From the Pastor’s Desk – December 2023

As we begin a new year in our liturgical calendar, we enter into Advent hoping to identify who God is and who we are in relation to God.  This is the time to prayerfully consider our relationship with God and everything that God loves.

There is a school run by Catholic nuns in Cleveland, Ohio.  I don’t know the name of their Order, but they have committed their lives to working in the Catholic schools in Cleveland’s inner city.  Day after day after day, they focus their faith and energy on the education of inner-city youngsters, youngsters whose lives are at
risk in so many areas.  One day, out of nowhere, a wonderful gift was given to these nuns.  The gift was to pay for the entire Order to go on a vacation.  Vans were supplied, and all the necessary money for their trip was contributed anonymously.

So, that summer, the nuns closed their Order house and headed to the vacation spot of their choice, the Rocky Mountains.  Most of them had never seen the Rockies, except in their imaginations.  They were awed by the glory of the mountains.  They would stop and ponder and behold and not be able to take their eyes off the majesty they were experiencing.  They noticed, however, that every time they stopped, Sister Margaret, one of the smallest members of their Order, would move to the edge of the group, and then disappear for a while.  She’d return sometime later.  They didn’t know what she was doing.

So, on one particular occasion when they had stopped to behold a majestic view, they decided they would follow her.  She stole away from the group and made her way down into a gully.  They watched her as she walked into the gully.  She bent down and reached under a sizable rock, and then turned the rock upside
down.  She brushed her hands and turned around to walk back up the trail.  When she looked up, the entire Order of nuns was watching her.  “Margaret, what are you doing?” they asked.  “I’m turning over a rock.” she replied.  “Why?” they asked.  “Do you do that every time?”  She answered, “Yes.”  “Why do you do that?”
And she replied: “Because I will never pass this way again, and it’s my intent to have made a difference while I was here.  So, I turn some rocks over so that this place is different because I passed here.”

Now, that nun was dedicated to making a difference.  She saw that as her mission whether at school in her teaching role or alone in the Rockies.  What rocks does a rural church like this one have to turn over in the city of Red Bud for the good of neighborhood?  What rocks do I need to turn over inside of me in order for the Kingdom of God to make its way through all of the barriers that I put up?  I think there needs to be some rock-turning going on inside of me and this church in order that we can, with the help God’s Holy Spirit, maybe taste and smell the real experience of Jesus’ birth – in the interior manger of our lives.

As always, I welcome your comments
Pastor Cory