Saint Aidan Catholic Church - Livonia, MI
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  • Discover
    • Schedule >
      • Holy Week
    • Livestream Masses
    • Lent Fish Dinners
    • Contact
    • Register
    • About >
      • Our Patron Saint
      • Church Tour
      • PRES Plan
    • Groups >
      • Women of St. Aidan
      • Men's Club
      • Men's Prayer Group
      • Young(ish) Adults
    • Links
  • Grow
    • March Enrichment
    • Lent '23
    • Families
    • Blog
    • Bible Studies >
      • Exodus
    • Sacrament Prep >
      • Reconciliation & Holy Communion
      • Confirmation
    • Young(ish) Adults
    • Youth Ministry
    • Ongoing Enrichment >
      • Online Studies
      • Sacraments
      • Faith Basics
      • Library Database
    • Children's Liturgy of the Word
    • Become Catholic
    • VBS
  • Service
    • Assistance
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    • Electronic Donations
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Gifts Made Manifest in a Spiritual Resolution

1/20/2019

 
Today we celebrate the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time. We hear the story of the changing of water to wine; the first miracle of our Lord at the wedding at Cana in which He is revealed⎯made manifest⎯as divine. This story is an “epiphany” celebration, a theophany ⎯ startling evidence of divine intervention. Appropriately, in today’s Psalm we sing: “Proclaim to all the nations, the marvelous deeds of the Lord!”

In the miracle of the wedding at Cana Jesus is revealed to His disciples as the Son of God; He is the proof of God’s unconditional and redeeming love for us. This love that motivates God to earth is expressed in Isaiah’s words as a love that is like the intimacy of the marital bond: no more are we forsaken and desolate, but we are espoused and delighted!

The letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians reminds us that God’s gifts are made manifest in us: many diverse gifts, but of the same spirit and given for some benefit or service. In this New Year, have we made any spiritual resolutions? Perhaps your spiritual growth may include discerning your gifts and their use in the service and benefit of this Community. Maybe you would like to devote time to scripture study - there is plenty of opportunity for that here at St. Aidan! (Thanks David!)

Last time in Cycle C, for Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, I wrote a letter to God as my “Sing Praise” article - and I would like to repeat some of it now.

Holy God of Heaven and Earth,

I know that a thousand years are as a day to you, but we humans are bound up in time. As a new season is beginning, please teach me to care more about people and less about money, to enjoy my work but not let it enslave me, and to laugh more easily than I did last year. Help me to remember the things that are easy to forget: to remember that it might well be my last year—that some people are counting on me and that you have things for me to do. Help me discern what those things may be in order to be the best me I can be.

Lord, please let me shake off the monotony of life, try some new things, and mend broken fences. Father of Mercies please teach me in this new year to lighten up and let go, to enjoy children, sunsets, reading, and long walks, avoid quarrels and work at being a peacemaker in this world; to start the year with fewer regrets. May we live always for your glory!

I cannot know what this year will bring, and I am grateful for that blessing! Help me to eat less junk food, exercise, to take better care of my body (the Spirit’s temple) and to engage my intellect; to learn to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. Above all other things, Father, I want to be your instrument for easing somebody's too-heavy load, to relieve some sad person's misery, and to introduce some lost soul to Jesus and His love and peace. Help me to be merciful and always kind. Come what may, may we all live for your revealed glory, within your will, and to your delight. We pray all in the name of Jesus. Amen!

We gather together today; and at Mass we are espoused - joined to heaven - in the great prayer of our Church. Today we sing a wonderful hymn based on a well-known hymn tune called ‘Sing a New Church’ (JS 830). The refrain is: “Let us bring the gifts that differ, And, in splendid, varied ways, Sing a new church into being, One in faith and love and praise.” What a marvelous New Year’s resolution it would be for us to manifest Christ to the world in service of others: our own epiphany of spirit and a celebration of our gifts given by a generous God. Make your New Year’s spiritual resolution now - it’s never too late!
​

Keep singing!

Elizabeth Dyc


The Supreme Value

1/10/2019

 
Before the face of the supreme value, we are called to have a change of mind.  On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we come face to face with the supreme value - our Savior Jesus - as His Father lets everyone know who Jesus is as He submits to the baptism of John in the waters of the Jordan.  Jesus - Son of God - is the one, if we let Him, who will form us to be lights for others, bring clarity of vision to those suffering from the darkness of confusion and sin, and lead to freedom those in the bondage of one vice or another.  To be such agents though, we first must undergo a change of mind.

This weekend, in Luke’s Gospel, we hear: Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (3:21-22).  Jesus certainly did not need to be baptized, but He submitted to John’s baptism as a sign for all of us that we need to die to ourselves in order to accomplish God’s will in our lives.  Jesus, then, exhibits great humility in submitting to John’s baptism.

To be clear, John’s baptism was/is not the same as the baptism Jesus instituted as one of the Seven Sacraments.  John’s baptism only served as a visible token of repentance - from the Greek word metanoia, literally a “change of mind”.  It was a reminder to all who submitted to such a baptism that they must turn away from sin and instead toward God, in preparation for the coming of Jesus the Savior.  Jesus did not need to be baptized because He was totally faithful to the will of His Father and free from sin.  What He wanted was to show His solidarity with us in order to reconcile us to the Father.  By commanding His disciples to baptize all nations (cf. Matthew 28:19), He established the means by which we can die to sin and begin to live a new life with God.

If live up to our baptismal calling, having been made, through Jesus, sons and daughters of God, we can accomplish with and though Jesus the great work Isaiah speaks of as well this weekend: to be lights for others, to bring clarity of vision to those suffering from the darkness of confusion and sin, and  to lead to freedom those in the bondage of one vice or another.

The key to all of this, though, is that when we are faced with the supreme value - Jesus - we have that change of mind, that metanoia.  Let us, as we continue forward into this new year of 2019, respond to the call of Jesus to turn away from sin, embrace the Good News of Jesus, dead and risen, and exhibit the transformative nature of this Good News in our own lives so that all may experience the renewal we have been privileged to experience (and continue to experience as we doggedly practice our faith) as we together share the Supreme Value - Jesus - in their midst.

David J. Conrad


Baptism of the Lord: A Bridge

1/10/2019

 
Last weekend’s “Sing Praise” article talked about how the Feast of the Epiphany, today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord and next week end’s story of the miracle at Cana (Jesus’ first miracle) form a three-Sunday “line up” of divine manifestation. These three events were the three major epiphanies of Christ: Jesus is made manifest as divine (the star, the dove and voice, the water turned to wine).

​Today’s Feast of The Baptism of the Lord forms a bridge between this Christmas Season and the next: it is both the culmination of Christmas and the beginning of Ordinary Time; it is both an ending and a beginning. Today, with the end of the Christmas Season, we still sing things of Christmas—and yet we celebrate Jesus’ baptism today (remembering our own baptismal promises) and the beginning of His public ministry as prophesied in Isaiah: “the victory of justice…a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind…”

This last Sunday of the Christmas Season I would like to take the opportunity again to thank all those member-volunteers of the Music Ministry (the young and the youthful) for their dedication and service to the Parish of St. Aidan. The long rehearsals, extra rehearsals and private practice are a huge commitment and sacrifice of time, talent and treasure in order to bring meaning, love, joy and beauty to our liturgical celebrations. Please hug any age Choir/Music Ministry member today and thank them for all the time and effort spent to serve the Parish well!

Next weekend we will see changes in the liturgy reflecting the beginning of the new season of Ordinary Time: the Gloria will change, there will be no post-Gospel Acclamation, we will speak our response to the Prayers of the Faithful and we will sing a different set of Eucharistic Acclamations. Ordinary Time means ordinal, or, counted time. In this new (next) season we will study Jesus’ ministry—which is really anything but ordinary! 

Today ends the Christmas Season and we begin our liturgical ‘countdown’ that leads us to Lent and beyond. A new season of spiritual resolutions begins! May God bless you in this New Year with good health, peace and prosperity. In the meantime: Keep Singing!

Elizabeth Dyc

    Authors

    David J. Conrad, M.A. Theology. Our Director of Faith Formation.

    Paul Pyrkosz. Our Youth Minister & Bookkeeper.

    ​Elizabeth Dyc. Our Director of Music Ministry.

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St. Aidan Catholic Church
17500 Farmington Rd. 
Livonia, MI 48152
Phone: 734-425-5950
office@saintaidanlivonia.org

Weekend Mass Schedule
Saturday Vigil: 5:00 p.m.
Sunday: 7:30, 9:30, 11:30 a.m.

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