September 11-12, 2010
Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 32:7-14 First Timothy 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-32
At Mass this weekend, our newest HAVEN Youth Leaders will be acknowledged and commissioned. Parents and HAVEN-aged youth will gather for a kick-off dinner/meeting and our 5:00 p.m. Saturday congregants will have enjoyed a traditional ‘5:00 p.m. exclusive ‘ celebration. Our First Saturday Men’s Fellowship is on a camping retreat down in San Clemente and on these residual summer weekends, the campground is packed to the gills.
High School football games are getting underway, the rituals of autumn being awakened after their winter/spring/summer dormancy. Life is as it should be, there is even a familiarity with the political mud slinging in full swing with the approach of the November elections. What a far cry from nine years ago on a Tuesday morning in September when we crowded around televisions and witnessed the unfolding spectacles of THAT day.
Our national sense of normal day-to-day life which crashed and collapsed back on 9-11-01 has gradually been resurrected. Our airports are full even with the increased screenings. New York is thriving, new towers are emerging.
The crown atop Lady Liberty has re-opened and, with the exception of those who have sacrificed loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan, our lives are back to earning a living and finding our way in South Orange County. This weekend’s Scriptures speak to ‘finding that which is lost’, a reference certainly to God’s incessant call to each of us to enter into relationship with him…but also a reminder that the deepest wounds and traumas of life have a way of healing (as long as we do not continually rip off the scab), that the lost peace of heart or mind can be found if we are patient.
Most of us have experiences of painful moments when we may have wondered if life would ever be the same again. We mourn the loss of our innocence or the sadness’ we will forever harbor.
We recall when we were not burdened with what we now know and wonder if life will ever be normal again.
The words of Luke’s Gospel about searching for the lost coin or distracted sheep can just as easily be our self-esteem following a divorce or self-confidence following a lay-off or sense of hope following a wrenching health prognosis.
Elsewhere in Scripture, God speaks of himself as being ‘the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end…and that he makes ALL things new.’ On this day of potent memory we need only look around and see the grace of God at work restoring the things we thought we lost forever in 2001.
This might be a good weekend on which to also consider how God’s grace has been refurbishing other aspects of our lives? How has God restored our hope, our smile, our laughter, our joy, following our personal traumas?
It is also wise to note that there are some who do not want to heal or be found or restored…they want to be martyrs, who resist every overture from God to be made new and who continually rip open their scabs to keep their wounds fresh.
The normalcy of our restored lives, raucous politics and even phoenix-like resurrections from our personal travails might be painful to some …but to those of faith, they are present-day reminders that the things we thought we had lost forever, they have been found.
Thank you for joining with us on one of these final weekends of the Summer Season. Please keep in prayer the men of our First Saturday Men’s Fellowship as they experience their yearly retreat, this year in San Clemente at a very affordable campground.
If you have recently relocated or joined with our Parish community please make sure you complete a Registration Form, available on the Concierge Shelves; Registration is the door by which everything else happens here at Corpus Christi. Please take a Bulletin with you, there are plenty of things coming up and it would be a shame if you missed out! As the flags flutter and heads are bowed in 9-11 memory, look around at how our joy, zeal and hope are being restored…and remember, you are loved. FKB
