A pure Icon radiating the Joy of the Gospel
Dear Parishioners,
This Sunday, we are only three days away till the 7pm Candlelight Procession and Rosary around the Church Grounds followed by 8pm Mass. This Procession and Mass on this Wednesday night opens our Feast Week, a time full of faith and Community Events to celebrate the Assumption of Our Lady and grow closer to God and each other as a Parish Family under her Patronage.
We encourage all parishioners and especially all Committee members and volunteers for the Feastweek to participate in this opening Faith Event that has been a very prayerful experience for those who have participated over previous years to set us all on the the best footing to journey and benefit from Feast week. By doing this we will follow two central themes of the next paragraph of Pope Francis’, prayer to Mary in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (the Joy of the Gospel.) These two Marian themes are (1) to be a person of listening and contemplation and 2. to be an Icon open to showing others the Joy of the Gospel.
In these two themes Pope Francis captures two central qualities of Mary responding to God’s Magnificent Grace. The Gospel’s speaks of her as ready to listen and contemplate God’s word and calling to her. She listened and pondered in her heart we hear three times in the Gospel of Luke. Mary stood watching, listening and contemplating even at the most painful long moments of her Son’s Suffering and Death on the Cross.
When we commit to taking time to stop and be silent to being prayerful listeners in faith to God and contemplate what His Word means for us we like Mary will be an Icon, humbly reflecting the power and joy of the Gospel, the Joy of living in the power of God’s Grace and His Kingdom.
And so we continue with Pope Francis calling on Mary’s prays as we say:
Virgin of listening and contemplation, Mother of love, Bride of the eternal wedding feast, pray for the Church, whose pure icon you are, that she may never be closed in on herself or lose her passion for establishing God’s kingdom.
Amen! Alleluia!
