Today’s Celebration of the Feast of St. Anthony was a fun and lovely event and festival of HOPE! Thanks to everyone who came and shared in the celebrations. We celebrated Dolly, our ‘Sittu’s’, birthday and we celebrated the life and witness of St. Anthony the father of Monasticism. We also celebrated the hope and reality of eternal life from Christ from the words of Fr. Thomas Mueller who joined us today as our guest priest!
All were heartened by the power of his testimony of love and hope, even in loss. Fr. Thomas reflected on several Scriptures to uplift us all. Here are just a few: The hope that God is good all the time even when in our time and lives we can and will experience the loss of our loved ones. We learned that there is no time when we are truly prepared for anyone to leave this life nor our life with them (PS 136, John 11:35). We learned that it is important to acknowledge our loss and the grief we experience is valid and through our love of Christ and His love of us; we need not be consumed by the pain of that loss and the we reflect on the genuine struggle of it (1Thess 4:13-18, PS 136). Fr. Thomas had us reflect from our questions and even speculated (similarly to that of Fr. John Meyendorff) about the love we share for each other from the sacrament of marriage entered into by a couple and while we don’t know, He offered that the love shared between a man and woman (indeed all of us) is real – just as the eternal nature of all sacraments performed are real here and in the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:11, PS 136, Eccl 3:11). Lastly, the same Christ, our God, who loves us and shared our pain also shares his transcendent and victorious love for us in His word, His witness, His church and sacraments to provide us His strength as we build up each other on the road to His eternal kingdom (Eccl 3:11). God’s blessings to all. Have a great week!
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