I made the following announcement at the beginning of all the Masses this Sunday:
I have some news to share with you this morning.
As you are well aware, for more than 2 years we have been engaged in a planning process—one that’s taking place all across our Diocese. It has been a difficult task.
As you are well aware, for more than 2 years we have been engaged in a planning process—one that’s taking place all across our Diocese. It has been a difficult task.
I come today to tell you that Bishop LaValley has approved
the plan we proposed to him. Most
significantly, that means that St. John Bosco Church will become an oratory—remaining
a place of prayer, but where Sunday Mass is no longer celebrated—and St.
Joseph’s Church will close permanently.
This is not easy news to have to share. This is a very sad loss—not only for those of you who are
attached to these two particular church buildings, but for all the Catholics of
Malone—your priests included. We
were not ordained in hopes of spending our priesthood realigning parishes and
closing churches.
Bishop LaValley will be coming to Malone on Sunday, April
22, to celebrate the last Sunday Mass at St. John Bosco. He will be returning the evening of Tuesday,
May 1—the feast of St. Joseph the Worker—to celebrate the last Mass at St. Joseph’s.
All of our registered parishioners will receive a mailing in
the next several days, including a letter from our Bishop and details about his
visits. Copies of these will also
be made available in our churches.
The Church wears rose-colored vestments this Fourth Sunday of
Lent as a sign of her joy on reaching the midway point to Easter. The first words of the Mass, as we just
sang in our Entrance Antiphon, boldly proclaim: Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all you who love her. Be
joyful, all you who were in mourning…
In light of this announcement, those words can seem a cruel
irony. But I think that they actually
hold an important message for us at this crossroads.
It can be awfully tempting at a time like this to focus only on
what’s being lost. That, of
course, would be to miss the bigger picture. The whole point of having a plan is to set our sights on the
future. Committing ourselves to
working toward a brighter tomorrow, as did those who built our churches years ago—that is the very best way to honor the rich legacy of our past.
As we especially remember at this time of year: with the
Lord, there is no death without the joyful promise of resurrection.
In recent days, the comforting words of a familiar hymn have kept ringing in
my ears: O God our help in ages
past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the
stormy blast, and our eternal home.
The Lord remains ever faithful—no matter what. May he increase our faith that he is
very near to us, now and always.
Fourth Sunday of Lent B
John 3:16.
Anyone who’s watched an NFL game knows that scripture citation. Now, you may not know what it says, but
you know the chapter and verse.
It’s likely the most commonly quoted line in the entire Bible, and it’s
at the heart of the passage we’ve just heard: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. John 3:16 has rightly been called “the gospel
in a nutshell.”
Chronicles is the very last book in the Jewish Bible. What we read today are its very last
verses. And I’m going to guess
that the anonymous author of Chronicles must have failed creative writing class,
because the original ending of his book is absolutely horrible!
We’re told that God’s people—from the nobles and priests on
down—had “added infidelity to infidelity,” picking up all the wicked ways of
the peoples who lived around them.
Now, God had chosen them to be a light in the world: to be different
from all the rest; to lead other nations to him. Instead, they kept showing how much they preferred what they
could do with their neighbors in the darkness—how much they wanted to be just
like everybody else.
So how does God respond? Out of his deep compassion he patiently kept sending his
people messengers—the prophets. “Early
and often,” we’re told, did the Lord reach out, giving them plenty of time to
change their hearts and to change their ways. But they mocked his messengers, despised
his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets.
Having exhausted all other options, God allows the people’s faithlessness
to reach its logical conclusion. The
nations that Israel should have been converting now turn on it. The Babylonians brutally attack Jerusalem. They burn down the temple, tear down the
city walls, kill many, and carry off those who remain as captives into exile.
The result will be more than a brief “time out.” Interestingly, we’re told that the land
must retrieve “its lost sabbaths.” One of the people’s most grievous sins was failing to keep
holy the Lord’s Day. Because they
didn’t heed the Lord’s command concerning the seventh day, now the Promised
Land would enjoy a sabbath rest in their absence for seventy long years.
God’s people must have been asking
themselves: Where is the Lord? How could he let this happen? It’s the Lord’s own temple that’s been
destroyed! It’s the Lord’s own land
that’s been left in ruins! It’s
the Lord’s own people that have been killed and captured!
This Sunday’s psalm is their lament in captivity: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and
wept. We hung our harps up in the
trees for we were unable to sing.
What they’re expressing here, it seems to me, is more than understandable grief. It’s a stubborn refusal to experience joy. They have been so focused
on the glories of their past that they can’t see how God is working among them
right now, or where he might be leading them in the future.
But with the Lord there’s always more to the story. As the Hebrew Bible slowly took shape,
editors added two more verses to the end of Chronicles—the very same two verses
we find at the beginning of the Book of Ezra. They tell us that Cyrus, king of Persia, issues a decree:
all the people of Israel are now free to return home. Even more, Cyrus commissions them to rebuild the temple, and
he will (we’re told elsewhere) go so far as to provide the resources to do it.
It would be easy enough when considering this story—along with
its parallels both throughout history and in our very own lives—and think that
it’s evidence that God can and does fall in and out of love with his us…just as
we do with one another, and just as we do with him. How else do you explain their destruction and exile? How else do you explain our own
suffering and loss?
But that would be to miss the point entirely!
God does not abandon his people—never has, never
will—despite how things sometimes feel.
The Lord remains faithful, even when we do not. That’s because love isn’t something God
does; love is who God is. God is love—eternal love, unchanging
love.
As Jesus reminds Nicodemus, God’s purpose is not to condemn
the world, but to save it. When
God’s anger is inflamed, it’s not out of thirst for vengeance, nor is it aimed
at destruction. Rather, it’s God’s
passion to set things right again.
Believe it or not, it’s just another expression of God’s merciful love. Sometimes, things reach a point when
only drastic measures will work—when only radical surgery will bring about true
healing; when something old must be torn down in order for something new to be
built up; when something must first die before it can rise again. As the old proverb says, “The darkest
hour is just before the dawn.”
Divine purification is most generally a painful process, but it’s an
absolutely essential one.
Israel’s restoration after exile comes about in a way no one
ever saw coming. They’re returned
to their homeland by a foreign—pagan—king: a worshipper of other gods; the
conqueror of their conquerors.
Cyrus’ motives were likely mixed, at best—but God can make use even of
these. The Lord’s will will be
done.
Jesus calls to mind another unexpected turn in his people’s
history. (You might say that such
twists are one of God’s specialties.)
The Israelites are wandering forty years in the desert, and all along
the way they grumble against God and against Moses. They doubt the Lord’s good intentions toward them. In light of this breach of confidence,
this breaking of faith, poisonous snakes are sent among the people and, as a
result, many of them die.
The people recognize their sin, and the Lord hears their
cries. He directs Moses to make a
serpent out of bronze and mount it on a pole. The Lord promises that any of those who have been bitten
have only to look upon the bronze serpent to be healed. You can imagine their reaction: Really? Another snake? You want me to look what’s
killing me in the eye?
But as God so often does, the thing that seems to us a harsh
chastisement turns out to be the very thing that saves us. And it’s precisely thus that you and I
must face the Cross. God constantly
keeps before our eyes a vivid reminder of what sin really does. Jesus will endure what our sins
deserve—and, in so doing, save us from them. In Jesus, God descends into our human suffering—as low as he
could go—in order to lift us up from it.
Our parish finds itself in a moment of real sadness and loss. In times like these, it’s easy enough
to ask, “Where is God?” However
suffering comes to us—and come to us it does—we must trust that the same God
who has brought us to it will also, always, see us through it. For
God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the
world might be saved through him.
No—God doesn’t condemn us.
But we do condemn ourselves if we won’t allow God’s love—in its most
mysterious disguise—to work in our hurt and in our sorrow.
If The Malone
Telegram’s “Today in History” column is to be believed, we have a most
remarkable coincidence this weekend.
For it was precisely on March 10, 515 years before Christ, that the new
temple in Jerusalem was completed after Israel’s exile.
You see, the sad end of Chronicles was not the end of the story,
because God is always faithful. The
Lord’s love knows no end.
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