Sunday evening, April 3rd

Learning from Holy People

“We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work.

While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”  John 9

In the gospel for today, Jesus gives the blind man– blind from birth– sight he never had. Jesus is the light of the world.

But we share in his work. “We” have to help people to see. It’s our mission to  light up the world with our love and our lives. “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,” Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew.

The new US Catholic Catechism for Adults offers short biographies of holy people, many of them from our own time and country, to exemplify different aspects of our faith. So, St Elizabeth Ann Seton demonstrates  the search for God that goes on, uniquely, in all of us.  Faith doesn’t exist in the abstract.  The profiles of holy people in the new catechism say that you don’t find faith in a book, or in a list of propositions, you find it in people.

Growing in faith means growing in the knowledge of God, but it also means growing to appreciate people, made in the image of God.

I offer two examples at our mission service tonight  of people who have helped me to see.  One of them is Father Theodore Foley, a Passionist priest from Springfield, Ma, who is a candidate for canonization.

Read about him at http://www.theodorefoley.org/

There’s a video at  http://vimeo.com/20519385

And                          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrqTClkJidk

 

How about those who help you to see? Can you name one or two?

 

Lord Jesus Christ,

I am blind to so much,

help me to see.

Some other web resources you may be interested in:

The Passionists:   www.thepassionists.org

St. Paul of the Cross:   https://vhoagland.wordpress.com/st-paul-of-the-cross/

 

Victor’s Place: https://vhoagland.wordpress.com/