Dear Parishioners and Visitors to Santa Clara Parish: Glory to God in the Highest! Christ our Lord is Born! We have spent the last four weeks in hopeful waiting and expectation of the Celebration of Our Lord’s Holy Birth! We as Christians call this, His Holy Nativity; when the Second Person of the Holy Trinity broke into time and space and took flesh of the Most Holy Virgin Mary. He, God, the Creator God, humbled Himself and deigned to be Incarnated (to take on ‘carne,’ flesh) of a lowly, peasant girl in First Century Israel—the Holy Land. This absolute condescension; God Himself limiting Himself and penetrating into the created order, came about through His Infinite Love! Our Fallen State makes it impossible for us to be able to conquer sin and death. No matter how good, or how holy, or how pure, or how perfect and wonderful we can be, we can never reverse the effects sin (Original Sin or personal). We, of our own efforts, can never reverse ageing, disease or death! We are powerless and subject to The Scourge of Humanity: our own mortality! How many of us have had the bitter and tragic experience of burying those we have loved dearly in this life? How many have not had to say a bitter good-bye? Sin, and therefore ageing, disease and death, is the sorry lot of humanity! When our Loving God foresaw the state we had gotten into, He sent His Only Begotten Son; to walk in our steps, to experience and inhabit ALL of our sorry temptations and conditions, so that by experiencing and inhabiting them without sinning, He could take them to the Cross with Him and conquer them in His own Death and Glorious Resurrection! Only God can change sin into Righteousness, and death into Life Eternal! No mere human can do this! God had to do this! We cannot, could not … EVER! Christmas and Easter are intimately and inextricably linked! Easter cannot exist without Christmas, and vice-versa! The Mission and Ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ is quite simply this: He was Born to Die that we might Live! Think about this: no man or woman has ever been born specifically and uniquely TO DIE! Of course we all die as a normal course of life. But that is merely the fate of fallen human flesh. None of us is born specifically to DIE. But Jesus was BORN as the ONLY and UNIQUE Lamb of God; Born to be the Ultimate Sacrifice to be Offered for a mankind that cannot help itself out of sin and death. Jesus is that One, Only and Unique Lamb of God who came to change our forever, forever! Our future is not one of Death Eternal, but of the Great Promise that, as St. Paul says, “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us!” (Romans 8: (35) 37.) The early Greek-speaking Church had a joyful exclamation: “Iesous Christos Nika or ‘JESUS CHRIST TRIUMPHS!’ The very reason we even celebrate the Lord’s Birth is precisely because He came to Save Us from the effects of sin: our mortality and death! His very name in Hebrew: ‘Yeshua’ means “(He who) Saves!” Jesus’ Holy Nativity quite simply means that we are not subject or victim to ageing, disease and death as a final and ultimate reality: He is Born, like we were! He grew up, like we did! He suffered, like we do! He died and was buried, just like we will! He Rose from the Dead, just like we will! He Ascended into Heaven, as we will! And HE LIVES again, just like we will One Day in Him! May your Christmas be all about the Child that changes our future into one of wonder and glory, gratitude and love, Peace and Joy! JESUS IS BORN! May all creation Worship Him! On behalf of Deacon Richard Rodriguez, S.F.O.; Mrs. Barbara Candelaria, our Office Manager; Mrs. Carmen Eberhardt, our Music Minister; everyone who ministers to others in our parish; and myself, we wish you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a Happy, Healthy, Grateful and Joyous New Year! Rev. Robert L. Becerra, KCHS Pastor
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 19:47:44 +0000
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