Message – Sunday, October 16, 2022

My Dear Brothers & Sisters,

Today in our Cure, the Transfiguration celebrates harvest Thanksgiving as the rest of us focus on our National Heritage.  It might interest us to know that Harvest Thanksgiving is part of our religious heritage.  That is, most if not all Christian Churches celebrate harvest each year.  The various ways in which harvest is celebrated adds diversity to the element of our religious heritage.

Our Harvest Thanksgiving today I suggest provides us with the opportunity to be thankful to God for our heritage as a people and a nation.  Our heritage celebrations in more recent times have become less focused, as we have allowed ourselves to be totally engrossed by the issues and concerns of the present moment.  May I suggest that as we seek to find solutions to our problems and answers to our varied questions, we look to the past for inspiration.  The Old Testament contains many references to the “God of our Fathers.”  This indicates that the nation of Israel kept in active focus the examples left for them by their ancestors, examples of faith, that is those who brought this nation into being and continued to sustain the nation.

Today I invite us as the Church to ask ourselves, have we been faithful in challenging our nation to look to the God who sustains all nations and peoples, the God who is trustworthy because he has been with us in all the changing scenes of life?

Love and Blessings always

Fr, Eddie