From the Pastor

I know we are all planning New Year Resolutions soon to be broken and  somewhat forgotten.  What were the ones we made last year?  Well this year here is a little poem by Lori J. Batcheller and I like  it for the New Year and I hope you do too.

Make your own rainbow
And spread your own smile
You alone have the power
To make life worthwhile.

Stretch out your arms
To someone in need;
Lend them your shoulder
Help them plant a seed.

Each day act in kindness
To those whom you meet.
They too may be searching
Their souls may be beat.

Find your own purpose
Though it may seem small;
Look for a future
In which you’ll stand tall.

Life passes to quickly
To waste any day;
Make each moment special
You do know the way.

Rev. Msgr. Hugh Marren

On Friday next, we celebrate the Feast of Christmas.  Of all the festive days of the year, we might say that Christmas is the brightest and the most gladsome.  It’s a time for joy and happiness.  We have learned to love virtually everything about it, its music, its lights, the giving and receiving of gifts, the companionship of friends and the warmth of home and family life.
Yes we have come a long way from the celebration of the first Christmas.  Except for the Angels singing in the countryside, there was little music to be heard.  The child Jesus was not born into a welcoming society.  There was no red carpet or welcoming committee to greet him.  There wasn’t even an open door through which he might enter and take shelter.  There simply was NO ROOM.
The joy and happiness which we experience during this time of year has definitely been forged in the crucible of hardship and sufferings but we seldom reflect on this side of the story as we join in the festivities of the Season.  And what about some of our Christmas Music.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, named after his mother’s brother Henry Wadsworth, was the second of eight children and is one of America’s greatest poets.  As a young man he was known to be very studious.  Having graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825, he decided to travel to Europe to study French, Spanish, and Italian.  While in Spain, he learned that his favorite sister, Elizabeth, had died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty.
Having returned from Europe, he married a childhood friend by the name of Mary Storer Potter in 1831.  By 1834 Longfellow is seen as one of the country’s most respected scholars.  Everything seemed to be going his way.  He was offered and had accepted a professorship at Harvard, yet in November 1835, his world would fall apart with the tragic death of his wife at the age of twenty-two.  Deeply saddened by her death he writes,”One thought occupies me night and day…She is dead…She is dead!  All day I am weary and sad.”
In an effort to deal with his loss he poured himself into his work of teaching and writing.  He began to date Frances Appleton, whom he married in 1843.  Together they had six children.  The good life seemed to have returned.  Publishing such classics as the Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline.  Both fame and fortune had found him but it was not to last.
In 1861 Frances was to die tragically in a fire and Longfellow nearly lost his own life trying to save her.  He was burned so much over his own body; he could not even attend her funeral.  Divested by her death he worried he would go insane and begged not to be sent to an asylum and noted he was “inwardly bleeding to death”.  But before he could regain himself that same year the Civil War broke out tearing the nation apart.  Longfellow hated war.
His son Charles hopped aboard a train to join President Lincoln’s Army.  Wounded in battle, he was taken to Washington where his father joined him.  As Longfellow tended his son’s injuries, he saw many other wounded soldiers and visited with families who had lost loved ones and asked the question, “Where is Peace?”  Picking up his pen on December 25th, he gives vent to his feelings in the plaintive carol that we have come to know as “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”.
In the beginning of the carol the poet, out of his own suffering, feels like dropping his head in despair but then he hears the Christmas bells and their triumphant pealing stirs his faith and reminds him that

‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep!
The wrong shall fail;
The right prevails.
With peace on earth, good will to men!’

Yes today like Christmas itself, we enjoy the carol but behind it is a life of suffering of both a family and a nation.

Rev. Msgr. Hugh Marren

In 1992, or there about, on Christmas Eve, Pope John Paul II gave a talk in Pope Paul VI Audience Hall.  The talk was entitled “May Life Always Receive a Welcome”.

The Pope spoke of an ancient custom of setting an extra place at the table, to remind the family to welcome and make room for Christ.  He then added,  “Let us have an extra place at the table for the unknown guest, but we know this guest.  We know the guest even if still awaited and is only about to be born.  In fact in the baby, who is not yet born, not yet revealed, there is Jesus who found the doors of Bethlehem and Nazareth closed against Him.”

The Bible makes it clear that God is love and that at the Last Judgment we will be judged on the virtue of love.  How then do you think we will fare in light of the following observation “I was not yet born and you did not allow me to be born, you did not accept me.”  A rather frightening reflection you might say.

The people of America have always responded with great generosity to the needs of crises around the world from the great famine of Ethiopia through the most recent tsunamis.

There is no doubt that modern media has helped to generate this generous response.  When through television we witness hunger malnutrition, nakedness and starvation.  It is difficult for us to stand by and not want to help.  When we see it before our eyes it is difficult to deny the facts.

Today, there is a great thirst to know, to witness and to see.  That is why we have journalists embedded with our military.

Along this line, then I might ask, and wonder how many people have watched a video on abortion and its realities.  If you have not, then I believe you should.  In fact, it might be good for you to write down your thoughts before and then after watching it.  Abortion is the sin and sickness of the present generation and no one of us can become indifferent to it.

While sitting in a Birmingham jail,  Rev. Martin Luther King wrote a famous letter in which he explained how early Christians rejoiced that they were able to suffer for the faith.  He wrote, “In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular belief, it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

St. Paul in writing to the Romans put it this way, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  Romans 12:2

The Rev. Martin Luther King went on to say “If the Church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions and be dismissed as an irrelevant social fan club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”

Well across much of Europe, the Church today, is not even a social fan club.  The fact of the matter is simply this.  Our Catholic Church is not a fan club, we are Church or we are nothing and as Church we must be willing to sacrifice in order to protect human life including the unborn for they no less than us are also fashioned in the image and likeness of God.   “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.  Before you were born, I set you apart for my holy purpose.  I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”  Jeremiah 1:5

Rev. Msgr. Hugh Marren

What are they saying, only one more day until Christmas, not quite yet, there are still quite a few days left.  But before we lose our balance in all that noise of the public square here’s a little reflection by J.J. Hoff to help you keep your balance and keep you focused on what it’s all about.

My Child, I’ve often heard your question:  This
message is my answer.

You’re concerned about the hungry in the world,
millions who are starving…and you ask, “What
can I do?”  FEED ONE

You grieve for all the unborn children murdered
every day…and you ask:  “What can I do?”
SAVE ONE

You’re haunted by the homeless poor who wander
city streets…and  you ask: “What can I do?”
SHELTER ONE

You feel compassion for those who suffer pain,
sorrow and despair…and you ask: “What can I do?”
COMFORT ONE

Your heart goes out to the lonely, the abused and
the imprisoned…and you ask: “what can I do?”
LOVE ONE

Remember this, my child…two thousand years ago
the world was filled with those in need, just as it is
today, and when the helpless and the hopeless
called out to Me for mercy, I sent a Savior…
HOPE BEGAN WITH ONLY ONE!

Rev. Msgr. Hugh Marren