A season for renewal

In my travels, I enjoy reading the messages on church billboards.  One of them I came across on a small country church stated: “If God seems distant in your life — who moved?”  I have been pondering that question since then and think it is a good one to consider as we enter into a new school year and as we say, “the beat goes on.” I must admit I don’t know where summer has gone, and the signs of another change of seasons make me wonder who wound up the clock so tight!

Nonetheless, I see a change of seasons as a new opportunity to once again put our faith into practice. “Faith,” not just as a word you and I utter, but as a way of life. Here, in the month of September, we have an opening to begin again things we might have let slip over the summer months:  our participation in Holy Mass on Sundays and Holy days of Obligation, or daily prayer time, or celebration of the Sacrament of Penance, or concrete efforts for gospel living.

I was reminded of the necessity for such introspection when praying the Office of Readings from the Church’s daily prayer — The Liturgy of the Hours — on Saturday. The prophet Jeremiah announced: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:  Reform your ways and your deeds, so that I remain in this place.  Put not your trust in the deceitful words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord!  The temple of the Lord!  The temple of the Lord!’ Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with his neighbor; if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place, or follow strange gods to your own harm, will I remain with you in this place, in the land which I gave your ancestors long ago” (7:3-7).

In short, it is not enough for us to just “go to Mass and say our prayers,” but as the Second Vatican Council reminds you and me, we are the Pilgrim People of God; and as Church, we are invited to contemplate how we help our neighbor to gaze upon the face of Christ in the present moment, wherever one finds oneself on the road of life.  In what I consider one of his most powerful homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, St. John Chrysostom sums this pilgrimage up when he states: “Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother (sister), for he (she) is the most precious temple of all.” Pope Leo XIV, in his Wednesday General Audience on August 26, 2026, reminds the Church of the words of St. Pope Paul VI, that the faithful at liturgy “cannot and must no longer remain silent and passive. Their physical presence cannot be reconciled with their spiritual absence.”

Pope Francis spoke of this needed witness in his Apostolic Letter (29 June 2022) Desiderio Desideravi — On the Liturgical Formation of the People of God.  In its closing article #65, the Holy Father wrote:

The Sunday celebration offers to the Christian community the possibility of being formed by the Eucharist. From Sunday to Sunday the word of the Risen Lord illuminates our existence, wanting to achieve in us the end for which it was sent. (Cf. Is 55:10-11) From Sunday to Sunday, communion in the Body and Blood of Christ wants to make also of our lives a sacrifice pleasing to the Father, in the fraternal communion of sharing, of hospitality, of service. From Sunday to Sunday, the energy of the Bread broken sustains us in announcing the Gospel in which the authenticity of our celebration shows itself.

Let us abandon our polemics to listen together to what the Spirit is saying to the Church. Let us safeguard our communion. Let us continue to be astonished at the beauty of the Liturgy. The Paschal Mystery has been given to us. Let us allow ourselves to be embraced by the desire that the Lord continues to have to eat His Passover with us.

That is why it is more important than ever to renew our prayer lives and the need to approach the Church’s Sacraments from which flow heavenly graces.  It is this gift of self that God wants to share with us on the path of life as he comes to us in the Sacrament of the Church and in the Sacraments which are the wellspring of the Church’s life. This is why Pope Leo XIV has stressed in a recent message to a liturgical formation conference at Mount Angel Abbey in Portland, OR that, “all those preparing the celebration of the divine mysteries — especially priests — must show respect toward the rites promulgated by Pope Saint Paul VI and Pope Saint John Paul II.” This respect, he said, must come from an “inner attitude of openness, trust in God, humility before His greatness, and fidelity to ecclesial communion.”

As I wish you all a blessed September, I invite all of us not to forget our own part in being Sacrament … of becoming what we receive, especially in the Eucharist…to those we meet along the way! As I read recently, “Jesus loves us too much to leave us stuck in limiting mindsets and ways of thinking.” Let us pray that Jesus will open our eyes, our ears, our minds, our lives, to God’s abiding presence: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.