From the Pastor's Desk | February 16, 2025

Parish Mission

Our collaborative parish mission with St. Mary, Williamston, Encountering Jesus in the Eucharist, will be held March 16 and 17.  Please mark your calendars and plan on attending!  It will prove spiritually fruitful.  Fr. Luke Ferris, a priest of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin and National Eucharistic Revival Preacher will preach and lead us into ever deeper discipleship through the Eucharist.  I am looking forward to this very much and hope to see you there!  

Sunday, March 16 @ St. Martha: 
5:00 pm Mass
6:30 pm Opening Prayer and Adoration 
7:00 pm Fr. Luke Ferris
7:45 pm Questions and Answers 
8:00-8:30 pm Fellowship and Refreshments  
Confessions available beginning around 7:45 pm 

Monday, March 17 @ St. Mary, Williamston: 
6:30 pm Opening Prayer Adoration 
7:00 pm Fr. Luke Ferris 
7:45 pm Questions and Answers
8:00-8:30 pm Fellowship and Refreshments
Confessions available beginning around 7:45 pm

Seminarians

This past week, I accompanied our Vocations Director, Fr. Michael Cassar, to lead a group of prospective seminarians (high school juniors and seniors) on a visit to St. John Vianney College Seminary on the campus of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul/Minneapolis.  We flew out Thursday and came back on Saturday.  I’m thankful the deacons preached this weekend!  Please continue to pray for an increase of vocations to the priesthood and religious life.  As I preached a couple of weeks, we ought to be encouraging vocations within our families! 

Gospel Reflection

Blessed are they who hope in the Lord!  So we pray in our responsorial Psalm today.  As defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, hope “is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in God’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817).  More broadly, hope is both a desire for something and the expectation of obtaining it.  

The question before us as we ponder and pray into the readings this weekend is, simply, where is our hope directed?  Or, more accurately, what is the object of our hope?  We call this particular virtue a theological virtue because the object of hope is God himself.  But, is it really?  Practically, do our lives demonstrate a hope that has, as its object, God himself?  Or, do our lives demonstrate that we are clinging to straw?  

In our first reading, the Lord is very explicit with the prophet Jeremiah.  “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks strength in his flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.  He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth” (Jer. 17:5).  In our Gospel, Luke gives us an abbreviated version of the Beatitudes (the fuller text is found in the Gospel of Matthew).  Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the persecuted.  Luke follows these blessings with a list of woes or warnings.  Woe to you who are rich, satisfied, laughing, spoken well of.

For those of us who know and experience spiritual, emotional, physical, or mental anguish (and my guess is many or most of us have experiences of this pain and anguish), it can be easy to place our hope in the things of this world.  It is easy to lean on a friend risking dependency or codependency.  It is easy to lean on the government to solve all of our personal and social ills.  It is easy to lean into the satisfaction of material possessions or the pursuit of honor and respect to make us feel good about ourselves.

The things of this world - the things that we lean into for comfort, satisfaction, pleasure, perceived happiness - are fleeting.  They will not last.  Jesus reminds us that, “Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).  What are the Lord’s words?  His promise of salvation and eternal life.  It is precisely in the Lord’s promise of salvation that we place our hope.

Many of the Israelites did not see the Promised Land, yet they held onto the promise.  Many of the Israelites suffered great persecution at the hands of their enemies, yet they held onto the promise.  The prophets proclaimed the promise but did not see it themselves.  For generation after generation the promise of a messiah was their only hope.  And, in time, that promise was fulfilled.  God proved to us that he keeps his promises.  

For those of us who live in these end days, the time after Christ, we hold onto the same promise - the promise that, through Christ, an eternal dwelling has been prepared for us.  We hold onto the same promise that Saints Peter, Paul, Augustine, Kolbe, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, and all the great saints before us held onto.  As good or as bad as this life can be, it is passing away.  Our hope must remain fixed on Jesus and the promise made to us through the shedding of his blood.  

As we pray today, let us strive to make God and his promise the object of our hope.  

Know of my prayers for you all!            
Fr. Ryan