Fr. Simon's Letter - November 6, 2022

In July 2016, we launched a Capital Campaign, From Generation to Generation, to help fund the comprehensive renovation of the Benedict Center and to make much-needed improvements to the school buildings. Through this amazing community's generosity, we have collected about 90% of the 5.2 million dollars pledged. With God's grace, your help, and a dedicated team of architects, engineers, contractors, and consultants, we now have

• Meeting spaces for our many parish organizations
• An improved and secure classroom for our three and four-year-old       preschool program
• A dedicated room for our SPRED program
• A new elevator and all the renovations are ADA-compliant
• A new science-lab
• A new music room
• A new resource room
• Renovations to a couple of re-purposed classrooms
• Offices for our religious education program and the Assistant Principal
• Faculty Lounge and
• Parish Center.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to all who donated their time, talent, and treasure to help us address the many growing needs of our parish community. Last weekend we unveiled the plaque that memorializes the donors to this campaign. You will see it on the north wall as you enter the basilica through the port cochere doors. May God continue to bless us all. View pictures HERE.

Last Wednesday was All Souls' Day – a day we commemorate all the faithful departed. At the Mass that evening, we remembered, in a special way, those buried from our parish this past year. Although we took time to remember those who have passed, in another sense, we are looking ahead. In Jesus’ mind, the whole point of looking ahead is to look more seriously at the task of the now. We don‘t know much about the future and what awaits us - and, unfortunately, the way some people talk about it serves only to trivialize it.

This weekend’s gospel is about eternal life. When Jesus spoke of eternal life, sometimes he used the future tense, sometimes he used the present tense. What matters is that we are clear about what constitutes eternal life in our current ways of living. We can live eternal life now. How we live eternal life now determines how we will live eternal life then.

As far as Jesus was concerned, eternal life – whether lived before death or after death – consists primarily in believing in him and believing in the Father. But when Jesus talked about believing in him, he didn’t mean believing in statements about him – believing doctrines or dogmas. In that sense, even the devil believes. What Jesus meant by believing in him was trusting him, entrusting ourselves to him, living like him, committing ourselves to his project, to his yearning for the Kingdom: thy Kingdom come on earth – just as it is in heaven. That kind of living is eternal on this side of the grave and the other side.

As far as Jesus was concerned, living like him meant "Love one another as I have loved you." Living eternal life is simply living lovingly – and that’s essentially relationally. Living lovingly is a community affair.

It begins with being loved. It moves beyond that to believing we’re loved, to accepting being loved, to being transformed, being created and freed by love in the process. And the circle is then completed as we become loving and give love. Originating and starting it all is God, who is love. When we love – truly love – it's ultimately God's love that empowers us – whether we realize it or not. Believing in Jesus, and entrusting ourselves to Jesus, means stepping into, being plunged into, and swept up into the infinite ocean of loving energy that is God. God is love.

Loving now, in this life, makes us who we are. It is this “us” that lives into eternity, and eternity will be more of it – but at an intensity that we can never imagine. And its texture is being shaped precisely by how we choose to live now. If we decide to use the familiar word, "Heaven" is simply a relationship – people living in love. Saints are simply people alive with love – with the love that originates in God. That is our destiny. It has already begun.

This week I was informed by the archdiocese that Fr. Dave Straub, who was promised as an associate to us, has entered hospice care. Earlier I reported that his cancer returned, and he was undergoing chemotherapy. In the past couple of weeks, things have turned worse, and he had to make this difficult decision. Please keep Fr. Straub, his father, and his entire family in your prayers.

Blessings!!