Hi Everyone,

Updates:

1. Mass today was celebrated for all of you, the parishioners, and the living and deceased members of the St. Anthony's Catholic Daughter's chapter.

2. Thanks to a generous parishioners, we have a supply of clorox wipes for OLA. They will be delivered tomorrow (Wednesday).

3. The priests have a Zoom meeting with the bishop tomorrow. After we get the update from him, I'll update all of you, which may affect numbers at Mass, etc.

4. My sister came down and helped me with today's Through Saintly Eyes, focusing on St. Theresa of Avila. If you missed it, you can mind it on the parish facebook page: www.facebook.com/ourladyvt


Reflection:
(http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051220.cfm)

The more someone loves another, the more the character and quality of the beloved matter to the lover. The lover is the one who cares about the beloved, as opposed to the indifferent person, who simply does not care. Now the interesting thing is that the lover's care bears upon both the good qualities and the bad. Whereas the indifferent person cares about neither, the lover loves the good qualities and is pained by the bad. It notices the bad qualities in a way that the indifferent person does not. This is not to say that someone who loves another may not pass over or forgive another's faults, but the faults sadden the one who loves precisely because of his or her love. And so we can begin to see the outline of a paradoxical truth: that the intense focus born from love brings a kind of rejection of imperfection. The indifferent person won't care enough to be bothered; the lover meanwhile is pained by imperfection and would love to see it removed. Thus, we see that love, precisely because it is love, would love to see the improvement and perfecting of the beloved.

But this desire for the perfecting of the beloved can very well involve making trouble for the beloved. Take the following comparison (by C. S. Lewis, of course!) An artist has two pieces of art. One is a simple sketch, and the other is his masterpiece. The sketch he completes in a few minutes, moving quickly, hardly bothering to notice small smudges, inconsistencies, or mistakes. He is, by and large, indifferent to the work. And so he does not give trouble to the work. To the masterpiece, on the other hand, he trains all his attention. He notices every flaw and stops at nothing til it's correct. Imagine is you were the masterpiece. You might very well say: "my good artist, I think you've done well enough. Don't you love me? Why don't you give me some peace? Allow me some rest!" The complaint would be mistaken in that it fails to see that the it is precisely the artist's love is motivates the troubles. The artist does not settle or leave well enough alone because he loves the masterpiece. It's not a lack of love that leads to the intrusiveness, it's the abundance of love.

This paradoxical truth of the intrusiveness of love lies behind the words of St. Paul when he says in today's reading, It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God. These words are preceded with telling us: St. Paul encouraged them. How are these words about the necessity of undergoing hardship an encouragement? Because undergoing of hardships, the intense perfecting work that God has in store for us, is a sign that he's working on a masterpiece.

God bless,
Fr. Rensch