Dear Christ the King Family,
One of the many ministries that exist in our parish is the quiet work of bringing Holy Communion to the sick and homebound. Several Christ the King parishioners have gone through training to become Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion just to serve in this way, carrying the Lord’s Sacramental presence with them in a special vessel as they leave Sunday Mass each week. Many of them take Holy Communion to a spouse or sibling at home; others dispose themselves to make these visits to a parishioner who is at first a stranger to them, but then a relationship of spiritual friendship often develops through these regular visits.
Our Christ the King clergy regularly engage in this ministry as well, and each month I have the chance to bring Christ to several of our homebound parishioners, pray with them, and converse briefly about what is going on in their lives. I treasure these visits, and I am often humbled and inspired by the way many of these men and women bear the hardships and trials of aging and illness with grace and faithfulness. Some have family members who care for them and visit them and regularly bring joy to their daily lives. Others have lost most of their closest loved ones already, or else live too far away for them to be a regular presence in their lives, and they bear a heavy cross of loneliness in addition to whatever aches and pains the natural process of aging carries with it.
I think especially of these homebound parish-members whom I have gotten to know over my two years at Christ the King in connection with our readings from the Sacred Word this Sunday. There is a message of placing radical trust in God through times of suffering that runs across the readings. The prophet Habakkuk gives voice to his frustration and anguish at the evils and injustice that God permits to exist among his fellow Judahites, and the Lord responds by urging patient trust that God is at work in bringing an end to misery and the eventual triumph of justice and peace: The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. St. Paul writing to Timothy from prison encourages him: bear your sake of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God and guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. Finally our Lord Jesus, when asked by the apostles to increase their faith, promises: if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
As I ask the Lord in my own heart to daily increase my faith and confidence in Him, I am inspired by the faith and trust that I witness in many of our homebound brothers and sisters whom I go out to visit each month. Stripped of the physical strength to be as active and independent as they once were, they have learned to fill more of their time with conversation with the Lord, and to make faithful prayer their foundation, relying on the Lord to carry them through whatever trials and sufferings each day brings. And I have no doubt that their steadfast prayers of intercession for the Church, for the world, and for our community is moving mountains as God draws us all closer to his Kingdom.
Peace in Christ,
Fr Cameron Cortens, C.S.C.
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