ROSEVEAN REVIEW  November 1999 - Volume 2 Issue 1

The rest of this page will be uploaded asap - this upload 25th March, 2001

Cormac’s Comment

Greetings to you all. It is good to be able to communicate with you again on these pages.

The Jesuit priest, Fr. David Stanley says that all of us, all of the time, are faced with a choice between

-Finding something in our lives to love, or

-Loving what we find in our lives.

We do spend so much time and energy trying to find something, someone, some cause that will focus our affection and release our love. St. Augustine warns us that the hunger of the human heart is infinite. Our search, therefore, is full of an inbuilt frustration

If, however, we learn to love what we already find in our lives, - this body, this personality, this family, these friends and these fellow parishioners - this way leads to our peace and health and happiness. This way respects the gift of God in us.

On the first Sunday of Advent our Second Reading is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. We know what Paul found in Corinth: he found faction and fighting, he found division and discord even at the moment of Eucharist. Yet Paul’s vision does not dwell on the obvious and the surface of things. He looks deeper. He loves what he finds in the lives of his Corinthian Christians. "I never stop thanking God for the graces you have received through Jesus Christ I thank him that you have been enriched in so many ways The witness to Christ has indeed been strong in you..."

What a vision! What a way of looking at a community What a challenge to us to have that same vision, that same way of looking at our own community in this parish: to be determined to discover the good in each of us, and to love what we discover.

Sister Joan Chittister OSB (in her 1999 book, Gospel Days) writes this: ‘Christmas is the commitment of life made incarnate. It is the call to see God everywhere and especially in those places we would not expect to find glory and grace. It is the call to exult in life. Christmas is the obligation to see that everything leads us directly to God, to realize that there is no one, nothing on earth that is not the way to God for me The moment we begin to really celebrate Christmas, to look at everyone and everything as a revelation of God, to say ‘thank you" for them, ... racism would be over, war would be no more, world hunger would disappear, everything would be gift, everyone would be sacred.,

I hold up to all of us the challenge of this way of celebrating Christmas, and of living our lives in this parish.

May God bless each and every one of us. I thank God for you all. Let us pray for one another.

The rest of this page will be uploaded asap - this upload 25th March, 2001