FROM THE PASTOR'S DESK……         JULY 4, 2004

Dear Fellow Parishioners,
CONTEMPORIZE….
The Webster Dictionary defines Contemporize as:  To make or be contemporary, to synchronize.  In the scripture readings for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, it talks about living as true followers of God.
Isaiah loved his countrymen so much that he wanted them to convert and return to their God.  He even talks of the delights a person can enjoy if the person is faithful to the call to live according to the will of God.  God is so good that even if someone has failed, God was and is willing always to receive the repented.  God is and was always happy to see His people return to the fold.
As we turn the pages from the Old to the New Testament, we see this love contemporized by God's greatest act of love, by sending His own Son.  Christ wanted to reconcile the whole of humankind to His Father.  In the Gospel today, He sent seventy-two others to let the people prepare for His visit.  Laborers are still sent today.  Some are received and some are rejected because they bring peace and announce the kingdom of God.  St. Paul tells all laborers that if we ever boast, that we like him "never boast except in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been to me, and I to the world."  (Galatians 6:14)  We are called to be laborers of the Gospel by the way of life we lead and give example to others.  Let us be laborers of peace in the Kingdom of God.  Let us become more and more Christ-like.
May God bless the United States of America on our Birthday as an Independent Nation!

                                        Sincerely yours in Christ,

      Fr. Joe Zermeño, OFM