
The harsh reality is that because the world is not God, it is not perfect. Sometimes those imperfections are merely irritating, such as a broken shoelace or a vending machine that takes your money without delivering the goods. But at other times, it can be tragic—a child born blind or a viral pandemic that paralyzes the world. The world is neither benevolent or malevolent; it is simply indifferent and imperfect.
The Good News is that we have a God who is neither indifferent nor imperfect. Rather, the benevolent God enters into the very imperfection of the world and transforms it by his presence. This happened in particular way for the Man Born Blind who received his sight. It happens in a universal way for all of us who receive the forgiveness of our sins.
But strangely enough, such sacred mysteries are not self-evident. It takes a bit of humility to realize that we, like the world, are imperfect. This was the mistake of the Pharisees. In their zeal, they lacked the humility necessary to see the significance of the miracle. Thus our Lord can say to them. “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.”
We live in an extraordinary time that has deprived us, for a time, of the sacraments which are ordinary means of grace. Can we have eyes of faith that see God entering this new, imperfect reality of the present day and transforming it with extraordinary grace? I pray that we can.