Pastor’s Letter July 23, 2023

Pastor’s Letter July 23, 2023

21 Jul 2023 | Posted by: chadmin

The July 23 bulletin can be found online.

Dear friend,

The passage this weekend from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans reads, “Brothers and sisters, the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.  And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.”  These two simple lines invite us into St. Paul’s understanding of the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Paul know that we are all weak.  He knows that we are sinners and imperfect.  Paul knows that we all need help.  Paul is simply stating that he has experienced the promise of Jesus fulfilled, that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to be our helper and guide.  Not only does the Spirit provide God’s help, or grace, but searches the mind and heart to know the intention of the human heart.  This process is the form of prayer that helps each “pray-er” to grow in communion with God.  We each received the gifts of the Holy Spirit at Baptism.  These gifts were fully sealed within us at Confirmation.  The words of St. Paul are a reminder to lean on the Holy Spirit; to trust that the Holy Spirit is in fact communicating the Father’s truth to us while speaking on our behalf to the Father.  This great gift of the Spirit calls us to search our own hearts with Him to grow in authentic union with God each day.

The parable of the wheat and the weeds this week invites us to reflect on the challenge of evil in the world.  The seed sown by God is to produce good wheat in the field of the farmer.  The key question in the parable is “why does God allow the weeds to grow along with the wheat?”  The wheat represents the children of God while the weeds represent the children of the evil one.  The weeds appear with the wheat and the assumption is made that an enemy to the famer has sabotaged the field.  The landowner, God in the parable, chooses to let the evil weeds grow along with the wheat, in order to not hurt wheat.  Christ says that you can’t uproot the weeds without also uprooting the wheat.  Jesus makes the point that God can’t take away our free will and force evil to stop in the world without it affecting our freedom to choose doing good.  The words of Christ give us God’s perspective on permitting evil in the world, despite the negative affect.  All of us would remove evil from the world if we could.  We would all control the outcome of life situations, especially medical ones, if we could.  God’s love is shown in the gift of freedom and His unwillingness to control the created world.  Despite the problems and the evil in the world, God calls us to use our freedom to choose the good while patiently suffering the world’s evils.  This is one of the principal models in the life of Jesus.  May the Lord give us the strength to resist anything that would keep us from union with God and patiently endure the things we can’t change, especially the result of people choosing evil actions.  May the Lord continue to guide thoughts and actions toward holiness.

God bless,

Father David