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Good morning guys
Reminder about the Tuesday coffee meeting at the Outlet Mall food court – 10am.
Last meeting was a good one again. We were blessed to have Fr. Mathew with us to review two Psalms.
We looked at Psalm 22, the one Jesus referenced from the cross, and how it prophesizes Christ’s death, divinity and triumph. I had thought David lived and wrote the Psalms about 500 years before Christ, but today when I look it up, its closer to 1000 years. I wonder what David was thinking when he was looking down from Heaven and seeing these prophecies being fulfilled. Knowing what kind of character we kinda get told he was, i suspect he elbowed the guy next to him, pointed to Psalm 22 and said “I meant to do that.” The guy beside him might roll his eyes and say “Sure you did David. Just like everything else you did, right?”
We also looked at Matthew 27:46 in relation to this Psalm.
When Jesus is dying on the cross, He refers to this Psalm by quoting the first verse of it. They didn’t have Psalm numbers or verse numbers at that time. Just whole scriptures. So they would use the first line of a Psalm to reference the whole thing. By doing this, its understood that the Jews would all have understood what He was saying. It was a message to say “Hey guys, not sure how many times i need to say or prove this, but, yes I am the messiah and Lord.” I’m not really sure how many Jews would have been standing at the foot of the cross at that time, but they would all have gotten the message. In between them would have been Roman soldiers. It’s doubtful the soldiers would have gotten the message. It would have almost been a secret code between the Jews. And it would have sounded like it sounded to me for most of my life. It sounds like a desperate cry to God from someone who feels separated or abandoned. If He only wanted the Jewish people to hear the message, what a perfect way to lay that out for them all. For me this part of the Gospel has gone from confusing and conflicting, to extremely connected and deep with just a little understanding.
Just amazing how many new things we can absorb still from scripture. Before the meeting I was exploring the new Adventure Bible that Russ has and it is just loaded with references, connections, explanations, etc. Its going to take him forever to get through it all. He was saying that he is learning so much every day, and he has gone through 7 Bibles already, making notes and highlights. So that is saying something. I think we understate the impact that the Word of God has if we reduce it to just words on the page without digging into it a little more. It has so much to offer us.
Then we looked at Psalm 20 and Fr. gave us a breakdown of all the main points and meanings of that one line by line, verse by verse. It was a great examination of the Psalm. Some guys pointed out that it was helpful to understand the deeper meanings of certain main focus words in each verse and how they apply to us today. Thank you for joining us Fr. Mathew.
A couple challenge questions came up through the night. One was how can we reconcile the difference between “Ask and you shall receive” vs submission to God’s will for your life. I think Paul did a good job of reducing it to a simple fact. Almost everything we are taught leads to – Love God above everything else, and – Love your neighbor as yourself. I think we can dissect that a little to put a larger light on it. If love means willing the good of another, if God is Love, then we can reasonably conclude that loving God means willing the good of Him, and loving our neighbor means willing the good of our neighbor. In all cases the common lesson is to act as servant to others. We always need to prioritize others over ourselves. I think that lines up nicely with the video lesson on the parable of the talents from Bishop Barron (I’ll link that below for anyone who missed it). The talent representing the weight of the Divine Mercy of God given to us, we are meant to share it or give it away. It is an investment of God’s love and mercy that we should not keep to ourselves or it will be lost. Instead we invest that into the world and it will return with interest for God. Getting back to the question of “ask and you shall receive vs submission to God’s will”, the more you send His Divine Mercy that you have been given, out into the world for others, the more your requests of God will simply align with His will for you.
When Jesus said to the Apostles that they could move mountains if they only had the faith of a mustard seed, I think your intentions matter. If they asked a mountain to move because it would be cool to see, that would be a selfish intention where they out themselves back to the top of the list of priorities instead of the bottom in servitude. If they were to ask a mountain to move in servitude to the glory of God, 100% that pile of rocks jumps into the sea. Moses parted the seas for the Israelite’s. But that was a demonstration for the glory of God. We are still talking about it thousands of years later and none of us are saying “wow that Moses guy was pretty powerful.” We all see the action of God through His SERVANT. It is the same over and over through scripture. The servants delivered the message, and action. When Daniel was in the lions den, it wasn’t Daniel who prevented the lions from devouring him. It was God. The demonstration through a servant for the glory of God. So I dare to say that if you are truly acting as a servant to bring glory to God, you will walk on water. Not for your own purposes, but for His alone.
We talked a little bit about Divine Mercy Sunday but we didn’t really dig into it. A few weeks ago, Sr. Josephine played a short documentary on Divine Mercy and Saint Faustina. The video is on the FORMED app online and is free to anyone from the parish. If you don’t already have a user profile set up, you just go to FORMED.ORG and set yourself up, look for the St. Michael’s Parish subscription and sign on under that. Everything in the platform is free. Here is a link to the video she showed that night. Its worth an hour of your time when you are able to sit long enough to watch it.
https://app.formed.org/app/collections/115964
Fr. Mathew made it clear though that we are given His Divine Mercy at every mass. It’s built in. But it is good for us to really understand it and attend these things as they are offered to us. He was more concerned about how many people don’t attend or understand the importance of the whole Holy Week set of celebrations. I think it speaks to a lost culture of our Catholic faith. As many helpful changes were implemented after Vatican II, we did for sure suffer a loss of commitment, reverence, tradition etc. Fr. Mark Beard (not Frank Beard like i might have said at the meeting), mentioned in his video that the church has not done a good job of training us about our faith. So many of us are just lost between points and valleys of church teaching and are missing a solid fundamental instruction that would be helpful. But to our great benefit, we have a ton of resources available to us now. We just have to be committed enough to make the effort here and there. Its a lifelong journey and hopefully you can bring people along with you as you go.
Just a reminder that Stephen Sebasitan from our parish has been asking for anyone who is able/willing to help with the parish healing mass that Shalom Media is sponsoring on May 5. Its 6-9pm. There are handouts at the back of the church and his number is on the bottom of those. This is a great way for anyone to pitch in and help in ministry for one date, and try to build connection and community. There is a mass at St Michael’s one night, then two more at other parishes on the following nights, followed by a 3 day retreat in the city for anyone who would like to take that in as well. All we are being asked for is help to usher, read, distribute, for the one mass at St. Michael’s.
Here is a question for you guys. Do you think the group is too large? Should we be breaking up into smaller groups so that people have more opportunity to engage? At times the group can be large. Russ and I talked about making smaller tables once we hit maybe 16-17 people. But maybe we should lower that number and break into groups earlier? Just want your thoughts on that. I don’t want anyone feeling left out or blocked from participating. At some point if we get to 20-30, we would need to find a way to do this anyway. I don’t mind the format that Alpha had last year where we started as a group, watched a video or had a lesson, then broke into smaller groups for discussion, then came back together for the last 10 minutes to collectively share. Might be something we could try.
Next meeting will be Wednesday, May 6 at 7pm.
Not settled on a topic quite yet but these were provided for us to consider. If you think you would like to explore any topic or scripture, let us know and we will make the effort to include that. This is a collective collaborative group, so we are not subject to any program or syllabus to follow.
- Book of Acts
- Parables of Jesus
- Topic of being born again:
- John 3:3-7
- John 1:13
- Romans 8:15-29
- Romans 5:5
- Ezekiel 36:26-27
- 2 Corinthians 5:17
- Galatians 4:7
Thanks guys. See you on the 6th. Here is a little video I got from Paul about Carlo Acutis concerns for traps that we fall into that distract us from God. Not sure if the link will work. if it doesn’t let me know.
Will this bring me closer to God?
Chris
