 Fr.
Tom's Tomes January 3, 2010
Have you still been practicing your New Year’s resolution? With
only a few days of the new year gone it seems at times people will have forgotten their resolutions. Resolutions can come and go.
However, this year maybe one of the resolutions we make should be to deepen our faith and knowledge of God’s love. To assist in
giving some ideas of how to deepen our gift of faith a person could come to Mass one more time during the week than you are now
doing, making time to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation once every 4 to 6 weeks, making a holy hour once a week, making time
on the First Fridays of the month to pray before the Blessed It is my hope when Fr. Michael comes he will be able to offer some classes on the Catholic faith in the daytime or evening. I am hoping he will be able to do something during the season of Lent for adults to attend to grow in their faith. With the completion of the Advent Season we can not loose sight of the fact it was a season of preparing for the second coming of Christ. To become lukewarm in our faith leads a person to being mediocre in their relationship with God. We do not want this to happen. Christ wants us to be strong and vigilant in our knowledge of love of God. Today we celebrate the feast of Epiphany. This feast recalls Christ manifesting himself to the magi from a far. Christ wants all people to know him. People in our world today continue to share the knowledge of their faith with others. Catholics at times are afraid to do this. Catholics however are good witnesses of their faith by living it out. Many times in talking with people who come into the Catholic Church through the RCIA they say they did so because of the examples of Catholics they know. What a powerful statement this is. It is not so much in just talking about our faith but it is in living it out. If every Catholic person would take the time to live out their faith daily by following what it means to be a Catholic this would be a great way to spread the good news about our faith. As we begin this new calendar year I invite parents to be sure their children are attending religious education either through attending Bishop Hogan school which is the Catholic School for our parish or through the children attending the religious education program on Wednesday nights. It is important for all children to be attending religious education classes because to grow in faith a child needs to know and understand their faith. It is necessary to attend classes to study about what we as Catholics understand our faith to teach us. Faith is not just what we want to believe. Faith is being led in truth through the understanding of the Scriptures, Tradition, and Teachings of the Catholic Church. God bless you this week. |