“What if I follow?” Epiphany 2017 Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC

“What if I follow?”

What if I follow the light and you are not home or if I follow and I bring all the gifts that I hope you will enjoy and you do not accept me or what if I follow what I think is the light and it is still my own power and self-sufficiency and pride and arrogance and I find myself basking in my own light that I cannot see the light that is in your face or what if I follow and all the pain in me is not changed and I come to the conclusion that the journey was not worth it or do I really have to be in the dark to follow the light to where you are or what happens with my past will I just wring my hands and stew in my own sin and will that all be left in the dust if I get to you and offer you what I think is important and the journey of my past has been a total illusion or how will I live anew if the grief I carry along my side in the nighttime is still stuck to the roof of my mouth and I will not have the courage to speak what I truly need and hope for and by the way I am not certain that I should bring hope with me because I am so stubborn to change anyway because I really like living in the dark that I carry in my heart after all as it gives me identity and I am not sure that I want to lose my identity on my journey through the darkness and to find you sitting on your mother’s lap under the beam of the star where I long to be relaxing in your mercy and forgiveness and comfort as I hold you in my arms at the same time you hold me in your heart as you long for me with all the love that is yours and now mine and for the whole world?

Dear Followers of Jesus,

This weekend, the Universal Church celebrates the memorial of Saint André Bessette. Brother André is the first saint in the Congregation of Holy Cross. He ministered in Montreal and the people of Canada are proud of his life, his mission to heal and his canonization that took place in Rome in 2010.

The cover painting for this bulletin was first published in AIM Magazine in December 2017. I painted the image of Brother André to coincide with an article I wrote for that issue of the magazine.

I find Brother André incredibly fascinating. He was a sickly child who was not expected to live. Instead, he died at 91. He grew up illiterate. In the work of the Holy Spirit, he was accepted into the Congregation of Holy Cross that is best known for education. Our religious community really did not know where to assign him so they appointed him porter at their college in Montreal. He stayed in the doorway for over 40 years. André had a great devotion to Saint Joseph, especially after his own father died when he was very young. God used that devotion to heal people as they came to the door.

In the high point of André’s ministry, he would see up to 600 people a day. He would invite them to go to confession or to Mass. He would suggest that people pray to Saint Joseph or any form of prayer. He would use oil from a lamp in the chapel to anoint some people in their pain and frustration. He offered people hope when their was little medical care accessible to them.

André would sleep only one or two hours at night. He spent the night praying for all the people who had come to him during the day. He was a simple man with an amazing life of prayer. He thought of himself as God’s little one, as God’s little puppy not only because he was short in stature, but also because he was only leading people to God through Saint Joseph. André never considered himself as a healer.

The Shrine of Saint Joseph in Montreal is a large worship center in honor of Saint Joseph, the largest in the world to honor the foster father of Jesus, and was founded by André. The money came to him through the families that had a miraculous healing. The shrine continues today and millions of people still search for healing and hope.

When we finish Sacred Heart Church, a relic of Saint André Bessette will be housed in the altar. I am so grateful that André’s presence will be in the center of our community in a real way. I look forward to praying more from the faith of Saint André for our community and parish that is also in need of healing and hope, mercy and love in so many ways. Please offer your life, your suffering, and your incompleteness to Saint André. He will lead you to God, to the love and miraculous power of Christ Jesus.

Saint Andre Bessette, pray for us!

Fr. Ron

Mary, Mother of God 2018: Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC

Loving and Inspiring God, you prepare a new and unblemished welcome in our hearts for Jesus to find a home. We listen today to Mary, the Mother of God as she pondered this mystery within her heart and life. We ache for such prayer, to recognize our worth in Jesus’ life so we may be part of the plan to heal, forgive and restore the lost and forgotten. We beg you in this New Year to fill our hearts with such a memory and mystery that we may be alive with hope for the poor and peace toward all who prefer violence and hatred. Help us long for holiness and newness of justice. Help us live the serenity we seek in the promise of Jesus who lives for ever and ever. Amen

The Holy Family 2017: Painting by: Ronald Raab, CSC

O God of all creation, you invite our souls into sure rest in your light, forgiveness and mercy. Our lives, just as they are, remain in your family. For we are nothing without you. Guide us toward the light we seek. Restore all fragile relationships. Show us how to give you praise and to live on earth with grateful hearts. Help us sweep up our worldly cares in our family homes to make ready for your presence and your peace. Ready our hearts for your coming. Give us courage to live here in your comfort without violence, war and infidelity, without shame and hatred, and without fear of others. Help us celebrate hope with abandon and peace with eternal vigor as we come to admit that you are the source of all we need.  Amen

Dear Followers of Christ,

Today we celebrate The Holy Family. Tomorrow, January 1, 2018 we celebrate Mary, the Mother of God and the beginning of a New Year in our society. This week is about endings and beginnings.

However, the Christmas season extends far beyond December 25. For most people, we have moved beyond the silent night of Christmas gifts and family gatherings. We quickly have moved to our own corner again focusing on our cell phones, football games and return policies for sweaters that do not fit. For most people, Christmas has past us again. However, I want you to think about who we are, what we have celebrated and how we can become people of hope in our world.

Our Church struggles to maintain hope. In this Christmas season we come to the fulfillment of God’s revelation in our world not only in the past as a tiny baby, but now. Today is immersed in love. Today is the revelation of mercy and forgiveness. Today is the gift God gives us that cannot be returned for one that suits our size or perspective. Today is the Word of Love manifest in our actions, thoughts and energy.

We are the family of God because we are born again in baptism. This is the miracle of our second birth. We are the Holy Family! We belong to God when we invite people to be better by our words of encouragement and our works of justice.

Christmas is only a source of hope if we are willing to put our lives on the line for God and for others. Perhaps we can commit again to a life of prayer so to be used by God for the good. Perhaps we can commit our lives this year to be a better family, not only our blood relatives, but to work more diligently for our brothers and sisters coming into our country or people ravaged by war or our next door neighbors addicted to meth or cocaine or our neighbors who have just lost a job and are in need of food and clean clothing for their children or a neighbor who is growing more distant from dementia.

We cannot let the miracles of Christmas be found only in a TV movie or a Hallmark card. We are the family of God and we need to keep that awareness alive throughout the year. The miracle of Christmas becomes a deep promise of change, conversion and mercy for our own lives as we learn how to love other people.

As Christians, we still speak evil about other people. We still hold grudges and condemn many groups of people we do not understand. We are still divided by gender, race and denominations. We still have work to do as we let go of one calendar year and step into another. I invite you to take stock of your lives this day and let go of the bitterness that infests your hearts. I encourage you to find the solace of God and the rich life of being hope to other people.

Blessings in the New Year,

Fr. Ron

On the Margins from Mater Dei Radio, Portland, OR

The Holy Family, December 31, 2017

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Gospel   LK 2:22-40

“On Christmas” 2017 Painting by: Rev. Ronald Patrick Raab, CSC

ON CHRISTMAS

Jesus comes to us today in warm sugar cookies and chocolate squares. Jesus is revealed today in the cracks of fear as a spouse has surgery. Jesus enters the world in the tears of a mother who loses her patience with her teenager. Jesus arrives in the bitter cold after a long drive across Interstate 80 to be at the bedside of a grandfather struggling to survive to another Christmas morning. Jesus arrives burdened today with a longhaired youth carrying a backpack full of college texts. Jesus holds up a frail grandmother carrying her oxygen on her walker. Jesus arrives today along side the cozy Teddy bear under the Christmas tree with antique ornaments shimmering in the afternoon sun. Jesus embraces an old monk as he prays by candlelight in the nighttime waiting for an eternal dawn. Jesus is manifest in an unexpected text message from a former lover. Jesus makes his home in hard-crusted bread and children’s boots lined up on the blue rubber mat near the front door. Jesus comes home disguised wearing worn-out jeans and a smelly T-shirt. Jesus crosses the street with the urchin running toward the woods trying to get away from the city glitz and glam of the holidays because he is labeled a homeless teen. Jesus shifts into high gear when a tradesman packs his tools into the rusty truck and travels across the hills for work to provide food for his young children. Jesus peers today into the eyes of a grandfather facing his delusions from the severity of Parkinson’s. Jesus makes his home in war-torn Bethlehem. Jesus comes home today and rests his head on a mother’s lap as she grieves her lost son from cancer. Jesus comes and sits at a dining room table enjoying the aroma of a warm pot of homemade soup that feeds the neighbors and some strangers across the way. Jesus finds his way today to the heart of a young girl who miscarried. Jesus is seen today even in the fear and infidelity of an alcoholic priest. Today Love is Incarnate. Today is the day we know we are loved just as we are. Today is the day we believe that God so dared to journey across the heavens to find his peace and his place within our hearts. Merry Christmas.

“For nothing will be impossible for God” Painting by: Rev. Ronald Patrick Raab, CSC

Gospel LK 1:26-38

Dear Followers of the Messiah,

This extremely short Fourth Week of Advent is a challenge for our reflection since it falls on Christmas Eve morning. It will be overlooked by many of us. Yet, it provides for us spiritual food and hope as we are quickly led into the Christmas Season.

In Luke’s gospel we hear of the Annunciation of Mary. The message of this text is completely different from the gospels of the first three weeks of Advent. The challenges of the ancient prophets of John the Baptist and Isaiah, the finger pointing into the direction of God, the stirring up of our imaginations about what God can do for us, the waiting and watchfulness, is all being replaced with a quiet reality that God is inviting Mary to become the Mother of Jesus. Gabriel, an angel, is the messenger of such news of beauty and justice. Gabriel is also telling Mary not to be afraid! This message of fearlessness is the place in which we need to land, the message that we all need to take to heart before we celebrate Christmas.

“Do not be afraid…” is also a message for us to end the Advent season. God is at work in every heart. The Holy Spirit is shaping our families, our homelands and our workplaces. God is revealing love in ways in which we may not initially understand, just like the love that was revealed to Mary. Our first reaction to change is usually fear. Imagine how Mary’s life was changed! We fear anything that will rattle us out of our usual ways of seeing the world or that will challenge us to face issues among us that we are blind to, or that we will have to give more to God and to our neighbor than we are willing to give.

The summation of the Advent season is that God is at work among us, and that love can replace fear. Hope can satisfy even the bitterest heart. Beauty can transform our tragedies. Mercy can mend the most fragile heart. The Holy Spirit can lead the loneliest people into a new relationship that can set us all free. What we have been waiting for in these Advent days is to be released from all the fear in our lives that keep us from truly living. This is God’s action within us, exactly as it was in the life of Mary.

So we come to the conclusion of Advent and find our lives immersed in the Incarnation, the promise of Jesus born in our lives. Thank you for your lives of faith. Thank you for all the ways you support our community with love and kindness and as ministers of Eucharist to the sick, as educators of our youth, as believers that faith changes us. Merry Christmas! Thank you for your lives of prayer and service. I am so grateful for this holy place, the three churches we call home.

Peace and all good in Christ Jesus,

Fr. Ron