February 1st Pastor's Message
- Communications AllSaints
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Read this week's message from Father Don
Dear friends,
Recently I have been thinking about the importance of the Church and the countless benefits of belonging to a parish community.
One of the least recognized benefits of community belonging is that it teaches us humility. This is true whether the community is a parish or a family. Living in community we soon realize that we are not the centre of the world, that we are not always right and that we need the support of others.
By his teaching and example, Jesus revealed humility as a fundamental virtue of the Christian life. Again and again in the scriptures Jesus is seen submitting himself to the will of his Heavenly Father. In his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus cried out “Not my will but yours be done (Luke 22.42).” Elsewhere, he told his disciples “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me (John 6.38).”
We find it difficult to embrace humility as it is so contrary to what the world teaches us. In our eyes, deep humility looks very impractical, almost unnatural. The Beatitudes found in Matthew 5 (Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are meek, etc.) make us feel decidedly uncomfortable.
Only belonging to a community can change this deeply rooted attitude. In a community we discover the enormous personal benefit of loving relationships founded on humble gratitude for others. There we learn how to listen sensitively and to put the other person first. In a community we first recognize our need for others and then our dependence upon them.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons Jesus established a Church: to set us free from unhealthy individualism and form within our hearts humble gratitude for other people and for the God who made us.
It is a great spiritual good for us to belong to a parish like All Saints. Through our relationships with other parishioners and shared efforts to build up the parish, we slowly grow to be more like Jesus, the humble servant who gave up everything to heal our needy world.
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