The Church is our Home

“The chapel at Sheldon Point was especially dear to me, because that part of the land is easily the most desolate.  It is a piece of land that juts into the Bering Sea and is surrounded by absolutely barren flats...In the afternoons the children were gathered for catechism and stories.  In the winter we huddled around the stove, in the summer we would go out on the grass, avoiding ponds and mud.  In the evenings I built a fire and sat close to the altar to transact business with the Lord.  If there wasn’t something specific to transact, I just sat there loving Him in silence.  If I tired of sitting and kneeling, I got up and walked back and forth.  That place was loved by the Lord, so it should be loved by me to.”
(Memoirs of a Yokon Priest)

This place is loved by the Lord, and it should be loved by us too.  How do you we know this.  Well first and foremost we have the Eucharist, present in our tabernacle, present in our adoration chapel.  This alone is enough to prove the Lord’s love for this place.  But we have even more.  We have generations of families that call this their home.  We have a remarkable school.  We have a bustling campus that is used everyday.  There are many ways that the Lord shows his love for Blessed Sacrament.

How do we show our love?

This is really what the church asks of us.  To see this place as a home, an earthly dwelling, and to treat it accordingly.  To care for the buildings and the land.  To respond to the needs of the community as we would our own family.  To be hospitable to the visitor.  To gather here together.  We are called to love this place because the Lord loves it, and love is sacrifice.

I leave the answer to that question to you.  It’s yours to answer, because the Lord has given you each what you can offer.  I will continue to “transact business” with the Lord for this parish, for this community.  In a special way I will be praying for you to discern how the Lord is calling you to love this place, because He is.

“Christian faith, inasmuch as it proclaims the truth of God’s total love and opens us to the power of that love, penetrates to the core of our human experience.  Each of us comes to the light because of love, and each of us is called to love in order to remain in the light.” (Lumen Fidei 32)

-Fr. Benjamin F. Green