Dear Parishioners,
If you feel like me at this point in our Catholic Church’s
history, you are probably, at a minimum, confused and frustrated. What’s going on here? Where is our spiritual leadership?
Silence and continual delay in taking concrete actions do not help matters.
Clarity is woefully lacking on moral issues and theological teaching. Help! I’m falling!
To me, this is indeed a diabolical spiritual crisis of the greatest proportions. How do we deal with a spiritual crisis of such magnitude?
I recall a story from Jesus’ ministry where the disciples could not
cure someone and they looked to Jesus for the reason why they could not
perform the miracle:
“I brought [my son] to
your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus said in reply, “O faithless
and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you? Bring him here to me.” Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of
him, and from that hour the boy was cured. Then the disciples approached Jesus in
private and said, “Why could we not drive it out?” He said to them,
“Because of your little faith. Amen, I
say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Mt. 17: 16-20)
It was the lack of faith that Jesus pointed out as the reason for their inability to act. “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk. 18:8) We seem to be living in a time where supernatural faith is missing-in-action. At a time of spiritual warfare, this is certainly not a good situation. Faith must be nurtured before it is lost entirely.
Our faith tells us that Jesus, the Son of God, continues to
remain with the Church He established.
“And behold, I am with you
always, until the end of the age.” (Mt. 28:20) He is truly present in the Most Holy
Eucharist, in the Sacred Scriptures, in all the Sacraments, and in His Mystical
Body, the Church. Undoubtedly, there
will continue to be tribulations now
as there was from the very moment when Jesus established His Church on St. Peter,
the Rock—who had denied Him three times! Need we also be reminded that eleven of the
twelve Apostles were missing from the foot of the cross, and Judas—one of
Christ’s hand-picked twelve—turned traitor?
Clearly, supernatural
problems require supernatural
solutions. Prayer and fasting are a
must. Praying the Rosary daily has been continually
requested by Our Lady:
The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new
efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no
problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all
spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families . . . that
cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how
difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.
Sister Lucia dos Santos (of Fatima)
The Blessed
Mother’s intercession is absolutely essential to the solution:
Some people are so foolish that they think they can go through life
without the help of the Blessed Mother. Love
the Madonna and pray the rosary, for her Rosary is the weapon against the evils
of the world today. All graces given by
God pass through the Blessed Mother. St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio)
I believe that the Sacred
Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate
Heart of Mary will triumph in the end. Getting to that point, however, is definitely
not for the faint of heart.
Keep the faith!
Fr. Ed Namiotka
Pastor
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