Dear Friends of Carmel Mission,
I wrote last weekend that our Catholic faith is centered and dependent on the person of Jesus Christ. He has called each baptized Catholic to follow Him, to be His disciple. His call is a call to action. At certain times in our Church’s history, this call becomes more urgent and demands our response. Sometimes there is a need to ask ourselves the key question: In whom do I place my faith?
I place my faith in the One who has called me by name to be His follower and not in any human person, be they Pope, Cardinal, Archbishop, Bishop or priest.
Jesus was seldom angry. But on occasion, His words revealed a righteous anger directed at those who were religious leaders. He drove out the merchants from the Temple (Mt. 21:12) and He has harsh words for those who seek to corrupt the young and the vulnerable (Mt. 18:16).
We all have free will. We are free to leave the community called Church, or we are free to stay. I suggest that if we choose to stay, we can no longer remain as passive participants in our pew, but are called to action in order to bring our Church back to what we are called to be: the Body of Christ in the world today.
Where do we start? We start with prayer. If we read the Gospels, we discover that whenever Jesus was faced with a major decision, whenever He had fears about His future, He sought out a quiet place, away from the crowds, where He spoke directly to the Father. In prayer He found reassurance and the courage to continue His mission of revealing to those who would listen, the tremendous love of God.
May we also make time to pray for and find the reassurance that we so desperately need, and the courage to continue to become more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
May we also pray for one another.
Fr. Paul
Pastor at Carmel Mission