Message From Father Boyd – March 31, 2020

March 31, 2020    (Fifth Tuesday of Lent) 

Parish Update

The Mass readings bring us to that time when Moses is leading his people through the desert in search of the promised land.  And the search becomes a very tough journey for them.  They thirst, they hunger, serpents bite at their heals, and they come to the conclusion the journey is too hard.  They bring their complaints and bickering to Moses and demand to turn around and go back from where they came.   We find a similar scene when the readings take us to Jesus.   Jesus stands before a great crowd and he wants  to bring them to the promised land.   But just as Moses endures the anger and wrath of the crowd,  so now Jesus must,  also endure a crowd of anger and wrath.   A crowd that is hostile to any idea of a promised land,  a crowd that has become hostile, angry, and bitter towards Jesus.   It is a crowd that wants to go back from where they came.   Moses and Jesus are dealing with not only a social,  political crisis,   but with a spiritual crisis.    The spiritual crisis is a people, a crowd,  who have lost their trust, their hope, their interest , their love for God.  The crowd does not believe God can truly bring them into a new promised land.   The crowd is really a representation of any community,  a nation, perhaps even a parish, that prefers to go back to old ways, the old normal,  meaning perhaps never wanting to change or correct injustices, or not wanting to move forward meeting the needs of the poor, the sick, or working to promote the dignity of human life,  to promote and sustain earth’s creation.  We can also live our lives like those in the desert wanting and wishing to turn back and live in the old normal.  Never changing what needs to be changed,  never moving forward towards a better future.  Even if normal was really never normal,  or helpful, we sometimes prefer it just that way.   Better the devil we know than the devil we don’t.    The crowds do not want Moses of Jesus to lead them to a new and better land, or a new and better way.  They want the old.  They do not want the new.  Yet Jesus pleads with us, to come with him, into the promised land, into a better normal.   The normal is where  love reigns in homes, and marriages,   where the poor are loved and included,  where no one starves, or children  forced to work in degrading factories with minimum pay for our benefit to buy inexpensive clothes with a fancy labels.    The normal is a land where the earth, ocean, and sky, are not destroyed by the pollution,  by  waste and overconsumption, or by that unfettered and unnecessary constant desire for travel,  a constant of gratification of every need, the endless pursuit for wealth and pleasure.

Perhaps now that we have been forced into the isolation of the desert and  pandemic spreads across the world,  biting at our heals as a serpent biting at the heal of the crowd in the desert,  and we want to go back to the old normal, biting and bickering of others,  God is inviting us into a new and better promised land.   Not the land of the old normal,   but God’s normal.    We so often want to turn back to old ways, our ways,  rather than God’s ways.   It is a curious and mysterious thing when God says to Moses,  raise up a bronze serpent on a pole and look at it and you will live.  Could it be that God is saying look at those places in our lives where we allow the enemy of our homes, our planet,  and our souls, to creep in, and slither into our hearts, and end up destroying us.  God is telling Moses to look and name the enemy of our human nature,  the enemy of our planet, the enemy of God.   Name the enemy pride,  name the enemy selfishness, name the enemy destroyer of oceans and planets,  name the enemy virus that lurks and slithers into human life because we have chosen old ways , rather than new ways,  old ways that do not respect the powers of nature. And then let us journey together into the promised land.

Parish Messages:

Be united in prayer with others saying the Rosary in our homes at exactly 4 PM Daily.  Pray for the sick and afflicted and for our nurses and doctors of our parish and the world.

Blessed Sacrament available for Adoration can be seen through the Office Window from your car or walking by.

The  Mass intention was offered today for the repose of the soul of Mario Patrick.

Thanks to all willing to be available to help  CARE FOR NEIGHBOUR TEAM.

Thanks for dropping food items for the food pantry for those in need.  Put items in GREY BIN OUTSIDE  parish office doors. I will check each day.   Place any prayer requests, offerings, messages, in Rectory House Mailbox.

The Palm Sunday Mass will be streamed live @ 9 AM Mass.  Details will follow and be posted on the webiste.  Palms will be placed outside the parish office doors in the parking lot for those choose to drop by and pick up.

 

Fr. Vernon P. Boyd S.J.

Pastor

Holy Rosary Parish, 175 Emma Street, Guelph, ON, N1E 1V6

519-822-4701 x  22   www.holyrosaryguelph.ca