Hello Friends,

After Hurricane Katrina several TV preachers got in their pulpits and said that the reason that the storm devastated New Orleans was because of the decadence that goes on there. A famous evangelist also said the same thing about the horrific destruction that we’ve recently witnessed in Port au Prince. People blame God for cancer, wars, accidents, divorces and all sorts of silly things. In this weekend’s gospel we hear Jesus’ response to some deadly occurrences of His day.

Apparently, folks in Jesus’ time liked to blame God for tragedies as well as we do. They approached Him with questions about two recent deadly incidents that they were concerned about. Pontius Pilate and the Romans had killed some Galileans and a tower had fallen in Siloam near Jerusalem and eighteen more Jews had died. The response from the faithful disciples was, “Why would God do such things to us?”

Jesus’ answer was both assuring and challenging to His listeners. First He tells them that both sinners and saints die. We all have accidents. We all can be the victims of disease, violence, accidents, and tragedies. More importantly, God doesn’t pick on sinners any more than He picks on saints. Then Jesus challenges His audience to be prepared for their own death by repenting NOW for their sins.

Since we don’t know the when the axe will fall for us, Jesus calls His listeners then and us now to take the necessary steps in our own lives to be in the right relationship with God and our neighbor. We cannot guarantee that when we wake up in the morning, we will see the sunset. Jesus calls us to continue to be prepared.

Finally, I have two requests. I will be at my favorite place in the world this week on retreat. From Sunday afternoon until Friday evening I will be making my yearly retreat at Gethsemani. Please keep me in your prayers during this time. Lastly, you may have noticed that my hair is getting very wooly these days. I will be shaving it all off on St. Patrick’s Day to benefit research into cancers that effect children. Several other parishioners will be doing the same thing at other occasions in the next couple of weeks. Whether you contribute for them or me does not really matter, but please contribute so that we can all do a little part in keeping kids from suffering. If you’d like to contribute online, my link is www.stbaldricks.org/participant/frchuck. You may also give cash or checks to any of us participants in person. Write the checks to St. Baldrick’s Foundation for “haircut”. Thanks for any help you can give.

paz,
Fr. Chuck