Pastor's Spiritual Reflections

By Fr. Leo Schneider (4/15/2007)

Dear People of Holy Name,

You just have to love Thomas. He is so human and so honest. He just didn’t “get” the resurrection yet and wasn’t going to believe just because of what others said. Thomas needed to have his own experience of the Risen Christ.

The aim of any religion is to bring people to an authentic experience of God. Our liturgies try to create a “sacred-space” where the mind and heart can speak to each other in dialogue with the God who speaks through his Word and ritual. The dialogue begins with honesty. If we don’t feel God is near, we should admit that and tell the Lord. Then we are ready to listen. Then we are open to hear what the deeper parts of our hearts may say as it is awakened by the Word./p>

Coming to know God and coming to know ourselves takes time. To come to know ourselves increases our knowledge of God and our coming to know the Lord increases our knowledge of ourselves. The story of Jesus interacts with our own and gives us a way of understanding ourselves that we wouldn’t have on our own. Likewise, as we reflect on our own life experiences we come to a deeper understanding of the mysteries of God.

When I pray the rosary and think of Mary, I recall I used to have the image of a pure, pious and perhaps prudish, holy person, but after being blessed with women in my life who loved me and supported me in my humanness, I began to feel I was praying to a Mary who is truly there for me in my humanity’s deepest desires and search for love. Like my friends, she wasn’t judging, but full of desire for my deepest happiness. Here my human experience depends on my religious experience and trust in Mary as the mother of God.

Moving in the other direction, contemplating God as the presence of the Holy Spirit moves me beyond the limits of human experience to imagining the infinite potential of God, and allows me to see so much more even in the “ordinary.” For me the spirit is real and lets me know there is a reality and power beyond my own in which I can trust. This allows me to live with hope and even expectation.

What I am speaking of here does take time. It is a process and what is good news is that it took those closest to Jesus a while to “get” it. So having an open mind and heart, one not tied up in fear or judgment, makes us ready for a real experience of God in the here and now. Today we ask the Lord to help us touch him, feel his wounds and believe he is real because we have experienced him ourselves.

Let us pray that we may truly know the Risen Christ in our hearts and come to the peace that living in him alone can bring.

In Christ’s peace, Fr. Leo