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“The Almighty Power Of God”
It is not uncommon for us, and all who believe in God, a Creator, to pause at times and wonder at the magnitude, the height and breadth and extent of the Almighty’s unfathomable power. We ponder what the mind and abilities of God look like, but can only do so in terms of the limited human mind and powers we possess. But Mark’s gospel clearly illustrates for us what this great power of God does look like through the example of his Son’s exorcism and healing of the possessed man. Today, we witness three remarkable things about Jesus, three critical truths: 1) Christ’s ability to heal with nothing more than a simple word or command. 2) Christ’s supreme power over evil: “Be silent, and come out of him!” 3) Christ’s reaching out to the weakest, often unpleasant, and most rejected in society, (those we are often not comfortable with or disposed to ourselves). Indeed, this was why God took on the form of a human being, to demonstrate his vast powers to heal and rebuke evil, so we would follow his ways to salvation. This should end all doubts and concerns about who is truly in control of our world, who has the ultimate power to intervene in our lives and global affairs. It should comfort us to know we can call upon Christ anytime to help us as he promised: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” (Matt 28.20). Yet, how often do we question his presence with us, his ability to make things right, to heal us? Clearly, too often we doubt his power to intervene. Otherwise, we would not be debating and arguing with each other about one political matter and health issue after the other. We would be appealing to God to help us tackle the many things we, as humans, do not have the power to address as he does. But even the prophets of old certainly knew his power to heal the nations! But perhaps we doubt because of our limited minds and powers, inability to grasp God’s ways which are not like ours. After all, we cannot know the mind of God? Yet, this is why we need Faith! This is why we need prayer! Otherwise, we are going in circles, spinning our wheels in the workings of the world, trying to run the show ourselves, relying only on our tiny intellect, and not thinking with our hearts. The great saints and thinkers have all said we must seek to find and know God via our hearts, where we truly unite with the One Great Intellect of All Time, who will lead us to true understanding of ourselves, of each other, and of the Almighty. One of the greatest ‘intellects’ of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, on his deathbed said, “The end of my labours has come. All which I have written appears to me as just so much straw after the things which have been revealed to me in the heart.” Prayer is the perfect unification of intellect and heart, where the mind finds ultimate solace and peace, hearing Christ’s command to heal us. Beloved Dutch priest, Henri Nouwen, said, “Prayer heals. Not just the ‘answer’ to our prayers, but prayer itself heals us. When we give up our competition with God [to heal our own lives] and offer God every part of our heart, holding nothing back, we come to know God’s love for us and discover how safe we truly are in his embrace.” St. Paul tells us today: “Brothers and sisters, I want you to be free from anxieties.” So, let the debates cease. Let the bickering end. Let the political and social disputes fade into the glorious sunsets we are privileged to savour here in Saugeen Shores! Silence the negative thoughts running through our heads day after day, vain pursuits ending in a pointless circle of unending stress. Focus on Faith and Heal yourself! When an angry thought enters your mind, replace it with Christ’s powerful words: “Be silent, and come out of me!” When you feel words of rebuke and criticism rising up on your tongue, replace them with: “Be silent, and come out of me!” We are less possessed by the devil than we are by our own ‘egos’, pride, and a self-defeating reliance only upon our own measures, often distorted beliefs and ideals. But if we meet Christ in our hearts, not in our reason, and repeat the words he gave us to remember him by, we can be healed, and this healing grows with prayer. As priests we see healing take place, mental and/or physical, when we celebrate the commands of the Sacrament of Anointing. We also see it in Confession. We see it at every healing service when we command illness to leave a sick person. Let prayer be our guide, and with faith in God’s grace, command the negativity in our lives and communities to fade into the sunset under the almighty power of God. – Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario
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" The Call "
According to Smithsonian Magazine reporter, Isis Davis-Marks, Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass, and his team have found the tomb of King Teti’s wife, Queen Naert, from approx. (1570-1069 B.C.). Articles discovered include games, wooden masks, bird-shaped artifacts, a bronze ax, paintings, hieroglyphic writings, and fragments of a 13’ long x 3’ wide papyrus of the Book of the Dead. Indeed, for centuries, people have been so attached to their material existence, they have sought to take it with them, … even though playwrights, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, clearly illustrated in their Pulitzer-prize winning play, “You Can’t Take It With You!” In the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, we are urged “to guide our affections [regarding material things] rightly,” (42). Otherwise, we will be distracted from the ‘Call of Christ’ by focusing too much on earthly possessions, obsessing over them with an attachment which blinds us from doing our duty to serve others, to help the poor, and nourish our spirituality. They reference today’s reading, St. Paul to Corinth: “Let those who buy as though they had no possessions, who deal with the world as though they had no [or not enough] dealings with it, [not to get bogged down in it], for the present form of the world is passing away,” (1 Cor 7.31). To hear and answer Christ’s Call, we must detach ourselves from any unreasonable, distracting, or obsessive attachments with the material world. Some people may ask, “but when is ‘enough’, ‘enough’? How do I know if I have too much in my world?” … Well, we might consider two ways of looking at this: 1.) If we give a child the option of having either a bowl or a carton of ice cream, they might say even the carton is not enough, until they get sick from over-eating. Maintaining a healthy ‘balance’ between what we need and what we want, is key. 2.) If what we have becomes a ‘burden’, blocking us from what we want to do, then, also, we have too much, especially, if our freedom to answer Christ’s Call has been compromised. Do not ‘burden’ ourselves with too much of anything. Truly, the most serious concern about attachment, is it can become such a burden that we forget why we are really here. We are so busy building our homes, working overtime, planning projects, or banking time for dream vacations, that we forget our ‘Call’. We are focused too much on our worldly selves, not our spiritual selves. So, could we leave our homes and our jobs to walk with Christ in just an instant like Simon and Andrew, James and John did? (It is worth noting scripture studies seem to indicate Simon, Andrew, James and John, were not just poor labourers, but were sons and owners of a fleet of fishing boats. So, they gave up more than we realize.) So, again, could we leave everything to answer Christ’s Call? Some people do, but this is not the main premise of Christ’s ‘Call’. He does not ask us so much to sacrifice what we have, as to reach out to him for the treasure he wants us to have. Theologian, Francis Fernandez, points out that, “Christian detachment has nothing to do with a disdain for material goods, as long as they are acquired and used in accordance with God’s will,” (B3, 107). Investment in home and work is necessary to life. Only when worldly affairs interfere with our ‘Call’ do we get into trouble. And detachment from ‘material things’ is not the whole picture. It is detachment from self-destructive habits, behaviour, or negative emotions which is also needed. So, how can we ‘maintain balance’ in our lives, avoid the ‘burden of attachment’, and stay focused on our ‘Call’ as Christians? Well, Pope Francis has a suggestion. He has called us to focus this week on reading scripture. In fact, scripture is in many ways the critical, ‘tangible’ evidence of God revealed through his Son’s existence on earth. In Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, author, Cynthia Bourgeault, underlines this fact, reminding us, “Scripture is a living word – not just the history of an encounter with God which happened long ago, but one which continues to resonate and feed us in our own times,” (66). So, a suggestion: let us each morning this week, pick up our bibles, close our eyes, let it fall open randomly, pass our finger over the page, then stop and see which brief scripture verse the Holy Spirit might have revealed to us. Read it two times, slowly, thoughtfully. Then, let the words, the voice of God, speak to us throughout the day, reminding us in our minds and hearts what our true ‘Call’ to holiness is. – Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario The Baptismal Journey"
Today, we celebrate the divine ‘Baptism of Our Lord’; indeed, the first sacrament we ourselves receive as new Christians, welcoming us into the Church of Christ, preparing us, empowering us spiritually, for our individual, sometimes challenging, but always rich and rewarding Faith Journeys ahead in the life God has given us. It will be up to us to find the meaning and purpose behind our unique journeys. But clearly, the Holy Spirit has given us the strength of grace needed to go forth, and Christ has given us his Word to navigate the road with all its twists and turns: love God, and love your neighbour as yourself. Again, as suggested earlier: Love yourself enough to love God, and to love your neighbour, because many of us are impatient with ourselves, or cannot forgive ourselves enough to love ourselves. If we look up a definition of the Sacrament of Baptism, the dictionary tells us it is: “a ceremony involving a religious rite of sprinkling water onto a person's forehead or of immersion in water, symbolizing purification or regeneration and admission to the Christian Church.” But we are also told it is something we may not have paid enough attention to, that it is: “a person's initiation into a particular activity or role, typically one perceived as difficult.” We should be attentive to this. Because being a Christian is not only our call to salvation, it is our call to accept the challenges and suffering of life as Christians, while seeking to heal the suffering of others, and guide them to Christ. St Teresa (Mother Teresa) of Calcutta understood this. In fact, people like Gandhi also heard this call within their own culture and community. But maybe we are saying to ourselves, “I don’t have the same gifts, talents, skills, and charisms as a Mother Teresa or even a Gandhi! Realistically, I can’t see me giving up my life to the extent they did for other people. These people are icons of spirituality! I’m made of softer metal. Plus, I have a family to take care of. I truly wish I could save the world, but right now I need to save enough money to get my family and myself through this pandemic.” Of course, many of us are also perhaps shy or maybe simply too fearful to even consider making such major sacrifices for others like St. Teresa and Gandhi did. Yet, let us not forget – they were just human beings like us. They were not born ‘super’ heroes, though in their choices in life they became ‘spiritual’ heroes for us. Like them, we must remember our baptismal call is not easy: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross to follow me.” St Teresa of Calcutta, then Agnes, was a gentle, Albanian girl born in Macedonia. After her father’s death, she was raised by her Roman Catholic mother in the Faith, living in a comfortable, stable household. As she matured, she became fascinated with lives of the missionaries. After several influential pilgrimages, she moved to Dublin, Ireland, to answer her call. There, she joined the Loreto Sisters, learned English, and took a teaching job in India. While travelling by train from Calcutta to Darjeeling, she experienced “the call within the call”. Always listening for God, Teresa heard him say, “I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith.” Like Christ’s disciples, she left the convent with only a pair of sandals and a plain, white, blue-edged sari. Adopting Indian citizenship, she received medical training at Holy Family Hospital in Patna. Then, she made her way to the slums, the rest history. But again, perhaps we can rightfully argue we couldn’t do the same thing, because we are married, have children, or our health is too compromised. Yet, it isn’t the magnitude of the work; it is committing to help others even in the smallest ways. Pastoral counsellor, Rev. Chuck De Groat, says it is important to know that helping others first begins with ourselves. How can we help the lost see God when we may be blinded by our own worldly distractions? But then we may reply, “I’m too wounded myself to help the wounded.” Yet author, Fr. Henri Nouwen, illustrates in his acclaimed book, The Wounded Healer, how only those who have experienced suffering can heal the suffering of others. So, what does all this mean? Our troubles and suffering shape us to help others, while also being a catalyst for self-discovery, even self-healing, especially when done through prayerful union with God, the greatest path to self-discovery, to understanding and accepting our pain with true, forgiving love of self. We learn our thoughts and emotions are not who we are; that we are much more. At our core, we are profound, mystical creations of God. He will help us find and heal ourselves. Then we, the baptized, can help and heal others like Saint Mother Teresa did, because we have learned to love ourselves enough to love God, and to love others. – Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario " The Faith Journey"
Today, we celebrate the ‘Epiphany of Our Lord’, the word ‘epiphany’ meaning ‘manifestation’ which itself means an event or action which clearly embodies something abstract, a theory or idea or event outside our normal experience, as the ‘manifestation’ of Jesus Christ in the world, as celebrated in the story of the Magi. At our New Year’s Day mass, honouring our Holy Mother Mary, I suggested a theme for 2021: “Love yourself enough to love God and to love your neighbour.” This theme is what can and should accompany us, as Christians, on our individual Faith Journeys, preparing us, motivating us, and giving us guidance along the way. Because today is all about ‘journey’, as illustrated in the journey of the Magi, the three kings, to the humble place of Christ’s birth, to bring him gifts of love, and to offer joy, adoration, and gratitude to him for coming into our troubled, challenging world to free us from sin. The Kings loved themselves enough to make this long, perilous journey under the eye of Herod, loved God enough to want to experience his Son’s arrival in person, and loved others enough to share the exciting, good news with them of what they found and who they encountered, nothing less than the ‘Saviour of the World’. The story of the Magi is, in itself, intriguing, because over time it has evolved from what we now understand actually took place, into the tradition we now celebrate. First of all, the word Magi, was used by Matthew to clearly illustrate who the men were – not kings, but ‘astronomers’, as the ancient Persian word really means. Also, it seems certain there were several astronomers seeking Jesus, not just three. The idea of only three seems to have developed out of the wish to symbolize the three major eastern countries at that time: Asia, Europe, and Africa. The astronomers were then re-cast as ‘kings’ of these countries, to emphasize their importance. Their gifts would be symbolic as well: gold, representing the royal kingship of Christ; frankincense, representing the aromatic, divine charism of Christ; and myrrh, used for embalming, representing the coming death and sacrifice of Christ. There are debates about the ‘Star’ as well. Scientists today are wondering if the recent conjoining of Jupiter with Saturn, which may have occurred at Christ’s birth, may be what the astronomers saw. Yet, the importance is not what the star ‘was’, but more what the star ‘meant’ to the astronomers: it was their guide to Christ. The Star or Light of Christ shines on us always, often in ways we might fail to see, hovering just above our heads, or hovering in our hearts. Christ is there to guide us. But we need to make a conscious effort to search for his ‘light’ like the Magi did. Like Jesus is to us, every child is a gift from God, and every child, like Christ, has a unique destiny, hidden from their parents, even from themselves, until their journey reveals what that plan and purpose is which God intended for them. Though our purposes and the meaning of our lives may all be different, the journey is the same: to love ourselves enough to search for Christ, love Him enough to offer him the gifts we have produced in our lives, and love others enough to share with them the joy of having found Christ, and for having adopted his teachings of love. And we can do this sharing with others in the simplest of ways: lending someone a bible or book of sound, religious advice; giving a rosary as a gift; investing time as a volunteer i.e. with SSVP; being a good listener, offering words of support and encouragement to someone in distress; inviting others to join an online spiritual chat group like our Faith Sharing group or to join in prayer with others on our online Rosary Group. There are so many simple ways to share the good news, to evangelize what it means to be a Christian on our journeys, if only by example. In the words of Salesian priest, Flor McCarthy, SDB: “Just as ships at sea need a lighthouse beacon to guide them safely to port, so, we need a star to guide us on our earthly journey. In Christ we have a star, a star which will not betray us, a star of hope, the star of Bethlehem. Lord, may your gentle light guide us on the unfolding road, so we may walk with confidence, towards the light that never fades and the life that never ends.” – Amen. – Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario Faith Resolutions"
The New Year is upon us, and traditionally, it has come to be known as a time for change, for renewal. When we think of the approach of the New Year, ‘civilized’ society seems to have shifted our focus, from a time of new, positive, productive, meaningful beginnings in the world at large – something for the betterment of humankind in general, to a time more for personal, private renewal – a time for New Year’s ‘Resolutions’! It has become mainly a time to take stock of ourselves. After an often harsh personal assessment, we commit to changing ourselves for the better by improving our physical and mental health, and overall well-being: heading to the gymn, eating better, losing weight, working less, and getting to bed earlier. We hope to be more productive, to land the career we desired since our youth, maybe start writing the book we have been mulling over for years, or finally take the dream vacation we have pined for every day of our working life. But what is wrong with this picture? It is all about us, the ego: me, myself and I. Our perspective over the privileged years many of us have enjoyed in ‘civilized’ society has taught us to focus too much on the self. But this flawed incentive has been with us for a very long time, as witnessed by Fr Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus in the 1800s. This is why he formed the Knights, a group of Catholic Christian men whose fundamental purpose in life was to be of help to others in their communities, in imitation of Jesus Christ and his call to us. “In service to One, in service to All” is the motto of the Knights of Columbus. Take note that there is no mention of “In service to self”. Christ taught us when we serve each other, we serve him, indirectly serving ourselves when we bring our gifts together to feed the poor, clothe the naked, give shelter to the vulnerable, and heal the sick. This is how society can become a vehicle for the common Christian good. Of course, it goes without saying that making plans to improve our personal lives, aiming for better health and care of the self, are all good things. But only as long as we ensure our commitments are to better ourselves for the betterment of others, to acknowledge and love the face of God in every face we meet on life’s journey, just as Mary loved and treasured the faces and words of the shepherds who greeted her. A well-known personality learned this lesson 45 years ago. Actor and celebrity, Anthony Hopkins, will be celebrating his 83rd birthday this New Year’s Eve. According to ‘People’ Magazine, he owes this accomplishment to a “wake-up call” he had nearly half a century ago. He was drinking himself to death, burdened by the stress of his career, “heading for disaster,” he said. “I’m not preaching, but I got a message, a little thought that said, ‘Do you want to live or die?’ and I said, ‘I want to live’. And suddenly the relief came, and my life has been amazing [ever since].” Now, he encourages the young to “not give up”. “Today is the tomorrow you were so worried about yesterday, … Just keep in there, just keep fighting”. Anthony said something else important, in fact critically important in his rebirth. He said quite simply, but profoundly, that religion, God, had helped him get sober. I believe the Holy Spirit sent that little message to Mr. Hopkins. I believe Christ led him back to the community who love him, restored his faith in his career – what he was so gifted to do, but now learn to do it for God and for the people in his world, as well as himself, and ultimately, though indirectly, for his own well-being. Friends, in this coming year which will also have its challenges and difficulties, don’t give up! As Anthony said, “Keep in there. Keep fighting,” but fight in a positive way, knowing God is there with us, taking care of his sons and daughters. As we enter into 2021, perhaps consider this as a theme for the New Year: “Love yourself enough to love God and to love your neighbour.” May the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you, and give you peace. – Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario |
Father's Blog
Rev. Fr. Christopher Tracey
St. Joseph Parish Pastor Archives
January 2022
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