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Thank you dear Mother for taking me to where you wanted me on the Solemnity of the Annunciation. You always let me know where you want me with you on each of your feast days. This time, on April 8, 2024, it would be St. Patrick’s Basilica. What I learned only a week before is that a total solar eclipse would be happening the same day. That’s no coincidence. Comets, binary stars, galaxies, black holes and quasars. God created it all, beautifully made to display his infinite power. Within such majesty, He loves to play for us so we can gaze with constant childlike awe. It’s a never-ending abyss of intense grandeur. Carl Sagan said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” This time, close to home, He wanted His mother to eclipse the eclipse on the Solemnity of the Annunciation. The anniversary of your hearing Gabriel tell you, a virgin, that you would conceive by the Holy Spirit’s power, God’s Son, our Saviour Jesus, made a solar eclipse seem insignificant by compariso
St Gregory of Nyssa
The power of God is capable of finding hope where hope no longer exists, and a way where the way is impossible.
2 Cor 4: 16-18
Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.
He Sows Patiently In Our Hearts
Matt 13: 1-23
Hi Fr John,
You probably missed me jaw-dropped experiencing how masterfully you drew the second part of the parable into the homily which, incidentally, I felt disappointed in your leaving out in the reading.
Jesus is seemingly pretty harsh in his explanation of how the seed responds to my stony, shallow, preoccupied heart: “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing.” He even throws in Isaiah: “.. listen but never understand, …look but never perceive.” Then he finishes explaining the parable, “…such a person has no root, cares of the world” and lots of stuff that distract us…and “it yields nothing.”
I admit I find it hard to include myself among his disciples when he says “Blessed are your eyes and ears”. I tend to dwell on the soil of my own heart which can be pretty infertile to the Lord’s sowing.
Thank you for being a carrier of Christ’s love. I experienced our Lord’s love for me in your telling how persistent He is in the sowing until the seed sprouts and continues to grow. Starting with your family’s field really touched me as you wove the Truth into my heart. I honestly wondered where you were headed with it.
Your own experience of God’s patient sowing in your heart, “at times” having the same infertile characteristics Jesus pointed out to his disciples made me aware of this happening as well in me.
I tend to dwell on my faults and failings rather than Our Lord’s power to transform them into his own purpose. Like I said at Our Lady of Perpetual Help as you commented on her giving me a wink, “You strengthen increasing hope in me.”
Thank you for your love of Christ and your docility in gazing at Him. From being blessed to teach with Helen at St. Andrews to your teaching gifts and feeding me with the Bread of Angels, thank you, Lord.
May Our lady of Comberemere hold you and love you always,
Rod
ACTS 4:11-12
"This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among human beings by which we must be saved."
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