Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 25, 2011

My Dear Parishioners,

This past Monday evening, I was invited to a parishioner’s home where one of the Arise groups was meeting for the first time this fall. I believe there were 12 people there, six couples. The theme for the evening was the Virtue of Hope. Everyone in the group spoke about the need for hope in their lives and what hope meant to them.

This weekend I thought maybe we could reflect on the need of hope for all of us. St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, speaks of the three great virtues. He names these virtues as faith, hope and love. So if we think about it, to have hope we certainly need a healthy faith which will lead us into the virtue of hope.

Hope, in the dictionary of the liturgy, is defined as the firm expectation of a future possible good. Christian hope is the fulfillment of the Israelite expectation for the coming of the Messiah into the world; not a human action, but the all-powerful presence of God in the world. At every Mass, we affirm that we hope to enjoy forever the vision of God’s glory. So perhaps this weekend, within our prayer lives and within our struggles, we can place our trust in God. In Him is the gift of hope we received through the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, by the way, at the Arise meeting, one of our human hopes was realized when we shared a wonderful meal.

Fr. Leroy