Diminishing or obscuring Jesus’ teaching on the beauty of marriage and simply adjusting the Church’s pastoral practices to current trends will not help the common good. At a time when culture no longer supports or encourages family life, as church, we need to strengthen and promote good family life. We need to support Catholics who struggle and, with great personal sacrifice, succeed in living as Jesus teaches. Ultimately, a healthy society depends on stable, loving and generous families.
At a time when humankind is still capable of the noble, the loving and the compassionate and yet still responsible for the ugly, the brutal and the barbaric, at a time when we need to rediscover the wellsprings of all goodness, God is giving us a new Blessed who recalls us to the truth that, by baptism, the Most Holy Trinity dwells within our souls: a Blessed who reminds us that, when we live in such a way that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit remain within us, we find true joy in this world and the next.
For sure, “the times they are achangin’.” The economy and wars have a way of shifting our attention. Issues never remain the same in public discourse. But, the fundamental question does. Do we keep to the principles of truth and morality as given to us by Jesus or do we surrender to the shifting social fads of our day?
What an historic day for the United States, for New Jersey and most especially for the Diocese of Paterson and the Sisters of Charity. Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich. What a great gift to the Church! God is raising up from among us a reminder of our own call to holiness and an example that, by God’s grace, we can be holy by striving to do God’s will in our daily lives.