It's the amazing of faith of ordinary people that nourishes you in the parish ministry. It is such a strong encouragement and such an honor to give it reverence that sometimes I almost feel bad for those who don't have this in their daily lives, especially priests.
Today has been a good example. At Mass this morning I noticed the mother of one of the first brides I worked with here at the parish. After Mass I asked her how the newly married were doing. As it turned out, they had recently suffered through the death of their first child, who was only five months old. They had planned a fundraiser for the rare disease he had, but the baby died before it was held. They went ahead with the event anyway, and raised a lot of money for research. As the mother related it to me, their baby's death--even in the intensity of their grief--would be redeemed as an opportunity for increasing awareness of his disease and raising money to find a cure.
By our baptism we are baptized into the death and Resurrection of Christ, and by our Holy Communion that same Body of Christ, broken, sacrificed, and raised, embeds Himself in our lives. The faith of these folks is an example of how the paschal mystery comes to be incarnate in the world: the mystery of Christ by which death, robbed of its power, is transformed to life.
2 comments:
Ouch. A reminder of the choice I did not make. Any idea of what the disease was?
Sometimes we're too hard on ourselves about choices in the past; often we made the best choice we could at the time and under the pressures of that moment. What matters most are the choices we can make now. Peace.
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