“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:15
One might say, “God doesn’t understand us,” but absolutely, He does. Not only does He understand us better than we understand ourselves – after all, He created us – but He also became one of us. Today’s reading of the Letter to the Hebrews serves as a reminder of what God did for us. Christ became one of us to gain us access to his glory and to the heavenly kingdom. In doing so, Christ sympathizes with our weaknesses, and He knows what it meant to be tested. Simply, God understands human suffering; Christ endured human suffering for our sake. By undertaking the human condition, Christ came to know the anguish of human limitation, and He took all this experience and knowledge with him up to heaven becoming a heavenly intercessor who grasps the fullness of human experience.
Be it then our personal struggles with health, pain, or death or be it our common struggles with tragedy, devastation, or persecution caused by storms or political unrest throughout the world, Christ understands out plight and intercedes for our frailties. We, on the other hand, recognize and accept these weaknesses, offering them to Christ and asking for his wisdom and peace to prevail in the heart of our world and in each one of us. We pray that his conscience may be our conscience so that we can better cope with the wickedness in the world, but we also pray that we may have the courage to act in accordance with his conscience. We can’t simply rest on the fact that He knows and sympathizes with our suffering; we must also try to ease such suffering through him.
This weekend, we celebrate our Annual International Food Festival, and we’re so excited to share this time in fraternity. We thank again our chair Nikki Dudash and all those volunteers who worked with her in putting together this event. We also thank Luis Santiago Rosado Casimiro for joining us this weekend and for giving us some insight into the great work being done by the Diocese of Orlando in our Sister Diocese in the Dominican Republic. Thank you as well for all those who made a generous contribution to our Sister Diocese with our special collection. Finally, we are pleased to say that the relic of Blessed Carlos Acutis will be here on Friday, October 25. Please join us on Friday evening.
In Christ
Fr Robert