From the Lay Director........
Grand tidings of indescribable Joy... for unto us a Child is born – Jesus Christ the Lord. Mary gives birth as the Mother of God. Joseph cares for the miracle. Angels sing, shepherds stand and kneel in awe. The Star says”Hey, over here!” and wise men bear gifts. This Advent – wait and watch and anticipate our salvation. Angelic voices celebrate at Mass, and songs familiar to our hearts are sung at the proper time for the wondrous revelation of our Redeemer’s birth. What better gift than to be redeemed!
Still, the world moans and groans and looks everywhere for redemption. Except that they do not often look to the Lord God, their Creator to be saved from the craziness of the present time. Paul admonishes us to not be conformed to this world in his letter to the Romans … one translation offers “…do not let the world squeeze you into its own mold.” Do we shake our heads as the world’s celebration becomes forgetful? Or is there and odd entertainment in watching as the world would chose to believe that it has its own redemption in stuff and more stuff. Are we overstuffed with stuff? Tending to our stuff takes away the time that we could use to grow our relationship with the God; the “I Am” who loves us so much that the Son is sent to live and die and redeem us. And still there is that desire for more stuff, bigger stuff, better stuff, newer stuff, time consuming stuff.
Yet stuff is not evil, it is not even bad, it is the way we may permit the stuff to abuse us that distracts us and squeezes us in funny ways. Still, perhaps, we choose the stuff to surround us and give us temporary pleasure, but still no lasting joy in this part of the world. However, there is the possible blessing that we can use the stuff for the common good, for the Body of Christ, for our own growth towards God. We need to remember that all is blessing and choose to point ourselves in the direction that opens our spirit to His joy.
I see this often in musicians, vocalists, photographers, artists, writers, speakers, administrators, assistants, physicians, nurses, mechanics, coaches, teachers, engineers, machinists, farmers, truckers, athletes, mothers, fathers, young adults …. Etc. And I also sadly see all of these people miss the point. Jesus came as a little baby to grow in strength and knowledge and love to be the living sacrifice for us. Please offer back this grace you have been given. Love is eternal. Pay it forward - forever. Joy in Jesus’ birthday celebration, let the love grace flow and grow and go on for the whole year. Merry CHRISTmas!
I would ask you to do one fun thing when you get the chance. Find www.Cursillo419.org (a search engine might not bring it up yet) – our revamped website. My sincerest gratitude to John Welch with a good bit of finding the right product thanks also to Joe Manner and all of the folks who gave John & Joe bits and pieces to bring this together. There is still some tweaking going on to get the web site completely developed into best most usable tool for the Toledo Cursillo Community, but I am so very excited and impressed with their efforts. Our previous site began to corrupt and the software is no longer available to repair that product, so we needed a replacement and now we have something special. God is good, may we be His and be the same.
Finally, the grace of “Thanksgiving” at the November Focus Day was an embrace of thanksgiving in being grateful for being grateful – Eucharist to the world. On behalf of the Cursillo Community, I thank the Reinhart’s and Welch’s and Fred Garcia and Deacon Mike & Chris Learned and all of the musicians and those who provided hospitality and all who were able to attend. A very gracious job so very well done – again, Thank You!
I am humbly graced by the love of Jesus in this Movement….
Thank you!
De Colores, Ultrea!!!
Tim Haney
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