Blog Archives

Paul Fahey

4/22/2019

The picture above is one of my favorite religious images. It’s an icon of the resurrection, specifically, of Jesus’ descent into “the place of the dead”. This is the event we remember every time we say the line in the Apostles’ Creed about Jesus “descended into hell”. After his death, Jesus went to the place where the righteous figures from the Old Testament were waiting for the Messiah to defeat sin and raise them to Heaven.

Notice in this icon that Jesus is clothed in the white robes of resurrection, and the robes are flowing upward, like he’s dramatically breaking through the ceiling of Hell to rescue the souls waiting there. The two people Jesus is holding onto are Adam and Eve, the people who started this whole mess in the first place.

When we reflect on Jesus’ passion and death we often focus on how our sins caused Jesus to suffer this way. There’s a lot of truth in this kind of reflection, the Catechism says “our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross” (CCC 598). However, I think we also sometimes forget that Jesus freely suffered and died because of how much he loves us. The Catechism goes on to say, “In suffering and death [Jesus’] humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the salvation of men. Indeed, out of love for his Father and for men, whom the Father wants to save, Jesus freely accepted his Passion and death” (CCC 609).

Jesus didn’t become man and die on the cross in order to scold us and make us feel bad about our sins. He did all that to show us how much God loves us, how good God is. Jesus suffered through all the torture and humiliation because that’s how desperately he loved Adam and Eve...that's how desperately he loves me. The cross is a symbol of God’s goodness!

Go back to the icon and notice the skeleton in chains there at the bottom. This figure represents sin and death. Suffering and death are not part of God’s plan for us, rather, they are things that God allows because of our free choice to reject God and reject life. Jesus came as a conquering king. He came to bring about the Kingdom of God and to destroy sin, suffering, and death. God didn’t create these terrible things but he took them upon himself. Everything that causes us to suffer, everything that kills us, Jesus freely let kill him. Then he defeated them.

This isn’t merely an historical event. God wants to enter into every one of our deaths, into everything that kills us, whether it’s illness, suffering, depression, loneliness, etc., and transform it. And he wants to do that right now, not just after we die and go to Heaven.

God became man, God suffered on a cross, so that we may experience healing, so that we may be restored, so that we may receive the Holy Spirit, so that we may become God. Jesus didn’t come to simply bring us back to the Garden of Eden, he came to transform us, glorify us, and share his Divine Life with us.

And this transformation isn’t our work, it’s God’s work. We cannot heal ourselves or make ourselves Holy, but God can. And all God asks for is our consent, our cooperation. We can stop carrying these burdens ourselves. We can stop trying to be perfect. We can stop beating ourselves up when we struggle with a habitual sin. We just have to surrender our sins and weaknesses to God and let him transform us step by step. We don’t have to convince God to love us, forgive us, heal us, or transform us. We just have to let him.

As we celebrate Easter, I encourage you to take a few moments and reflect on this infinite love that God has for you personally. Ask the Lord how he wants to heal you, how he wants to transform you next. Reflect on what’s keeping you from accepting that next step. Is it sin, fear, shame, or feeling unworthy of his love? Surrender all of that to the Lord and let him heal you.

I want to end by sharing a passage from the pope’s recent letter to young people. I encourage you to open your heart to our Holy Father’s words and let them settle deeply there:

“The very first truth I would tell each of you is this: ‘God loves you’. It makes no difference whether you have already heard it or not. I want to remind you of it. God loves you. Never doubt this, whatever may happen to you in life. At every moment, you are infinitely loved.

...For him, you have worth; you are not insignificant. You are important to him, for you are the work of his hands. That is why he is concerned about you and looks to you with affection...He does not keep track of your failings and he always helps you learn something even from your mistakes. Because he loves you. Try to keep still for a moment and let yourself feel his love. Try to silence all the noise within, and rest for a second in his loving embrace.

...The second great truth is that Christ, out of love, sacrificed himself completely in order to save you. His outstretched arms on the cross are the most telling sign that he is a friend who is willing to stop at nothing....The same Christ who, by his cross, saved us from our sins, today continues to save and redeem us by the power of his total self-surrender. Look to his cross, cling to him, let him save you, for ‘those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness’” (Christus Vivit 112-119).
Christ is risen, truly risen. Alleluia!
Happy Easter,
-Paul

0 Comments

Fr. Dennis

4/15/2019

0 Comments

As we enter Holy Week, the solemn atmosphere of Palm Sunday prepares us for the mysteries of Holy Week. We are journeying with Our Lord toward His life-giving Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The Son of God came into the world “to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37) and “to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Holy Week guides us to Golgotha and beyond—to the empty tomb.

Father Sergius Bulgakov wrote, “The beauty, the richness and the power of these services take possession of the soul and sweep it along as upon a mystic torrent” .

During Holy Week we are challenged to do our best to focus on our Lord Jesus Christ, to enter in to His life-giving mysteries which can become a source of life for us. Holy Week draws upon all our emotions, sadness, fear, contemplation and joy. Try to put aside worldly entertainments and invite some quiet and time for reflection so that you can enter deeply into Holy Week.

In a special and unique way during Holy Week, each one of us receives Christ as our personal Savior, and it is possible to make our own all the events of Christ’s life through personal experience, to whatever extent we can. Holy Week is a “now event” that occurred once in time but is always happening outside time.

At the services of Holy Week, we enter into the “today” of the events being made present again to the saving power of God’s love. Thus, we are not simply commemorating a past event for its dramatic impact or presenting something of a passion play. Rather, the Holy Spirit makes present again the event of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. We see this in the saints who knew that Easter was not a single day of the year, but an eternal reality in which they participated daily.

That means that our presence at the Holy Week services confronts us with a series of choices and decisions, as it did the original participants: to be with Christ or to be with any of those who chose to crucify Him. Will our lives reveal us as imitators of the sinful but repentant woman, or as imitators of Judas the betrayer? Do we show signs of repentance or do we betray Christ in the small events of daily living? Or, perhaps like those for whom a moment of decision was at hand, we remain apathetic bystanders whose very indecisiveness keeps us distant from the company of Christ. This is essential to bear in mind precisely because we are referring to actual, concrete historical events that occurred at a particular place in time among a particular people. As we contemplate the harsh realities of a fallen and sinful world that is even capable of putting Christ to death, we need to mourn human corruption as it even tempts us within our institutions and within our hearts today. Would any one of us have stepped forward to defend Christ when unjustly condemned, or would our own passivity and fear have left Him just as alone and isolated today as during the end of His earthly ministry? Yet, God was “working” throughout this unbearable human drama to fulfill His will for our eternal salvation. Christ was not the victim of an unjust verdict, but the Victor who was fulfilling His vocation as the Suffering Servant who would be vindicated by Easter Sunday. Just as Saint Peter was forgiven his weakness and restored to fellowship with his Lord, so are we today, by the grace of God so abundantly poured out for us this Holy Week.

God bless,
Fr. Dennis

0 Comments

Kayla Nelson

4/7/2019

2 Comments

Over the last year, we’ve had 6 Healing Services and Holy Spirit Encounters. These are the landmarks of what’s been a noticeable shift in our ministry, and it begs the question: why this shift? Where are we going?

I’m going to start by saying that two years ago, I went to a healing service at another parish and I hated it. I was in a really tough place in my life and felt stuck. I had a vague hope of experiencing relief from depression, but I walked into that church and felt like I had no idea what was happening. Everyone was so excited to be there, and seemed to know to arrive over an hour early so as to be toward the front of the church. Then, as soon as individual prayer teams were announced, there was a huge line in a matter of seconds, a line which would move 2 feet in the course of 30 minutes. If someone would have suggested incorporating Holy Spirit-driven healing ministry into parish life at Most Holy Trinity to me right after that event, I can’t say my response would have been music-minister appropriate!

As a staff, we had a lot of questions after our varied experiences with the healing event I just mentioned, so we started reading, researching, and talking to people already involved in these ministries. Ultimately this lead to a huge perspective shift in our approach to parish ministry, encapsulated in these basic concepts:

Healing, prophetic prayer, and deliverance were essential to Christ’s ministry.
He intended for these to be commonplace in the Christian life for all Christians.
These forms of supernatural ministry are meant to bring Heaven to Earth, for us to become more whole and united to Him now.

Three of our staff, including myself, have been attending a weekly class with Encounter Ministries this academic year. One of our first homework assignments was to read the Gospel of Mark and write down every instance of supernatural power, including healing, deliverance from evil spirits, miraces, and prophetic revelation. There are 16 chapters in that Gospel, and not a single one of them lacks one of these demonstrations of power; in total, I recorded 70 instances. If you took out all of these, you’d be left with a couple measly paragraphs. This evidences our first prerogative shift: Jesus wasn’t just here to tell people to love each other. He came to reveal the Father’s love in power. Healing and prophecy were the very essence of his mission.

It’s really incredible that as Christians, we go our entire lives reading the Gospels and not noticing this. We fixate on Christ’s moral teachings without realizing that these were preceded by demonstrations of God’s desire to bring healing and wholeness to the world.

This is all well and good, but even in recognizing this, it’s easy to put up a mental wall between what Jesus did and what we’re called to do as Christians. We’re eager to do what Jesus told us to do in his teachings, but pick and choose which acts of his to imitate. I’m guilty of this; I like to bring God’s love into the world in ways that are more comfortable for me, or at least not as intimidating to the people I encounter. Healing and prophecy are for Jesus and the really holy people; I can take care of encouraging others and volunteering and praying in solitude.

But Jesus’ commission is not that comfortable. When he tells us to “make disciples of all nations,” he also says “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do.” We know what Jesus did, and it was a lot more than preach. He healed, he drove out demons, he gave people encouraging and challenging words for their futures. And contrary to our experiences, He meant for those acts to be commonplace in Christianity. He spent so much time with his apostles modeling supernatural power and then challenging them to do the same. He was inviting them to become more like himself, to share in His authority and union with the Holy Spirit. Things didn’t always work out for them, and at times the disciples returned to Jesus frustrated because they were unable to heal or deliver someone. But he doesn’t say “I’ll take care of it, stop trying.” He explains and equips them to go out and do more. He promises to give them His Spirit to make these things possible.

If the Gospel of Mark becomes a few scattered paragraphs when we remove supernatural ministry, the Acts of the Apostles does the same. This book is a picture of the early Church, the field in which the Apostles go out and literally do what Jesus did. Again, we can paint the early Christian church as simply a warm community of people who shared everything and prayed together. But when we look at it through a new lens, we can see Jesus’ powerful works carried on in his disciples.

Why is this important? Because the very prayer we were instructed to pray by Jesus asks for the Father’s will to be done “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” There is no suffering in Heaven, no sickness, no emotional brokenness. We’re missing out on so much when we believe that Earth is a pit of suffering and we just have to make it until Heaven for everything to be better. While it is true that pain and loss are to an extent inevitable experiences, God wants to begin Heaven now in us. He wants to break into our sickness and pain through others, and He wants to use us to break through others’ suffering. He wants to invite us into loving intimacy with Him now, not just after we die.

In summary, there has been a major shift in our parish ministry because it has become apparent that healing and transformation aren’t just a kind of Christian lifestyle. They are the very building blocks of Christian life and ministry.

We are going to spend a few articles explaining this concept further, including how to understand suffering in light of this knowledge. Our hope is to lay the building blocks for seeing God’s power in a new way, and ultimately to invite you into this journey of healing and transformation. We’re learning along with you, and are excited to continue to see God’s work in our parish community. Please consider inviting God in a new way at the Holy Spirit Encounter this Sunday at 7:00 PM. He wants to love you and make you whole. Let’s allow His kingdom to truly come on Earth as it is in Heaven!'

Kayla

2 Comments

Paul Fahey

4/1/2019

0 Comments

Thirty-two young adults from our parish will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation this Monday, April 1st, from Bishop Boyea. So I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about Confirmation and encourage you to pray for them in a way perhaps you haven’t before.

First, it’s good to step back and look at what sacraments are and their role in our life. I think we are so used to the sacraments that we forget how essential they are to our Christian faith.

The Catechism says that sacraments “are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us” (Catechism 1131). Without all the big words, this is saying that the sacraments are the primary ways that Jesus set up for us to encounter Him and be transformed into His likeness.

Catholics often speak of grace as sort of a spiritual vitamin or a divine energy boost. That is, we speak of grace as something added to our efforts that makes them holy or fruitful. But this isn’t true. Rather, grace is the very life of God within us, transforming us into God. Next time you go to Mass pay attention to the words the priest says at the altar as he mixes the water and wine, “May we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Jesus instituted Confirmation then, together with all the other Sacraments, so that we might participate in His Divine Life. The Spirit heals and transforms those who receive him by conforming them to the Son of God. The fruit of the sacramental life is that the Spirit of adoption makes the faithful partakers of the divine nature by uniting them in a living union with the Son of God (Catechism 1129). Thus, in Confirmation, The Holy Spirit anoints the candidate with Himself, bringing the candidate into a more profound union with God.

In other words, Confirmation is not merely something we do, or even something we receive. Rather, it is a necessary moment in God's plan, God's unwavering desire, to draw each one of us deeper into the Life of the Blessed Trinity.

Further, to understand Confirmation we need to look to Pentecost. The Catechism says that the effect of Confirmation “is the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost” (1302). The second reading for the Confirmation Mass describes what that outpouring of the Spirit looked like at Pentecost:

“And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim” (Acts 2:2.4).
The book of Acts goes on to say that three thousand people were baptized that day and that the Apostles went on to perform many signs, wonders, and miraculous healings. This is the kind of life that was normal for the first few centuries of the Church. This is the kind of life available to all who are baptized and confirmed. The sacraments fill us with the divine life of God so that all who receive them are able, in Jesus’ name, to do the things Jesus did.

With all that in mind, I want to ask each of you to pray for our Confirmation candidates. Please pray specifically that they will be filled with the Holy Spirit as the Apostles were. Pray that the Spirit will reveal Himself personally to them. Pray that they will be empowered to perform signs and wonders. Pray that they will have a renewed relationship with the Holy Spirit and, like Mary, hear His voice and respond to His promptings throughout their entire life.

0 Comments