Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Malachi 3:19-20 Second Thessalonians 3:7-12 Luke 21:5-19
While our sights are on Thanksgiving, Christmas and perhaps even the New Year….in the midst of it all things are also preparing to end….next weekend is the Celebration of Christ the King, the official conclusion of this Liturgical Year.
Without usually realizing it, we humans perform an intricate dance of time and space as we go about living our lives. We look ahead with anticipation (or dread) to what is coming while at the same time having to fully enter into the present moment…while also realizing that as soon as we live the present moment…it becomes the past.
For example, everything that constitutes our individual past’s were once things we anticipated….and everything to which we look forward will, in its own good time, come and go…the future becoming the past through the process of living. Confused yet? As the Liturgical Year starts to close, the Scripture readings touch upon these same confusing/mysterious ponderings…and invite us to dip our spiritual toes into the whirlpool of an eternal God. Life will have its ups and downs, there will be great joys and there will be tragedies that suck the life from our souls….and through it all, what remains is our relationship with God. While all around us will constantly be in flux, while the things to which we set our goal-oriented hearts will come and go…the constant to which we are urged to cling is God.
It has been an entire year since we began lighting the Advent candles on the Advent Wreath….what has this past year brought you? How has your relationship with God grown, diminished or stagnated? How have your relationships with family or friends altered, grown or diminished? What have been the high points and what have been the low points of this past year and how has the grace of God been made manifest in your life within these positives and the negatives? What was your physical weight when you started this Liturgical Year? What is it now? Are you happier today than you were in November 2009? Sadder?
In the same manner by which All Saints and All Souls Days invite us to consider the presence of death within our lives, the end of the Liturgical Year beckons us to take an accounting of what has occurred within these last 12 months…months which were once the future, and for a short time were the present and have now become the past. And the process keep right on going….try not to get dizzy.
Thank you joining with our Corpus Christi Community on this lovely Autumn weekend as we join in praise, worship and celebration. Our Parish Thanksgiving Dinner draws near on Monday, November 22nd and NEXT WEEKEND will be the opportunity to adopt a turkey, cook and return it for the feast. Also please NOTE that we are attempting a more organized manner of letting people into the Grand Hall next Sunday, beginning at 4:00 p.m., a NUMERIC-TICKET System….complete info is in the Bulletin.
For all the frantic activity surrounding our Parish thanksgiving set-up…it is indeed an incredible feat of food and hospitality…and is FREE for all our parish members….so please consider yourself invited…just bring something to share. The sign-up sheets for side-dishes are on the outdoor tables….please prepare side-dishes sufficient for 10-15 people. For all your Thanksgiving supplies and hostess gifts don’t forget that our SCRIP booth is available and able to help…while also generating profit for our Building Fund. As the spirit of the holidays begins to enfold you, remember, you are loved. FKB
