YOUR FAITH HAS SAVED YOU

     

 

 

In our lives there will be times when we all will be tested and confronted with things that will challenge us spiritually, mentally, and physically. It is an expectation. Nobody is exempt from this. This represents a reality which is unavoidable. As Christians, we need to ask ourselves a question: “How are we supposed to approach these obstacles that could easily test our faith in Jesus and lead us away from him?”

We should take our answers from what the Sacred Scriptures tell us and what so many of our brothers and sisters before us did when they faced trials and tribulations. It is so easy to dismiss them and other individuals in times of crisis when the natural thing to do is only focus on ourselves. This is a terrible mistake and could lead to unimaginable consequinces. No one is ever really alone; only when they want to be. Christianity is a community; an extended family that is bound together by Jesus Christ. Living in this reality, there is an expectation of love, support, and consolation in the community. There is also an unconditional love that mustbe given to all who reside in the community.

Too many times, society teaches us that each individual rises and falls based on his or her own merit and faults. God teaches us that this is not true. Yes, we are all responsible for our own actions but once there is an acknowlegement of a sin or of crisis, healing and help comes from God and the community; not from one person. God called the Jewish people back to faith and healing not individually but as a community. It was through the community that healing and reconcilliation was possible. It is the responsibility of the individual to respond but it is through the support of the many that we all receive our strength. This is why Jesus performed miracles: not only for the individual receiving the miracle but so that the community could wintess it and thus have their faith strengthened also. It is a collective act.

Through the movement of the community all going forward with a common goal everything is achieved. No one stands alone. Standing alone and feeling alone weakens the Living Body of Christ here on this earth. When we act individually,we cannot forget the collectivity of our nature. Individual actions affect the whole as actions of the whole affect the individual. That is why we must keep Christ central in all of our thoughts and actions. We must remain selfless in our nature.

As long as we are selfless, we can then encounter Christ selfishly and develop our own relationship which will then strengthen the faith of others.

 

Deacon Tom

WE ARE SLAVES TO CHRIST

Christ suffered so that we might be saved. Christ was crucified so that we could achieve eternal life. We live our lives by his example. As Christians, suffering is an obligation and a way of life. When we suffer, we become more like Christ and are able to understand our faith more fully. We are taught to look to Christ as an example and follow him as disciples. We are his disciples now in all our actions and thoughts.

Christ became a slave for our salvation and the salvation of the world. If Christ became a servant and we are his disciples then we are also servants. Christ is the king of slaves. We must act as slaves and serve the world in his name. Through us the world must see Christ. All we want and desire must come last and what people need is first. Acts of charity and good strengthen our faith. As Christian we must love to do these things. If we all do what we want to last and everyone else is first then Christ becomes the light of the world and saves us all.
We all want something better in our lives.

 

We all want to change our lives and be happy. We must remember to pray for this, but we need to  accept the bad things from God in our lives and celebrate what we suffer on his behalf. Good things happen when we suffer. We know ourselves when we suffer. We understand ourselves when we suffer. After darkness there is always light.
To enjoy the light we have to experience darkness. For light, we must first know the darkness. We should not fear the dark, because we are following the light. Light is Christ. If we understand this, then we can celebrate Christ's suffering and know that we will not suffer forever. We become stronger in our faith only when we suffer as Christ.

God sent his only son to suffer for us and then rose to perfection. He will always do the same for us because He loves us. We will always be protected, loved and saved. So go to him and become his slave.

 DEACON TOM

“MY SOUL PROCLAIMS THE GREATNESS OF THE LORD

August 15^th was truly a great day indeed.  Gathering in Christian Fellowship to celebrate such a glorious solemnity dedicated to Mary the Mother of God who ascended into heaven body and soul to join her beloved son Our Lord Jesus Christ is reason enough to be elated. This is a dogma of our faith; something that we must believe in and profess in our daily lives. The Holy Family Serves as an example as to how we should conduct ourselves in our own families and relationships while Mary herself is an example of how we should love one another with the same love she had for her son Jesus Christ. Mary’s love for her son is perfect in nature. It unites the divine to the human and the human to the divine. We are encouraged to meditate on the relationship between Mary and Jesus; contemplating on how we should approach our own relationships with family, friends, and even those who we meet casually as we go about our daily activities.

 

The foundation of our faith is love and the love that God has for us as his children. Without love we have no faith and with no faith it is impossible to believe in or walk with god. Mary is our greatest intercessor and the greatest expression of Jesus’ love for us. She continues up until this present day to appear to us; bringing messages of love, prayer, and an urgent appeal for all of us to come back to the faith. She constantly speaks of Jesus’ love for us and his plans for the salvation of the world.

 

Reflect on what the Archangel Gabriel said to Mary when he first appeared to her:

 

“HAIL, FAVORED ONE, THE LORD IS WITH THEE….”

 

An archangel, the Messenger of God, addressing a woman such as Mary in that manner? The word “HAIL” itself commands a large amount of respect, honor, and dignity that the one saying the words is giving to the receiver. The individual saying the word is indicating that he or she is sub-servant to the person they are speaking to. In other words, Gabriel has indicated that he is below Mary in stature, rank, honor, greatness, and holiness. Saying that she is with god and favored also shows that Mary is in a perpetual State of Grace because she is already in possession of it and that she is also walking with God as mentioned by the angel. This wasn’t something that was earned. It was given freely by God to Mary and now she would maintain this State of Grace because she will be with the Christ from that point forward through his death and resurrection. Soon afterwards, she would join him once again.

 

When Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, the Gospel of Luke tells us that Elizabeth was “filled with the Holy Spirit” and began to speak. Being filled with the Holy Spirit and being compelled to speak indicates that it is God talking and not the person. So god spoke through Elizabeth:

 

“BLESSED ARE YOU AMONG WOMEN…”

 

God just elevated Mary above all women on the Earth. Elizabeth goes on further to call Mary,

 

“THE MOTHER OF MY LORD”

 

God himself, through Elizabeth, just called Mary the mother of God.

 

Mary the proclaims in a State of Grace and walking with God that all generations will call her blessed.

 

These are things that we must reflect on and contemplate. By the command of God and the angels we have been told to elevated Mary to a position of reverence, stature, and authority within our faith lives.

 

Ask Mary to intercede for us and have her Beloved Son enter our body, hearts, minds, and souls for our salvation and the salvation of the whole world.

 

Deacon Tom

BEARING FRUIT

In Ezekiel, The imagery put forth is at once beautiful and challenging to our faith. God emphasizes once again that He would take the smallest, most insignificant sprout from a great tree and raise it up to unprecedented heights. This will be placed on a high mountain for Israel. And from it will come fruit. Here we have a vision of Jesus Christ. Israel signifies all of us. We are the birds and the trees. Christ is the greatest of them all and his shadow will cover the entire earth. He will offer comfort, solace, and instruction. 

Through our own Salvation Story we recognize this. With Jesus Christ, all is opposite. The large tree dies. A small tree becomes much stronger. The weak are lifted up. All people are important.

   When we read Sacred Scripture, we must realize that everything leads to Jesus Christ. Our confidence is build with Jesus Christ at the top of mountain. It is the desire of God to make this so. With Jesus Christ, all is opposite. The large tree dies. A small tree becomes much stronger. The weak become strong. All people are important. This is the Christian theme and the road to salvation. Christ calls us in our weakened, sinful state and it is from there that he molds us into a new being. We are a constant work in progress that will never be complete until that fateful day when we are finally taken from this earth and are completely renewed in Jesus Christ.

When we find Christ and respond to his call for us to love him, it is a natural reaction to look at everything in a different way. This includes judging our own actions and the actions of others through a paradigm of expectation that, in the end, no one can ever live up to. We are corrupt by our very nature and struggle with our humanity every day. This struggle is not unique with each individual but it is a shared struggle with successes and failures which will encompass our entire lives. The failures must be recognized as much as the successes but with the intent to improve on them and shape them into perfection; a perfection that will not be achieved in this lifetime. It is about the journey and where we are going. From failures come wisdom and understanding that cannot be achieved any other way. We all must look towards the mountaintop for guidance because that is why it is there. If we were perfect or had that capability to make ourselves perfect then there would be no need to look to the epoch of our faith for guidance. We are not Christ and we are far from Christ-like even though there might be those who think differently. They are called hypocrites.

When we see the light on the mountain, we want to climb it. As Christians, we want to go with the Lord. It is a battle between body and soul. He is our father. Our hearts belong to Him. It is our reality.  Our soul longs to be one with our creator as Paul mentions in the reading today: 

“Yet we are courageous,
and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.
Therefore, we aspire to please him,
whether we are at home or away.”

Yet we are here amidst His creation. We are asked to enjoy it in all of its wonder and beauty but with the realization that there is more to our existence than this life alone. If we don’t, we risk the danger becoming lost while trying to climb the mountain. This must be our constant theme and constant understanding of our faith.

When we remain diligent we can find ourselves becoming stronger in our own formation. Through prayer and an active faith-life we are capable of bearing our own fruit; providing shelter and nourishment for those around us. We become exemplars of Christ; providing solace, comfort, and instruction for others who are climbing that mountain beside us. Together we achieve insurmountable greatness through our Creator and Lord. 

DISCIPLINE

A friend of mine handed me a book telling me that it would be a good book for someone within the Concord Community to read. Being in between books myself, I decided to give it a chance. Seventeen pages into it, a simple quote from the Bible stood out. It was from Timothy (4:7):

“Train yourself for devotion.”

I thought: “What a powerful statement.” It serves as a warning and words of encouragement. Paul then went on to compare the benefits of spiritual training and physical training. Each has a singular purpose: one to improve the performance of the physical body and one to improve the performance of the spiritual body in relation to God. Each can take a lot of dedication and hard work. With focus and endurance, one can witness the betterment in these areas. Regarding the physical training: the body will improve and the outcome is self-evident both in appearance and capability. In the spiritual sense, other things will happen.

The purpose here is to write about Spiritual Training. With it, our relationship with God will improve and the understanding of our faith will deepen. How are we to know our faith if we do not practice it? Familiarity comes with repetition. Knowledge deepens when we seek it. Wisdom is only revealed to those who strive for it (“For to men she is an unfailing treasure; those who gain this treasure win the friendship of God, to whom the gifts they have from discipline commend them”-Wis 4:14).

Training is not always easy. It is very hard to enjoy it, yet as improvements are revealed throught it, so will appreciation and dedication. Think about this: Are we the same as when we first came back to the Church? I would have to say obviously not. This in itself is because of training. We saw the improvements in ourselves as we committed ourselves more and more to knowing God. The challenge now is not to be satisfied with the small betterment while ignoring what we can truly gain. The book gave a perfect example:

“Jascha Heifit, the greatest violinist of this century, began playing the violin at the age of three and early began to practice four hours a day until his death at the age of 75-when he had long been the greatest in the world-some 102,000 hours of practice.”

WOW! So, with that example, we must reflect on what could we all accomplish if we just listen to what God wants us to do: walk with Jesus, live our lives according to His teachings, and learn to understand about our faith. Knowledge comes through seeking, understanding through learning, and finally Wisdom through a full awareness of each. From the small amount we each do, we have already witnessed tremendous results. So, why not more?

An inspirational story of a man who serves his community

3rd Sunday of Lent 2012

 My Brothers in Christ,

This weeks Gospel Reading is the only time where Jesus is seen losing His temper. He is visibly upset and drives the merchants out of the Temple using a whip, overturns tables, and berates all who are present. Why was this situation different? Why with all the wrongs in the world and situations that Jesus interacted with within His ministry was this circumstance so different that he actually got physical? There is a messsage here in His actions. He obviously wanted to get our attention and sometimes actions do speak louder than words. It is like Jesus has grabbed our face with His hands and put His face two inches from ours. He is trying to tell us something.

One of the biggest feasts on the Jewish Calander is the Feast of Passover. In the time of Jesus, Jews from all over the world would come to the temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrafices to God and fufill their religeous obligations. What was once a very solemn event had turned into a money-making opportunity. The Jewish Community had lost their focus and the true meaning of the ritual was lost. The temple was becoming a center of commerce. Its true purpose was blurred. What was once a testament to their faith had become a cultural center. Jesus was sending a clear message: “You have lost your focus!”

Today, Jesus is sending that message to us in the form of a warning: “Don’t lose your focus!” We have just passed the Third Sunday of Lent and our journey has just barely begun; yet with the lures of society and the lures of sin it is very easy to forget why we are here. It is very easy to forget our religeous obligations. We need to keep ourselves empty of everything except for Jesus. It must be the central aspect of this season as we journey with Him carrying our own crosses to Calvary. It is so easy at this point to throw down our cross and abandon the journey. That is what temptation is all about: we are here because we want to be here. We have responded to Jesus’ call for us to love Him. Yet, we can always ignore Him instead of confronting our own pain, sin, and short-comings. We can always forget that we are part of something far bigger than ourselves. We do not need to help our brothers and sisters and treat others as we expect to be treated: with love and compassion.

It is so easy to take the road that offers no challenges and lowers expectations. Christian Life is not easy. It is arguably the hardest life that one can choose to live; but the rewards our endless. We become one with our God and that relationship becomes so intimate and personal like no other realtionship we can ever comprehend having. Let the Holy Spirit move you and let Jesus love you. There is no better feeling than being moved by the Spirit and knowing that Jesus is with you always.

“DON’T LOSE YOUR FOCUS.”

DEACON TOM

2nd Sunday of Lent 2012

My Brothers in Christ,

 Through the Transfiguration, Jesus reveals himself to Peter, James, and John  on a mountain in all of His glory. From that point on, there is no doubt as to who He is: the Son of God. His kingship is also solitified by the presence of Moses, Elijah, and God himself.

It is important to understand why Peter, James, and John were there and no one else. It is also important to understand why Elijah and Moses were there. Peter, James, and John were the key disciples of Jesus’ “Inner Circle” of 12. After Jesus left this earth, it was Peter, James, and John who were instrumental to spreading His message of everlasting life and salvation. Peter was “The Rock” from which the Church was built upon, James brought the Faith to Spain and evangelized throughout Jerusalem. He and his brother John were known for their fiery tempers and passion for the Faith. In the end, this caused him to be the first Apostle to be martyred. John, the Apostle whom Jesus loved, was the only one who did not suffer matyrdom. He lived well into the next century until the age of 94. He was central to the founding of the Early Church at the end of the Apostolic Age. Saint Polycarp, one of the most important Bishops in the Early Church, was a disciple of John.

The signifigance of Moses and Elijah being present with Jesus in the center is an indication that Jesus is indeed the Son of God: Elijah represents all of the prophets whose messages point to Jesus’ coming and Moses represents the Law of God. Then there is God Himself reveiling Jesus as His Son.

During this Lenten Season we all can relate to the Transfiguration. As Jesus and the three climbed a mountain to its peak, we are climbing our own mountains to reach a greater glory through our own suffering and struggles. To get to the peak and to the Easter Glory that waits us, we must first challenge ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually to achieve our own Transfiguration that awaits us. Jesus is at work in all of us. We need to recognize this and let Him influence our lives. The more we ajoin ourselves to the Suffering Christ during this season the more we will understand our relationship with Christ.

There is a special kind of Grace that can only be experienced through suffering and pain. All of us here are in a unique poisition to experience it. All of us here have had something taken away from us and have experieinced a crisis in our lives that have brought us to this point. The challenge now is to let it affect us in a positive manner and to prevent it from destroying us. Through this Lenten Season we will then be able to experience our own Transfiguration and become closer to Jesus.

Yours in Christ,

Deacon Tom

Lenten Message to the Prisoners at Concord MCI

My Brothers and Sisters,

We have reached the First Sunday of Lent. Our journey together is still very fresh and very new. We haven't fully gotten to know each other but, in many ways, we are old friends. You see, there is an immediate trust between us because we are truly Brothers and Sisters through Our Lord Jesus Christ; and with that, we need to open our hearts to each other and be completely honest. That is what Jesus wants us to do.

The scripture Readings this past Sunday deal a lot with trust. In the First Reading, God renewed the world with water. Her cleansed it of its evil and brought forth a new creation. Today, the Church uses this imagery to explain our own baptism and relationship with God. God washes away our sins and cleanses our soul when we are baptized and we are then orientated towards God. As we progress through our life, we find ourselves sinning and making mistakes just as children will always do, for we are indeed Children of God. But God still gives us that opportunity to say that we are sorry; then, through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we are washed away clean again.

God further tells us today that he will never cleanse the world physically again with water. Instead, God spiritually cleanses us through baptism and keeps us clean through Reconciliation: from no hope to hope. We can always make our life new just as the Great Flood did the same to the world. The Covenant has been made, evil was punished, and we have an opportunity for salvation.

Peter mentioned this also: linking the great Flood to baptism. Water cleanses us and lifts us higher to God much the same way the arc was lifted by the floodwater. Remember, through baptism and the cleansing water of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we remain His forever. We will always be tempted to sin; that is our nature. But Jesus understands this. In His human nature Jesus was tempted also. He let this happen so as to serve as an example to us all: we all are tempted but through faith and love in Jesus Christ we can overcome these things.

Know that Jesus is with you this entire way and that I am with you always.

As I mentioned before, we all have lifted our crosses this Lenten Season and have begun walking together towards Calvary. When you get tired, talk to one another. When you grow weak, ask for help.

Remember, we all are in this together.

Deacon Tom

Season of Lent 2012

My Brothers in Christ,

With Ash Wednesday, we have entered the Season of Lent. This is a very important time in the Church and should be a very important time in all of your lives. This is a time where we should all realize that we are sinners and that we all are human. With that, our lives are hopeless and lost without Our Lord Jesus Christ. We come forward to receive the ashes on our foreheads to remind us that we are sinners and that our time on this earth is limited. We all have been born, we all have sinned, and we all are going to face the same end: death. We are then presented with a choice: Do we live our lives with Jesus and his meassage of forgiveness and salvation or do we turn our backs on Him and face the consenquinces of a death without forgiveness and eternal life? It cannot be made planer than this: Do we walk with Jesus or without Jesus?

During this Season of Lent, we are encouraged to focus on the Human Jesus Christ; the Jesus Christ who suffered and died for our sins. This same Jesus is the one took up his cross for us and journeyed towards Calvary for us because of our sinful nature. As we try to picture this event, we must also reflect on our own sins and the struggles we encounter in our own lives. Jesus truly shares in these struggles and the pain that they bring. We are never alone in this life: JESUS IS WITH US THE WHOLE WAY. Lent serves as areminder of this. To truly experience our faith we must reflect on this for the entire season of Lent. Through this exercise we will become closer to Jesus and our faith. There is an exchange of feeling and love: we feel Jesus’ pain and torment during his crucifixtion and he feels ours as we journey through this life. No one is without hardship, pain, and suffering; NOT EVEN JESUS.

In the end, we form a bond with Jesus because of this shared experience. Jesus knows that this life is hard. Jesus knows that we all suffer on one level or another. Yes, we all sin. No one does not sin. The first person who tells you otherwise or judges your is a hypocrite. Jesus says this himself. The only way to overcome our sinful nature is to come forward, admit our sin, and beg Jesus for forgiveness. If we do this, if we beg for forgiveness, it will be given. Jesus has never turned away anybody who has asked for forgivesness.

Lent is the season of new beginnings and forgiveness. It is a time when we confront ourselves, admit we have done wrong, then throw our sins away in the garnage and being anew.  I invite you all to do this. Join me in prayer, celebration, and redemption and Brothers and Sisters through our Lord Jesus Christ.

As the ashes are placed on your forehead, remember, YOUR JOURNEY BEINGS TODAY!!!!!

Yours in Christ,

Deacon Tom.