Dear St. Rita Families,
You’ll notice this weekend that our poor boxes and candle boxes have been reinstalled, a little better than before, so hopefully this will prevent any future thefts. However, I would like to encourage your active participation in ensuring that we remain safe. The thefts occurred mainly during off-hours, when the Church is open for prayer but outside of normal Mass times. Keeping the Church open during these hours is important for you and for others who need and desire to visit Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and to pray.
Therefore, I encourage you not to take those times for granted! Come and visit Our Lord. Come and spend time in the Church and pray. Not only will you help to deter any future issues, but more importantly you will be living out your Faith concretely. You will receive actual grace, which is grace given to you at a particular time to enable you to carry out the will of God. You will also be ordering your life around God, who is our First Cause and Last End. Take advantage of the opportunity you have to visit with Our Lord, to seek help for your struggles, to praise and worship Him, and to receive the rest that only Christ can give. Even if it is just a few minutes, your visit to the Lord is not without benefit.
There is a story that St. Josemaría Escriva would tell about a time when, as a young parish priest in Madrid, he would hear Confessions for a few hours each morning. And regularly, he would hear a loud clanging, like the sound of large, metal milk canisters. One day, he decided to find out what was going on. He waited by the door, and as soon as he heard the clanging, he stepped out and saw – surprise! – a milkman! The future saint asked the milkman what he was doing, and the milkman responded that every day he would come in the Church just briefly to visit Our Lord. Putting down the milk cans rather clumsily, he would simply say to Jesus, “Lord, here is Juan the milkman!” And then he would leave. St. Josemaría was so moved by this little witness, that he spent the rest of the day repeating his own aspiration to Jesus: “Jesus, here is this miserable priest, who doesn’t know how to love you like Juan the milkman!”
Of all others, the Prisoner of the Tabernacle most merits our love and attention! And He rewards generously, too! There is no other Friend who we can visit who is so good, so patient, so forgiving, so loving, so encouraging, and who knows how to challenge us precisely in the ways that are necessary for our peace and joy. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Mt 11:28-30).
It is hard to express just how much the Lord longs to shower His graces upon you! When we go out of our way to visit Him, to ask for those graces, to open ourselves to receive them, we begin to discover just how much the Lord wants to do for us and wants to love us. Spending time in prayer is never wasted. Even if – especially if – we have to go out of our way to do it, the Lord sees that little act of love for Him, and it delights Him.
In the end, I hope the theft of our poor boxes becomes an occasion of grace for our parish! St. Rita is remarkable in the beautiful, Catholic culture that has formed around it and in it, and that culture can only be sustained by our relationship with God. All of our human relationships are sustained and deepened by little acts of friendship and love, and there is no reason that this little act of love, whether it is a spontaneous visit or a regular one, cannot do the same for our relationship with God!
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen