God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself. Jesus bridges the gap between God and man.

The commercials cry out, “But wait! There’s more!” And so there is. But material goods will never satisfy our longing for the infinite, no matter how impressive the product.

I couldn’t be more proud to be your pastor, or grateful to God for sending me here. I love our parish very much and have been happy to spend these years of my life with you and your families.

I think we can all agree that we live in an age that neglects the soul. Man makes his body sleek and fills his head with information, but because his soul is left to carry the burden of life in this fallen world all alone, like a blow upon a bruise, man abandons his mind to error and his body to stress by leaving them unaided by his spirit.

My brain may filter and effect my interaction with this world, but it no more accounts for the whole of who I am than does my body.

My soul is all throughout, uniting me in mind, body, and spirit. It is where my “I” is. It is the “who” I am, and is affected by everything I experience.

We do not like waiting. Well, in any case, we’re not good at it, which is obvious; in this age of invention we’ve all but eliminated the need to wait for anything.

There was a time we waited for the seeds to germinate, the rains to fall, the sun to shine, and the plants to bear fruit. Some still do, but most of us go to the supermarket and complain about the checkout line.

I left a comment on YouTube this week, something I rarely do. The video described the vastness of the physical universe with breathtaking facts about the infinite void that both creates and surrounds the relationship between the celestial bodies. I had nothing critical to say about the science, but instead about something the narrator said, which seemed intellectually dishonest to me.

I was going to entitle this first section, “The Church Has No Mission,” but it would have been too obvious that I was trying to get your attention. Still it’s true that the Church does not “have” a mission. Rather, the Church is a mission. Even the word “Mass” comes from the Latin “Misa,” which means mission.