My dear Parishioners:


In the next two months we will be celebrating some major feast days, and I want to take this opportunity to wish you all well and a happy and healthy holiday season.

While thinking about this month’s message I thought of several themes, but one stood out of all of them. Which one? The question, “Do we love Christ completely and totally?

Christ tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. In other words, we are called upon to love Him with our entire being! Not 80% of our being…not 90% …. Not even 99% of it … only 100% is acceptable to Him! Not only that, but it is also understood that if the Church is to flourish and survive, this love must be applied by all members, not just a few!

During our “Footsteps of St. Paul” tour in September, I took advantage of this trip to read in more detail about the apostle Paul. Paul explains this beautifully in his first Letter to the Corinthians. In this writing, he compares this total commitment to the parts of our physical body. “A body is not a single organ,” He writes, “but many”. Suppose the foot would say, ‘because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.’ It does belong to the body nonetheless. There are many different organs but one body. God had combined the various parts of the body, even giving special honor to the humbler parts so that there might be no sense of division in the body, but that all organs might feel the same concern for one another. If one organ suffers, they all suffer together. If one flourishes, they all rejoice together. You are Christ’s body, and each of you is a limb or an organ of it.” (1 Cor. 12: 14-27)

The words of St. Paul should serve as a strong reminder to us of what the Church truly is. It is a community of believers, striving to make Christ’s Church a bit of “heaven on earth.” There can be no individual agendas, only common goals among the members of the Church. Only by understanding and applying the message of Christ’s greatest commandment, is this possible.


Christ truly,

+Fr. James Adams