The homily of the 12-18-2015 OLS Christmas Mass
Our Pastors beautiful Homily spoken during the evenings Mass gives spiritual guidance to the message.
Thank you for keeping your appointment tonight. Your ‘appointment with God’ … your appointment with Mary.
We speak of Mary’s “coming” to us … because we think in terms of time and space. Because the reality is: that Heaven is not far away, and it is not so much that She comes to us from somewhere far away, but rather, at times, our faith, our hope, our love clear our vision enough … that we can hear and see what is there always.
I would like to share with you a little of what was heard …what was spoken in love … what was spoken as a gift, and what we are told again and again. It is the message of God’s love for each of us …. God’s love for all of us. That message … the Good News … is the same always. The word “reassure” was Heard several times. We should be reassured of God’s love for us. We should be reassured of Mary’s praying for us. What we heard was a beautiful message for “pilgrims” … that we are pilgrims, pilgrims together, and that we walk together on a path illumined by Mary … a path of forgiveness and love … a path of mercy.
Do not be discouraged, thinking your prayers are not heard. Your prayers are heard … your sorrows are felt… your joys are experienced. Do not be discouraged. We are each of us, each one of us, called to this path … to this pilgrimage. This pilgrimage is short. We are called to this pilgrimage … to this path … which She illuminates. The path of faith and trust in God. She speaks of her Fiat, her “Yes” to God … Her “Yes” to God in the Annunciation … Her “Yes” to God beneath the Cross … Her “Yes” to God for us. Mary says “Yes”.
God is calling you. Do not close your hearts … open your ears. God is calling you.
She spoke of, ‘taking our hearts (if we will permit) … each of our hearts … and placing them on the altar tonight’ … ‘if you will permit … I will place your heart on the altar tonight’.
The visionary “saw” at the end of the message … the heavens lighted up and Our Lady welcoming … beckoning … inviting. What the visionary saw was an enormous ‘stream of people’ … pilgrims going up into the light. She saw each of us there … among those pilgrims responding to God’s call. The path she saw, she described as lighted with the stars. The stars lining the path and God’s people hearing and responding to the song of heaven … the call of heaven. Each going through the mantle of Mary, not afraid, but filled with joy.
God is calling you and me … through Mary. And what we are told again, what we experience now, tonight, and in our lives as pilgrims together is the love of the Father, the love the Son, the love of the Mother. We are loved. We are called in mercy. There is much more to the message, which will the transcribed and printed, but these are some words that I thought important to share with you tonight. Because you have come in faith and in trust, to keep an ‘appointment with God’.
Finally, may I share a personal thought that came to me tonight? How reassured we must be, to have Our Mother praying for us. What an assurance everyone here can have: that She prays for us! She prays for us! Do you remember the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee? Do you remember that She said to JESUS, Her Son, that “they have no wine”? Do you remember that? And do you remember what JESUS did? He gave the gift of the wine in abundance, because His Mother said to Him, “They have no wine”.
Now She says to Him … “They have no faith!” … She says to Him … “They are out of hope!” … She says to Him … “They have no love! Yes, our Mother is praying for us!