Grace won by Christ’s cross

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.” (Jn. 3:13)

Jesus was lifted on the cross to win saving grace for us (sanctifying grace) by offering himself as the perfect sacrifice to the Father and thus opening heaven for us. Let us rejoice that we have a loving God who searches for us when we become lost, like the parable of the good shepherd finding the lost sheep, or the woman sweeping her house to find one of the ten lost coins. And upon finding each gift, God and his holy ones celebrate with a party in heaven!

When God the Father points out that we are missing one or two coins that we have lost, with his light we can find them and have the complete set of all ten. In this way wholeness and healing come back to our heart and soul, and into our relationships among the church faithful and society.

The challenge of course is realizing that sometimes we have wandered away and have become lost, or that we have lost sight of one or two of the Ten Commandments of God’s treasured life and love.

Just imagine if you lost a coin that was worth a whole month’s worth of food and drink for your family. A value well over $1,000.00 dollars. If you lived in a home with a stone floor and very little lighting, like in the time of Jesus, you would light a lamp and vigorously sweep within every crevice and corner of that entire house to find that coin.

And so, like a woman sweeping her home, we allow Holy Mother Church to sweep over us with the light of the Gospel, so that we might hear the lost coin skipping across the stone floor and see the candlelight flickering on its cherished value. This makes us rich again in the ways of God among this church community.

As soon as a person realizes they have become lost by sinning or have not fulfilled one of the Ten Command-ments in a reasonable way, they are found by God when they receive the grace of contrition – are sorry for offend-ing God and his love – and then seek to be forgiven and resolve to sin no more.

By his suffering and death, Jesus Christ has given we sinners the grace to repent of our sins, and the grace to have that sin most certainly forgiven and absolved when we worthily celebrate the Sacrament of Confession. Or, if it is a venial sin, to be forgiven at Mass with the necessary commitment to avoid that particular sin which blocks God’s life from healing and strengthening that part of our soul and communal life.

God is our heavenly Father who sent Jesus into the world to seek out those who have wandered away from his love and truth. God always seeks us out like a good father who wants to make sure that his children are safe and growing in the ways of true love. God the Father wants us believe with acts of faith, hope and love and

thus be united to Jesus Christ within his bride, Holy Mother Church.

When we understand that every Mass is like a heavenly wedding banquet, we can be assured that any time we confess our sins and come to Mass in the state of grace, we are participating in a heavenly celebration where God and all his holy angels and saints are celebrating that person’s growth in their friendship with God and his Church.

It is a joy when I see a father walking his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day, to be given to a man who, as a faithful husband, will carry on the father’s re-sponsibility of caring for her body and soul by beginning a family of their own, baptizing the children Catholic, and helping them on their way to Mass and the Eternal wedding banquet of heaven.

As the spiritual father of this parish community, I want to be like the good father who fulfills his role by providing and protecting their children on a spiritual level. And so, I was happy that many of you were able to make it to the extra confession times and Masses I provided on Sept. 5thand 6th, when we celebrated the First Friday devotions at the Church of St. Mary, and First Saturday devotions at the Church of St. Columbkill.

What a joy for me as your spiritual father to hear your confessions, to offer you God’s absolution, to join you in Adoration of our Eucharistic Lord, and then feed you with the bread of angels. With songs of praise, we celebrated God’s loving commitment to us and this parish community, and prayed for healing in our Archdiocese.

As followers of Jesus Christ, let us be sorry for block-ing God’s love with our sins and pray, “Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy,” especially at Mass, entrusting ourselves to God. When we sing or re-cite “Glory to God in the highest” we know that the party is beginning, because Jesus Christ has come down from heaven to search for us, has found us, and has brought us to this moment of seeing and, when worthy and of age, receiving Jesus Christ, the bread of angels, in the Holy Eucharist.

Thus, with deep gratitude and joyful humility, we al-low our hearts to be filled with sanctifying grace won by Christ’s cross which leads us to heaven by way of God’s Ten Commandments, the complete union with God in Jesus Christ through his seven sacraments. For Christ fulfilled God’s Ten Commandments perfectly. Let us rejoice that at every Mass, but especially Sunday Mass, we experience Christ’s cross and the heavenly wedding ban-quet that draws us onward and upward through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Peace in Jesus Christ, our Eucharistic Lord,

Fr. Thomas McCabe