“By grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. This is not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us.” Ep 2,8-10

Dear parishioners,

In today’s second reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we are in the presence, once again, of the mystery of our chosenness, of our giftedness, of our God-given destiny to be his people, redeemed by him again and again.

God is extremely discreet, and very slow in revealing himself to his people, but after 4000 years of experience as believers, we’ve come to learn a thing or two about him. One of the main things we’ve learned about him is that he is a redeeming God. His first great redeeming act was the redemption of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. And then there was the redemption from exile in Babylon. When the Israelites were taken into exile in Babylon, they sincerely thought it was all over. They had collectively and repeatedly sinned, and God had had enough. He had abandoned them to the wrath of Babylon. Jerusalem was destroyed. The Temple was destroyed. God had vacated his Temple. Over time, they had come to believe, mistakenly, that God dwelt in his Temple, and only in his Temple. No temple, no more possibility of relationship with him. They were quite convinced that as a people, as the people of God, they had died. It was over. But to their great surprise, God followed them into Babylon. They knew him to be present to them. They still had their scriptures, which became precious to them, because they had lost everything else that connected them with God. They pored over their Scriptures like never before, and re-discovered their God. And then came the magnificent second redemption. Who could have foreseen or predicted that the Persian empire would overthrow the Babylonian empire, and that the Persian king, Cyrus, would let the Israelites go home? The unlikelihood of such an enlightened gesture on the part of Cyrus can only be understood and explained by an act of God’s Providence. And so they were redeemed. Again. And they, and we, after the Israelites, would be redeemed, again and again, in countless different ways, big and small, collective and individual. God chose us to be his people. It’s not for a time. It’s for good. And because he has chosen us, he will always be there for us, to redeem us. Not always in the ways we would like, but he’ll always be there.

A lot of people in the Church worry about what we will look like, as a Church, as a consequence of the pandemic. I’m personally not worried. The Church will be, as a result of the pandemic, whatever God wants it be, or whatever he allows it to be, because he knows he can work with it. So let us take heart. We are chosen, and God always redeems his chosen people in the ways he knows to be the best.

Just three things to share with you this week. The first is a request. The demand is increasing for admission into the church for confession/communion times, especially for communion. We can only accommodate 160 people per week, and we are noticing that some people are coming more than once a week. In order to make it possible for as many people as possible to make it into the church for confession and communion, we ask that you pre-register for no more than one communion/confession time per week. Thank you for helping us to make confession and communion accessible to as many people as possible.

Secondly, a question. I have reminded everyone that we have a direct link to Shalom World News on the main page of our parish website. Has anyone visited this online television channel? If so, what’s it like? I invite those who have checked it out to report to Lorna by email, and we will be in a position to share your experience with other parishioners. 

Thirdly, attention all Filipinos! As you know, we are celebrating this year 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines. To mark this milestone, a live streamed 500YOC Mass will be celebrated by Fr. Amador Abundo, at All Saints Parish in Coquitlam, this Monday, March 15th, at 7:00 p.m. In order to view this mass online, go to our parish website, our Facebook page, or our Instagram page and look for “Misang Pilipino”. From there, you will have a link to get into the mass on Youtube. You might also try going to the Filipino Ministry website, at filipinoministry.ca.

That’s it for this week. Keep safe everyone, and God bless. Fr. Guy