OAPCE
Summer message from the Liaison Bishop
✠ Yvan Mathieu, SM
Summer is about to start. After a very full year of work and commitments, it will be good to have some time for ourselves and for our families. As vacation time is near, I like to remember the invitation Jesus made to his apostles after they came back from their first mission. “He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” (Mk 6:31) It is important therefore to take seriously that time of rest.
What is fascinating is that, while he wants his apostles to rest, he himself continues his mission. Once they arrived in that deserted place, many had followed them. “He saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.” (Mk 6:34) Jesus refused to let them go without food. With the help of his disciples, he fed five thousand men with five loaves of bread and two fish. “they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.” (Mk 6:43) Jesus will continue to be at work in our families this summer.
As members of the Ontario Association of Parents in Catholic Education, it is important to take our summer rest seriously. We can take that time off while continuing to evangelize the members of our families. In his June 4 message, pope Francis’s words suggested that “we can think of God […] through the image of a family gathered around the table, where life is shared. […] it is not only an image; it is reality! It is reality because the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that the Father poured into our hearts through Jesus (cf. Gal 4:6), makes us taste, makes us savour God’s presence: the presence of God, always close, compassionate and tender. […] The invitation he extends to us, we might say, is to sit at the table with God to share in his love.”
What a beautiful invitation: to sit at the table with God. Allow me to continue to quote pope Francis. By allowing God to sit at our summer table, “we commit ourselves to bear witness to God-as-love, creating communion in his name.” What a summer this will be! We will be strengthened by our rest and by the loving presence of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That way, we will be able to start anew our mission in September: to “bear witness to God-as-love,” to “offer everyone the food of God’s forgiveness and Gospel joy.”
And I conclude with pope Francis’s words: “may Mary help us to live the Church as that home where one loves in a familiar way, to the glory of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”