Pastor’s Letter & October 18 Bulletin

Pastor’s Letter & October 18 Bulletin

16 Oct 2020 | Posted by: chadmin

The October 18 bulletin is available online.

There will be a second collection this weekend for World Mission Sunday, when the global Church supports mission priests, religious and lay leaders providing loving service to those most in need. If you desire to write a check, please make it payable to St. Philomena. If you’d like to give online, go to the top of this page and click on the green DONATE button. Choose Second Collection as the fund and Mission Sunday as the sub fund. Thank you for your consideration. 

Dear friend,

In this weekend’s reading from Isaiah, the Lord says, “I have called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not.” The Church has many roles within society and operates as a voice that speaks to many life situations. One of the principal beliefs we have about the Church is that she is the deposit of faith to which we can go to learn and understand Divine Revelation. The Bible, along with all Church teaching is seen as the faith teachings that guide our way of living. For us Catholics, we believe the deposit of faith to be true, no matter if another believes it or not. This goes for the existence of God, His love exemplified in Creation, the beauty and power of the Sacraments, and the immortal soul that is the core of each of our identities. In this passage to Isaiah, God makes the point for His initiating the call to all persons, no matter if we know Him or not, whether we believe in God’s existence or not. The truths are our faith are not true just because someone believes them, they are true because they are true. A big part of the subjective spiritual journey we all endeavor in this life, is understanding and incorporating God’s truth into our lives. This can be a challenging and at times uncomfortable education. We have all grown in our understanding of God over time, and as the great saints show us, no one person has a fullness of understanding of God’s existence this side of heaven. As we grow in our understanding of Divine realities, may the Lord give us humble hearts to see what He sees, to believe what he reveals.

The Gospel reading this weekend holds one of the more famous entrapments of speech in the Bible. It was common practice in First Century Israel for the Jewish people to pay taxes to the Roman Empire, who occupied Israel. The taxes were paid with the currency of the Roman Empire. There was deep political and religious rejection of the Roman’s occupation of Israel and the mandate of paying tax. Refusal to pay tax would mean punishment from Rome which might include exclusion from permission to practice the Jewish faith in the Temple. With the Roman occupation, permission to enter and use the Temple was controlled by the Romans. The Pharisees, one of the Jewish leadership groups, along with the Herodians, those that served the will of King Herod, plotted together to entrap Jesus in speech. On its surface, the question posed to Jesus is quite clever. Jesus is given the option to renounce God or renounce the authority of Rome. The famous response of Jesus to “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God,” invites us to assent that God-given reason allows each human person to choose for one’s self what we say “yes” or “no” to. Our personal ability to reason comes from our creation and from the powers bestowed on us by God, whether we know it or not. Christ calls us to use our reason to apply revealed truths by God to our daily lives. The process is one that never ceases to develop in every human being. May the Lord give us all the wisdom to continue this intellectual and spiritual journey while celebrating and encouraging the freedom of every other person to do the same. Have a great week.

God bless,

Father David