Dear Parisioners,

After Jesus heard about the death of John the Baptist, He went to a deserted place to pray but the crowds followed Him.  They wanted to hear Him speak and see miraculous things. We are like the crowds of Jesus’ time in that we are searching for answers and desire to know that God remains with us.  Jesus will always respond to our needs and concerns in the same way that He responded to the crowds who followed Him.  He is moved with compassion as He observes our struggles and concerns.

During these most difficult times, we especially need to be comforted by the healing presence of the Lord and just as He nourished the crowd in the Gospel, with His word and physically fed the five thousand people, He will nourish us with the Scriptures and feed us with His Body and Blood.  As we hunger for the Eucharist, it is important to reflect on this most precious gift that sustains us on our journey through this life to our eternal reward.

As we reflect on what we heard last week about the buried treasure and the fine pearl, we realize that the Eucharist is that precious gift that we are willing to sell everything that we own in order to receive it.  When we are unable to be physically nourished by the Eucharist, it is important to pause and reflect on the reality of this Eucharistic Fast so that we have a greater appreciation, understanding, and desire to receive this most precious gift. 

Jesus nourished the crowds with His Word and He will always nourish us in the same way.
 
Fr. George P. Blais

Dear Parisioners,

In these past weeks, we have heard Jesus teaching with the use of parables to help us understand that we are the good seed that God has planted in the world to produce abundant good fruit.  Working together we can make a difference in the world and defeat the evil seed that has been planted by the devil.  

This week, Jesus transitions His teaching to give us an image of what the Kingdom of God is like.  The two images that He describes are the buried treasure and the fine pearls which are so valuable that a person is willing to sell everything they own in order to purchase the treasure or the fine pearl.  This tells us that the Kingdom of God, or heaven, is the most precious and valuable gift that anyone could imagine or receive, and this is what we live our lives for.  We are on that journey to claim our place in the Kingdom of God.

The final image in today’s Gospel is that of collecting things from the bottom of a lake and then sorting the valuable from the things that are not valuable.  He tells us that at the end of time, we will be separated, the good from the bad, and the good will be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven while the bad will be thrown into the fiery furnace to be burned for all eternity.  

These images are powerful in that they call us to reflect on the great gift of Heaven and our salvation, the gift of eternal life.  I pray today and always that we may all recognize the most precious gift of “eternal life” and not only journey towards that reality, but also help others to recognize and embrace this most precious of all gifts.

In these difficult times, it is easy to lose sight of the ultimate gift of heaven because of the darkness and despair that surrounds us; however, God remains with us and Jesus shows us the way to the Father.  Let us pick up our cross and the burdens that occupy our lives and follow Jesus to our eternal reward in Heaven.

Fr. George P. Blais