Now is our time!
Dear Fellow Parishioners of Our Lady of Divine Providence Family of Parishes,
Happy Feast of the Baptism of the Lord! Today we remember how Jesus identified Himself with sinners and was baptized to make baptism the means of our salvation.
After His baptism, He immediately went into the desert to fast, to pray, and to wrestle with temptation. (I would like to give a shout-out to all the men from our parishes who are joining Jesus in this experience through the Exodus 90 program! It’s not too late to join, contact me if interested.)
As I write this, I am attending the SEEK Conference in Columbus with our OLODP Evangelization team. At SEEK, 16,000 young Catholics are gathered to worship and deepen their faith. Their hunger is palpable and their excitement contagious. We have listened to powerful talks, and I am excited to share some insights with you, and to announce that SEEK 2027 will be in Columbus again. That means we can bring more people from our parishes next year. Some key takeaways:
Young people hunger for meaning, and they are finding it in the Catholic Church.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of change and challenge.
Christians evangelize!
The Evangelization team and I are on a conference track called “Making Missionary Disciples” designed to help equip people to become missionary evangelists. We are gaining lots of good insights.
I am excited to bring some of the fire and power of the conference back home. One of the speakers, Fr. Boniface Hicks, spoke of the place of the Holy Spirit in the tradition of the Church. He talked about how the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of change, how change is necessary, messy, and painful, but the Holy Spirit brings harmony out of the change and the mess that He has inspired.
Another speaker, Jim Beckman, taught about stewardship and tithing. Everything we have belongs to God, and He has given it to us. He did some simple math; the average person is awake for about 1000 minutes a day. So, if we pray less than ten minutes a day, we are giving God less than 1% of our time. The question is not “How much of ‘my’ time and money and talents should I give to God?” The question really is, “How much of God’s time and money and talent am I using well?”
The average person can live for three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air. To us, is God food, water, or air? The average American looks at screen for seven hours a day. Is God more important than a screen? Let us restore the primacy of the Most High!
I am convicted more than ever that now is our time! We must make big changes, embrace messiness, and go through pain. We will do that together, because it is the path to life and growth. It is the way of the Holy Spirit. If we commit to doing our best, we can do great things.
As a family of parishes, we are gearing up for a change in Mass times. I know that this will be difficult and painful for many. But I also see it as an opportunity for us to make responsible choices about how we use God’s resources in the best way.
Jesus’ Baptism is a sign that points to the transformative power of aiming for Heaven. If we aim at Heaven, we must go through the desert, like Jesus did, but that process sets us free and actualizes our full potential to be fully alive.
Yours in Christ, with Mary,
Fr. Henry Hoffmann
