Herald of the Gospel

Dear Friend,

Peace and all good be yours!

In our parish retreat this week, Father Jude helped us reflect on how darkness and night feature in the parables of Jesus. The night-time hours can be a place where we can sense God’s nearness more readily. The quiet of darkness is a “womb”. What’s more, in the words of the poet David Whyte, “The night will give you a horizon/ further than you can see…”

This Sunday, Jesus tells the parable of the wise and foolish virgins who are awakened to their task at midnight. They’ve succumbed to sleep by the bridegroom’s delay and in the ensuing hustle-bustle in the darkness, God brings them face-to-face with a hard reality: some are prepared with lamp oil and some are not.

For our church and for the United States as a whole, the last eight months have covered us with a shroud of darkness: the COVID pandemic - its economic, emotional, and psychological impacts; the social fracturing, social injustice, and violence; a polarized presidential campaign, which at this writing is still undecided.  As with the characters in the Gospel parable, the darkness presents a hard reality: in some ways we’re well prepared for the future opened by God, and in other ways we’re not.  

The grace of this moment is that God wants to wake us up to the overriding reality of his love, the journey of a lifetime. The parable is an extended question: Are we ready to step into the future of our individual lives, and that of our families? How are we ready as a parish and a Mission? St. Francis called himself a “herald of the Gospel”.  What lamp oil do we need to follow his example?

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan Lackie ofm, Pastor