Padre's Post-When Dreams Come True

The Christmas story is a dream come true. The dream had been told and shared in the Hebrew culture for hundreds of years. The dream became reality in a manger. It was immediately threatened and fled to Egypt until it was safe to return home. The dream was raised in anonymity in a little village. When the dream came of age it was allowed three years upon the world's stage. And then....it was killed...until it was born again by the hearts and eyes and ears and hands who touched and heard and saw and was inspired by the dream come true.

When dreams emerge from the world of imagination, hope, and story they rarely look as they were dreamt. Dreams take on skin and vulnerability. Dreams are at risk when they are brought out into the light of day and dust of the earth. I suppose that is why most of us keep our dreams in dreamland. They are safer and left for only us to see and imagine.

But the Christmas story is about a dream come true. The dream of God incarnate in our very lives and from within each of us eternal light and grace and love and healing might radiate. And then...we would be a dream come true.

Fr. Richard

Padre's Post-The 6th Day Of Christmas

In every spiritual journey we see the seasons of the church played out in each life. The divine birth of Christmas happens in each of us, many times throughout our life. The births come following the deaths, like Jesus told Nicodemus, "you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you be born again."

Christmas represents the new life that does come when the old has passed away. We have all experienced this truth in our lives. Reflect back upon the decades (unless your particularly young, then let years or months suffice.) The pain of life passing is always followed by life emerging. Unfortunately, the dying and passing can be so painful and dark, we choose to believe nothing as good or better may follow... but it does. This is the truth of Christmas. In the quiet remote places of our being, new life is dawning in our soul. We are now given the charge to nurture and raise it just as Mary and Joseph nurtured and raised the child, Jesus.

Fr. Richard

Padre's Post-The 3rd Day Of Christmas

Christmas is the birth of the divine from human life. It is the recognition that every life bears the nature of God to be lived out upon the earth. The Christmas story is about one person, but the Christmas message is about each of us recognizing the divine potential of our own life.

Christmas is about divine visitations to ordinary persons conceiving new life within. Can we not imagine our own life being a womb that brings forth grace and love, healing and forgiveness? As we give ourselves to simple prayer and little actions can we not imagine God taking our humble offering like Jesus took a few loaves and fish, and feed a multitude of others?

Let Christmas be a time of holy visitations in your life. Let the quiet and long dark nights of winter be a womb for holy light breaking forth from our life.

Fr. Richard

Padre's Post-The 2nd Day Of Christmas

The Holiday of Christmas has passed, we now turn our attention to the Holy Days of Christmas. Dec. 25^th to Jan 5^th marks the second season of our annual pilgrimage through the year of our Lord. The meaning of Christmas is in the incarnation: the invisible becoming visible for our hands to touch, our eyes to behold, and our ears to hear.

Be mindful of little acts of grace and kindness, be aware of opportunities to both give and receive the compassionate presence of God. These are the gifts that cannot be purchased or wrapped but are discovered and experienced.

This is the magic and wonder of Christmas: light emerging from darkness; warmth radiating through the cold.

Fr. Richard

What Is The Christmas Story?

Father Richard's sermon for December 24, 2017, Christmas Eve.

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The Power Of Wait

Father Richard's sermon for December 24, 2017.

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Padre's Post-The Miracle Of Advent

It is bound to happen – living in the world – we lose the deeper places – we become stranded upon the surfaces – we know what we see – hear – touch - we no longer see below the surface - we have lost the language and life of soul.

Advent beckons the reappearance and emergence of God in the world. Advent is the prophets’ cry for faithfulness and justice – Mary’s song for the lowly – the angel’s announcement of God’s conception into the world. Advent reunites God and humankind in the profound intimacy shared between mother and child. This is the fellowship the creation story imagined from the beginning. This is the relationship that inspired creation in the heart of God. Advent is our return to the beginning when God created all to be the community of heaven and earth.

We were not born to be temporal or contemporary. We emerged from all that preceded us and will remain in all that follows us – we are eternal. Our lives run deeper than the daily news or generational generalities. We are not boomers, busters, millennials, post millennials…. We are children of God born from the womb of women.

It is bound to happen – living in the world – to forget or never know any of this. To know only our daily experience and personal perspective. But advent is here to wake us up. To make a clear path for the rebirth of the divine from the womb of our lives. May our response be “Let it happen according to thy will.”

Fr. Richard