Dear Friends of Resurrection Catholic Missions,
There have been a few movies over the past several years where God was one of the featured characters. When I’ve seen them, I wasn’t looking for any deep theological insights. Like anyone else, I was just looking for a couple of hours of entertainment.
But in one of those movies, God says something that struck me because it is so true. He told the main character that people on earth spend too much time looking up and not enough looking around. Another way to put it is that while most of the time we may think of God on a heavenly throne, surrounded by angels, doing miraculous things, that isn’t the message of Jesus.
Jesus became one of us and lived our life joys and sorrows. He used images of real people to explain His Father to us – a farmer sowing his crops, a father waiting for his son to return, a woman turning her house upside down to find a lost coin. He used the basics of our existence – food and drink – to reveal Himself and His mission. Finally, He shed His human blood and died a painful human death.
Throughout the Church year we use tangible things as well. We use bread and wine each day to have Christ present among us. We bless ourselves and baptize with water. We use salt and oil. We hold palm branches. We put ashes on our foreheads.
We call this Incarnational, becoming flesh. Our faith is not just in spirit. It is in things we can touch. And most importantly, it is in loving and serving one another as Jesus taught us. He told us very clearly that we will be judged by one standard: what have you done for the least among you? Don’t keep looking up. Look around.
That is what you keep doing for us month after month, year after year. You look and see young children yearning for a strong Catholic education to put them on the right track. You see elderly people who need assistance and a friendly face in their loneliness. You see children smiling through significant physical disabilities. In each of these faces, you see Jesus Himself.
Your faith in Resurrection Catholic Missions of the South, your prayers and your support, helps me to see Him in those faces, even on difficult days. And though I can’t see your faces, I feel the love of God in your gifts. Won’t you help us once again?
During this Lent, let us pray together for real contrition, real conversion of our hearts so that together on Easter Sunday we may share fully in the joy of Christ’s victory over sin and death. And as always, you, your families, and your intentions will be especially remembered in our Masses and prayers here at the Mission.
Sincerely yours in the Resurrection,
Fr. Manuel Williams, C.R.
Mission Director