Dear Parishioner

“Open your eyes; “open your heart”; “Open up”; “Have an open mind”; “Dare to be open!”

“Open” It’s just a four-letter word, but it has something about it, an energy.  Can you feel it? Do you feel its power, its affect, its impact?  It’s just a four-letter word but when said out loud, it can make you feel free, liberated! 

You know that feeling when you walk into a room, and you can just feel the energy around you.  Someone is speaking and something inside you is set free. You feel the energy, the excitement they are creating, and you just feel alive, feel free!  It’s liberating, life giving. It’s that feeling, sensation that drives you, motivates you to move mountains, change the world.  You grasp a sense of what life, God, is offering and you have a role to play, and you have a purpose and a mission.

Our readings this Sunday have that energy, that sense of openness, of being set free!  The Prophet Isaiah!  Courage; Don’t be afraid; Leap like a deer; “Ears be unsealed; Tongues Sing for joy!”  “Eyes, Be opened’.  Jesus in our Gospel says to the man who is deaf and with a speech impediment: Ephphatha!  BE OPENED”Mk 7:34.

“Ephphatha! BE OPENED!”  When that happens, we have no need, desire, to pull rank and make distinctions and judgements like St James talks about in our second reading.  Because we are free, open to life and what life has to offer us and our call, our mission, to bring God’s love into our world and make the world a better place, a place where God reigns and everyone is given a chance to be fully human and fully alive.

Be freed! Be alive! Feel Alive!  Live from now on!  Seize the moment and let the world shine with love!  God’s love!

Fr Ambrose OSB, PP