Dear Parishioners,

Three weeks from now, we celebrate the OLMC Festival. Come one, come all to share together as a community of faith, called, baptized, and sent to spread the good news by our lives. "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20).

The OLMC Parish Welcome gathering of new members is very significant and although we can say it is our response to the Lord's commissioning of the Apostles, there is also an echo of the text from the Acts of the Apostles, "All who believed were together and had all things in common" (Acts 2:44). Coming together, we can demonstrate our faith in real time and space. This also enables us to share the good news as we serve and support one another.

We will therefore need volunteers to collaborate with our Parish and School staff to make the day more meaningful. Christ Himself did say, "The greatest among you must be your servant." Let us follow our Master per excellence. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is our Light, our Unity, and peace.

We are also celebrating the Sunday of the Word of God. The late Pope Francis, in his Apostolic letter(a motu proprio), titled "Aperuit illis", of 30th September 2019, declared that the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time is to be devoted to the celebration, study, and dissemination of the word of God. "Aperuit illis", the Latin for "He opened to them," stems from the Resurrected Jesus opening the disciples' minds to understand Scripture on their way to Emmaus (Luke 24:45)

Reflecting on a text from Isaiah the prophet, we read, "You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing, as they rejoice before you as at the harvest, as people make merry when dividing spoils. For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster, you have smashed.” Isaiah 9:2-3

Beloved friends, what is that yoke that oppresses us and our joy? Sin. Separation from God. Separation from love, from the self-giving, self-forgetful love that is the secret of joy. If you look back at your life and ask yourself what moments gave you the most joy, you find that they were always moments of self-forgetfulness, moments of overcoming all your selfish fears and worries, moments when you were just taken out of yourself in the presence of something so beautiful that it took your breath away. Those moments brought uncontrollable tears of gratitude or uncontrollable laughs of relief. They were gifts, free gifts, graces, and they were little appetizers of heaven. And who was the giver of those gifts? Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh. He is Emmanuel, God with us.

Christ, even when we did not recognize him, is humble and anonymous most of the time. That is one of the reasons we are here celebrating the Eucharist: to thank him for the gift of himself. The word “Eucharist” means “good gift,” or “thanksgiving for the gift.” Christ is the gift. He gave us himself in coming down from heaven to earth, in dying on the cross for our sins, in giving us his Body and Blood in the Eucharist, in giving us all the graces we need every day of our lives, and in giving us a share in his own divine life and heavenly joy, which we will enjoy perfectly and forever when we are with him in heaven. He is our light, and he is our delight. He is the source of all truth, and he is the source of all joy. To know him is to truly live. He is the meaning of life.

Christ is not one among many things God gives us, but the only thing, because he is the one mediator between God and Man. St. John says: “No one has ever seen God. The only begotten Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him” (John 1:18). And Jesus himself says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). And Paul says that God will “fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).

What does Christ mean when he says he is the way and the truth and the life? He is, first of all, the way from God to us and from us to God, the bridge, the connector, the mediator. He is also the truth, the source of all truth, the very Mind of God from the beginning. And he is also the life, divine life, supernatural life, the very life of God in our souls, the life that is joy because it is a life of self-giving love, which is the secret of joy. Light comes first, truth comes first, even before joy. For even joy and happiness and bliss and love have to be true joy and true happiness and true bliss and true love. Thus, the prophet says: “Dispelled is darkness, for there is no gloom where but now there was darkness. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.”

Without Christ, we do not know; we can only guess the meaning of life, what to believe, what to hope for, and what to love. Who is God, anyway? What are his plans for us? What does he want of us? Why are we alive? Why must we die? Why must we suffer? What happens after death? The greatest questions in the world are the hardest, and the wiser we are, the more we realize we are not wise at all when it comes to these most important questions of all.

And then comes Christ, God incarnate, God made man, to show us God’s answer to all these questions, to show us who God is and who we are. Christ is not our answer to the questions; Christ is God’s answer to them. Our answers are “gloom”: fog, uncertainty, fallibility. God’s answer, and God’s answer alone, is infallible truth. Because God cannot deceive and cannot be deceived. And then, in that light, in that revelation from God, we see joy, hope, salvation, God’s infinite and unconditional love for us. I LOVE YOU.

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