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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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There is something wonderfully strange about today’s feast. We call it the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and yet the Cross was never meant to exalt anyone. Rome designed it to humiliate, expose, and crush. And yet we Christians take that very instrument and raise it above the altar. If a first century Roman executioner walked into a church today and saw a crucifix hanging over the sanctuary, he might think we had developed a very unusual sense of interior decoration. But we raise the Cross because God has completely changed its meaning. What was meant to reduce humanity has become the place where humanity is lifted up.
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Learn more about our faith | Video homily | Weekday homily
In June 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile released its first spectacular images of the universe. What fascinated me was not only the images themselves, but how long they had taken to arrive. The project had been dreamed about for decades. Scientists designed enormous mirrors, built a camera weighing several tons, hauled equipment high into the Andes, calibrated instruments, corrected tiny errors, and waited. For years, there was tremendous work and almost nothing for the public to see. Then one day, the images started appearing, filled with millions of stars and galaxies, and a look into the vastness of the universe. What looked like a sudden achievement was actually the visible result of years of invisible preparation. That is perhaps a beautiful way to understand the day of Mary's birth. When Mary was born, apparently nothing happened. No angelic choir was reported over her house. No star appeared. No emperor lost sleep. Somewhere in an ordinary Jewish family, a baby girl was born, cried, needed feeding, and probably kept somebody awake at two in the morning. Even the grandmother may have looked at her and said what grandmothers have been saying ever since: “She is beautiful. Of course, she looks like our side of the family.” Watch Video Here
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