From the pastor’s desk—Feb. 6, 2022

Dear Sacred Heart Family,

The Story of the Hurricane

We hear in the first reading I am here with you to deliver you God is with us and promises to deliver us from those who fight against us. This is what we hear with Jesus, His own people don’t like what He said and so they drag Him out of the city, where they took all the people they wanted to kill and today God delivers Him from them and He passed somehow through their midst… and many times with prayer we are delivered from the middle of our problems.

But you might also be thinking, well if God promises to deliver us, why did He let Jesus be crucified? It is like when we have problems, maybe with a brother or sister, a spouse or a boss that picks on us and we pray for God to deliver us but it seems He doesn’t listen to us, it seems He doesn’t hear us. Or when we are facing sickness, cancer or covid and we pray for deliverance but it doesn’t come… and we say to ourselves, God I prayed but you didn’t save me, or you didn’t save my spouse….but sometimes God delivers and protects us in the same way He did His Son, at the end Jesus was not delivered from the cross but He was delivered from death, He was delivered from much more than the cross, He was delivered from this life into a fuller life with God.

We will not be saved from every illness, we will all die some day and for those of us with faith, we know on that day we who follow the words of St Paul will be delivered from the worst of things that can happen in life….not hurricanes or bullies but from death, from eternal separation from God… if we live the words of St Paul, the deliverance begins now….it begins with love…. And Paul reminds us love has many faces love is patience that delivers us from impatience, love is kindness that delivers us from meanness, love is the trust that delivers us from envy and jealousness…love is the forgiveness that delivers us from the vicious cycle of retribution and always getting even.

Some look at this cross and see suffering and pain, some see the shame of a man hanging in capital punishment almost naked, but God has delivered me from such a small view of what is happening here , because with the right eyes this is the picture of love poured out for us, the picture of love poured out for me, the same love that He pours into this Eucharist we will share and that He asks us to share, as we love one another, and as we share this love, we are surrounded by His love and delivered into the hands of the one who will never let evil prevail over us because Love never fails.

With a heart for Mission,
Fr. Ray