Dear Friend of Carmel Mission,
In today’s Gospel Jesus is very clear on what is most important, to love and serve the one true God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. The primacy of the one true God was the foundation of Jesus’ Jewish faith. If you love and care for God, you must love and care for God’s creation, ergo you must love yourself and your neighbors, whoever they may be. Sounds simple, right?
In reality, it is often much easier to love God, an omniscient, merciful, essentially perfect, albeit mysterious, presence in our lives, than to love the flawed, often difficult, people we call our neighbors. More challenging still to love the flawed, difficult person we encounter when we look within our own selves. But our God is not selfish. More than anything else, God wants to love us, and want us to be loved. Jesus’ addition to the Shema Israel, the Hebrew Scriptures’ command to love the one God, is an expression of God’s desire for us to know and experience love in all possible ways.
This year our parish retreat, Mission at the Mission, will focus on God’s unconditional love, and how it informs and transforms our lives. We are able to love because we are loved. Our retreat leader, Fr. Max Oliva, will be exploring how our experience of God’s love empowers us to love one another, and equally importantly, teaches us how to love ourselves.
Our founder and first pastor, St Junipero, will be one of the models of fearless and uncompromising love that we will be studying to gain insight on the incredible power of God’s love to shape our world. I hope that you will be able to join us for the Mission at the Mission. More information is available in our e-bulletin on our website, carmelmission.org.
I wish you and your loved ones continued blessings of good health, new hope and God’s endless love,
