A Message from your Pastor

March 6-7, 2010

Dear Friends,

Our first reading this Sunday is the great story of Moses with the burning bush. It is a wonderful story about the call of Moses; but, even more so, it is a story that reveals to us a bit of the nature of God. In the story God tells Moses he is on holy ground and he also reveals his name. This name reveals a truth about God and a truth about us.

When I was in the seminary we studied the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas constantly. I remember that Aquinas loved this story from the Old Testament. Aquinas was always searching out information about God and here was a story that revealed a lot. Aquinas saw in the burning bush a revelation of the deepest mystery of a God who could never adequately and accurately be conceptualized. There is no other way to begin to talk about who and what God is other than to say that God is existence itself. “I Am” he calls himself. The source of the universe is not some mindless evolutionary process. What created everything, from the heavens to your little toe, is personal existence.

Last fall, when I taught our high school age youth in the Dead Theologians Society about Thomas Aquinas, I used his five proofs for God as one of the sessions. Several of those “proofs” are from existence itself. If you just think about it, the fact that there is anything at all is the most wondrous thing. Nothing could be known, if there were nothing to know. Nothing could be loved if there were nothing to love. The source of all creation is God. This universe is not an accident. It is too complicated; too radically beautiful for it to have no originator.

Aquinas teaches, “Everything that exists is, as such, good, and has God as its cause.” “If we exist, and we cannot give existence to ourselves, we must have been willed, loved into existence.” He goes on to explain that God not only creates and sustains every existing being; God also creates each kind of being there is. Every being participates in a hierarchy of goodness and intrinsic value. Each species is good, not only because it exists in the first place, but also because of what it is. All creation is good.

The gospel tells us today that accidents do happen in this world of ours. The laws of nature which God put into place continue to work. On occasion we human beings happen to be in the same place and time that some other event of creation is happening. When that occurs we may get hurt or die – witness the incredible amount of suffering from recent earthquakes. Jesus tells his listeners in the gospel that those who suffered a similar tragedy were no greater sinners than all the rest of the folks. But, and this is a big but, if we do not turn away from our sin we may end up suffering a worse fate. We may lose not our life here on earth in a tragedy, but our relationship with God here and in the hereafter. For Jesus that is a greater risk than the risks that arise from living on a planet where creation is still happening.

As we enter into our third week of Lent and the hopes of springtime, enjoy this beautiful world God has created, come to know God better through intimate encounters with Him and turn from sinful self-centeredness to outgoing love of God

Peace,

Fr. Damian