Dear Parish Family,

This Lent the first readings have by and large presented covenants. The term covenant means a binding agreement between people, or in the case of Sacred Scripture, between God and His people.  We read about the Covenant of the Rainbow time of Noah.  Next we reflected on the covenant with Abraham and the last Sunday focused on  the covenant of the Ten Commandments with Moses.  Our focus today is on Jeremiah’s prophecy.  “A day will come,” says the Lord through Jeremiah, “when I will write my law upon their hearts.  No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD.” That day has come.  When we are united to God, then we can look within ourselves, determine what our conscience is telling us, and know how to serve our God.  We don’t need particular laws any more.  We have the Lord.

A great example of the fulfillment of this prophecy was given by one of the saint’s whose feast we celebrate tomorrow, St. Joseph.  Consider Joseph’s state of mind before the angel told him to take Mary to be his wife.  He was about to marry a beautiful, young girl and begin a family. Then he learned that Mary was pregnant.    Joseph was devastated. Should he follow the written Law of Moses and reveal Mary’s pregnancy to the local synagogue leaders and have her put to death? Joseph was a just man.  That meant that he had a relationship with God.  And that relationship told him, that law within his heart told him that he could not expose Mary to the law.  He would just send her away. It was only after Joseph chose to follow the law of the heart that the angel appeared to him in a dream and told him about the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.

When we are united to God, then like St. Joseph we know what is right and what is wrong.  We call that knowledge a certain conscience.  There may not be a written law that says we have to look in on that difficult elderly neighbor, try to make peace with that estranged family member who has just returned home. There may not be a written law telling us how we should behave, but our hearts say that God wants us to be compassionate.

We Americans tend to be legalistic that we can easily let the law reduce us to limiting the choices we make to that which is required by the written law. We can do better than that.  The law that we need to follow is the law of God that is written within our hearts.  We need to stay united to God and listen to our consciences. Kindness, compassion, walking the extra mile to care for a needy person and being friendly to those who are lonely. These are not written into our legal system, but in our hearts.
All of us are concerned with teaching our faith to our children.  Religious education is not enough.  It is important, yes, but it barely touches the surface of what it means to follow the Lord.  Yes, it is important that our children learn their lessons.  Formation of our conscience and theirs is of prime importance. It is most important that we provide our children with experience after experience of our living our love for God. We need to look at coming to Sunday Mass from this perspective. It is not just their minds or our minds that God wants.  What God wants is their hearts.  What God wants is our hearts! This loving relationship with God is central to a happy life … many time we are too naïve and fill our life with many other activities, as good as they are, they can never be ‘central’ as the Lord reminds us, “I have come so that you may have life, life to the full.”
 

Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.