Dear Parishioners

We have had some good weather over the last few weeks and I pray it will continue for the Parish BBQ this weekend so we can all gather and enjoy together.

In today’s gospel reading we see Jesus being challenged and provoked for His good works and teachings.  Through Jesus’ various moments of encounter with people we see that often it has been the most vulnerable, poor and broken that received His message as good news and took it to heart and were transformed by it.  While, frequently those who were learned and took pride in their understanding of God, and were stuck in traditions and laws, were often the ones who missed the point and caused trouble for Him.  In today’s gospel the challenge and provocation not only comes from the scribes but also from Jesus’s own family who see Him as out of His mind for the impact He is having on the people around Him. 

But Jesus as always is unshaken and firm in Himself and the work He has been called to do by His Father.  What gives Jesus this confidence?  It is His strong relationship with and His knowledge of the Father and His Fathers will that gives Him the confidence.  Jesus’s confidence is rooted in an intimate relationship with the Father, through prayer, which strengthens His inner self and helps Him to listen to the Father and Holy Spirit speaking in His life and leading Him. 

This is also Jesus’ invitation to us in the gospel, to seek the will of God for our lives.  It is what is above all most important to Him and for us.  He taught us this through His own life that the will of God was higher than other peoples opinion of Him, or even their ridicule and rejection.  This seeking and doing the will of our mutual Father is so important that it is what makes us family with Jesus.  Being part of His family comes from being related to the same Father and so seeking His will in our lives.

In the second reading from 2 Corinthians, St Paul invites us to do the inner work that Jesus did by encouraging us to focus our attention on strengthening our inner selves daily.  Our inner self is the life we live with God: our relationship with Him and our listening to Him, our listening to the Holy Spirit and our seeking to do His will.  Paul reminds us that although the external self may weaken (we get older for example), our inner self, our faith, our relationship with God (that which is tangible yet invisible) is what lasts for eternal life.  The troubles and suffering of life, which affects all of us, can help and strengthen our inner selves, if we allow God to use them to form and shape us as we deepen our faith and relationship with Him through these struggles.

So I hope we can all find the time this week to continue to allow God to strengthen our inner selves and to lead us to seek and accomplish His will for our lives, just like Jesus did.

Ann Marie D’Souza, FMVD