JSTM


 

 

  

 

A WORD FROM THE PASTOR

Is your salt salty and your light shining

Today, I am giving two stories of two female personalities which highlight how they were salt of the earth and light of the world, the theme of this weekend’s liturgy.

Mother Angelica: The story of EWTN is the story of a brave woman who had the courage of hera conviction that she should be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  Mother Angelica, who died on March 27, 2016(my priestly ordination anniversary day), started broadcasting Catholic TV for just a few hours a day in 1981 from the garage of her Poor Clare Monastery in Irondale, Alabama.  The project grew and grew, and now, after thirty-nine years, the Eternal Word Television Network is available twenty-four hours a day all over the world by cable and satellite.  Mother Angelica is an example of a true Christian living out her faith as salt to preserve Christian values and to provide the modern world with a purifying mass medium. She kept putting her lamp on the lampstand so that Christ’s Light would shine for everyone in the modern global village. 

St. Teresa of Calcutta:  She was born as Agnes to Albanian parents in Yugoslavia. After learning English in their Mother house in Dublin, Ireland, she went to India in 1929 as a member of the Loreto Order of nuns. There, she taught for many years and became principal of the school.  In 1946, she received her 'call within a call' to work with the poorest of the poor.  By 1948, she had received permission to leave the Loreto Order and had trained in the nursing skills she would need to carry out her calling.  She prayed, "Oh God, if I cannot help these people in their poverty and their suffering, let me at least die with them, close to them, so that I can show them your love." From this simple beginning, the Missionaries of Charity have grown to include 4,500 Sisters and Brothers, 755 homes for the children, the sick, the destitute and the dying and 1,369 medical clinics that serve 120,000 worldwide. 

We too can become the salt of the earth and the light of the world as Mother Angelica and St. Teresa of Calcutta did. Any simple services done to our neighbors become instruments of making Christ known to others.

Let us try to find an answer to this question: Is your salt salty and your light shining ?

 

In the Service of the Lord,
   Father Thainese Alphonse

 

 

   
     
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