Beloved parishioners of SFX,

Happy Easter – again and again! Kierkegaard once remarked “why do Christians look so sad? Don’t they know they are redeemed?” This allegedly dour Dane makes a good point: Jesus has risen – triumphant over pain, suffering, and death. Why be distraught and de pressed? “Rejoice and be Glad!”

Dear Friends,

Last Sunday – Laetare (“Rejoice Sunday”) was our lenten break given by the church to help remind us that no matter what our practices of prayer and penance are these 40 days and, even as we contemplate the Suffering and Death of Jesus Himself, we know there is Light at the end of the penitential tunnel: the triumphant Resurrection of Christ, Our Savior!

A bit like Mr. Rogers kindly querying “will you be my neighbor?, the somewhat shy and timid little girl passes a valentine – newly created in class – across the aisle to another equally timid, shy person: “will you be my Valentine?”

Happy Valentine’s Day, good friends! Albeit a Sunday, we remember thisspecial holiday of Love dating way back in history to the days of the martyrs. What we may not fully realize as we come to church this sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time is that Jesus Christ Himself leans over and asks each of us, timid and shy though we may be: “Will you be my Valentine?”

Dear Parish Friends,

The liturgical season of Advent is an endangered species. It has been for a long time. We get Lent, but Advent, not so much. The four weeks before Christmas are not meant to be a Christmas celebration, but a time to delve a bit more deeply into why we have Christmas at all!

Advent is a time to hold our horses, hold back. Secular-commercial Christmas is already with us, but we wait in anticipation for Christian Christmas which will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The Jews waited some 4000 years; we can quietly welcome Jesus into our world for four weeks!

Christ has come – Christ will come again!

Dear Parish,

“Did not our hearts burn within us as He explained the scriptures as we walked with Him?” “Did not our hearts burn within us as we met Him in the Breaking of the Bread?”

The Emmaus disciples joyfully rush back to Jerusalem to inform their companions that the Lord has truly risen: He is not dead, but alive! These two discouraged and despondent men when they walked this same road before now do a 360 in their utter happiness to announce the Good News!

My friends, we all walk alone or with another these coronavirus times as they did, but it is a depressing, lonely, joyless path, buoyed up only by small screen and phone reminders from our loved ones and the ever-so-faint hope that these days too shall pass.