Dear friends in Christ
The first of all the Commandments is the love of God. This is also the determining factor in our lives: the fact that God loves us. The Incarnation is the supreme manifestation of the love of God for each of His children. This love precedes Creation itself. St Thomas Aquinas teaches that this same love is the source of every grace we receive. And Saint Augustine has written: We have been loved even when we were most undesirable. God has wanted to grant us something to praise Him with. The same Saint also says: Listen! Think of the way you are loved when you were not lovable. Listen to how you were loved when you were clumsy and ugly, before there was anything in you that was worthy of love. Because you have been loved first, you have been made worthy of being loved (Sermon 142).
The Lord asks us to love Him with deeds and with the affections of the heart. Every day we should come to know a little more about the sacred humanity of Jesus, which is the shortest route to the life of the Blessed Trinity. Last week Pope Francis gave us a beautiful Encyclical Letter—Dilexit nos—on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. There he explains: As we contemplate the heart of Christ, the incarnate synthesis of the Gospel, we can, following the example of St Thérèse of the Child Jesus 'place heartfelt trust not in ourselves but in the infinite mercy of a God who loves us unconditionally and has already given us everything in the cross of Jesus Christ'. This is an important necessity in a materialistic age such as ours, notes the Pope: In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs. For Pope Francis, devotion to the Sacred Heart can therefore strengthen the Church today by making visible the intense awareness of the love of Jesus in personal spiritual experience, but also in community and missionary commitment.
One of the specific ways we show our love for God and neighbour during this month of November is by our prayer for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Included in the newsletter are the conditions for the gaining for a Plenary Indulgence for the Holy Souls during this first week of the month. An easy way to fulfil the requirements would simply be a visit to our Memorial Garden beside the church where over seventy members of the Parish family rest in hope of the Resurrection.
God bless you all!
Msgr Kevin Hale