13 Jan 24 – A Shepherd’s Voice, Episode 1

“A Shepherd’s Voice” Let us begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Thank you for joining me for this first episode of “A Shepherd’s Voice.” I thought it was good to begin with the “Glory Be” - a simple but beautiful prayer that reminds us of what we are here for, what our life is about – to give glory to God. Probably many of us are familiar with the initials “AMDG.” It stands for “Ad majorem Dei gloriam” (“For the greater glory of God”).  I would like to dedicate this small work as a shepherd to exactly that - that we will learn and seek to give glory to God in all that we do. I have prepared some written thoughts. I thought it would be the most appropriate way to begin this presentation of “A Shepherd’s Voice” that I plan to do weekly to help us all to rejoice and to live in the Lord in difficult and challenging times. So I will turn now to more or less reading this written script to hopefully clearly say why I am here – why I am doing this – as a shepherd – and hopefully helping all of us to give glory to God in greater ways. My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Today I come to you with the first episode in a web series that I am calling “A Shepherd’s Voice.” On March 12, 1933, our country was in a time of crisis, and the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, began what came to be known as The Fireside Chats in which he talked to the people of the United States as though he was sitting in their living room having a chat with them.  These fireside chats served as the means for the president to directly communicate with the American people during a time of crisis, particularly the Great Depression and World War II. It was a way to reassure and comfort the people in a time of great hardship and uncertainty. So that idea of the fireside chat is part of what I hope, informally but clearly founded on the truth that is our Catholic faith, on Jesus Christ who is Truth Incarnate, to chat with you on a weekly basis, to just help all of us, myself included, to be stronger in faith, and to recognize that I am simply a shepherd, but I joyfully embrace this challenge and this call to be a shepherd’s voice. Today we find ourselves in the midst of a very great crisis in our Lord’s Church. You have no doubt heard the saying, “As goes the Church, so goes the World.” This saying is very true when we are talking about the Catholic Church because we know that she is indeed the Church that Christ instituted, and therefore everything that happens involving the Church has great eternal significance. We can better understand this if we realize that the sacraments found within the Church were instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church as efficacious signs of grace, and that they are indeed necessary for salvation as they are the means by which divine life is dispensed to the faithful. (CCC 1131). Therefore, the crisis we find ourselves immersed in within the Church is not only a crisis of the Church, and not only a crisis in our own nation, but is indeed a crisis within the entire world. As I prayed about this series that I was to begin, I was prompted to read the transcript of the first fireside chat Roosevelt gave which was about the banking crisis that was currently occurring in the country. Towards the end of that first chat, he said, “We had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people’s funds. …” And he talked about how these actions had shocked the people for a time into a sense of insecurity. He said, “You people must have faith”…. and he concluded with these words, “It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.” I come to you today, my beloved brothers and sisters,