Besides the official start of autumn (my favorite season of the year, unless you count Christmas as a season), this weekend is the third in our current message series all about responsibility.
We’ve been saying, obviously enough, responsibility is accountability for the obligations we’ve taken, it’s honoring the boundaries and rules and limits and laws we’ve been given. It’s paying your debt, discharging your duties, fulfilling your commitments. It’s just showing up on time and doing your job.
Many of the problems and much of the misery in the world today would simply disappear overnight if people, especially leaders, started acting responsibly. Same for each of us personally.
We’ve been created by God to be responsible and we’re generally happiest and most fulfilled when we’re acting that way. Responsibility feels good, and sets us up for success.
This weekend we’re following through on an issue we introduced last week. My responsibility or lack thereof, sets me on a path for living. The Bible tells us about this path, or principle, and it goes like this:
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked.
You reap what you sow.
Galatians 6:7
That is what I will be reflecting on this weekend, so be sure and join us. If you can’t make it in person, join our on-line congregation at 10:30 Sunday morning. We’re live-streaming our service, so it’s the next best thing to being there. This week we will also begin streaming our 5:30pm Mass on-line. We had originally intended to do that, but didn’t want to announce it before we had more experience with the technology. The afternoon time is a great time for college students, so spread the word.
Also this weekend, we’ll be welcoming the pastor of our strategic partner church in Haiti. And our Mission Director, Brian Crook, will be giving us a brief update on the progress of the partnership at all weekend Masses. A complete presentation will be offered on Sunday at 1pm in the Theatre and you are welcome to attend. Bottom line: a lot of progress has been made.
See you this weekend.
PS:
Coming next week, stayed tuned for a big announcement and a special invitation, exclusively for our readers.
Hi Father,
Another excellent message this weekend. I very much enjoyed the focus on principles – and recognized a bit of Stephen Covey (from his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) in your very well presented homily. His focus on “Character Ethic” is focused exactly on the principles of which you speak.
“The Character Ethic is based on the fundamental idea that there are principles that govern human effectiveness – natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably ‘there’ as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension.” – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
In Habit 1 (Be Proactive) of his book, Covey focuses on the very core message of your current series: “take responsibility”. He explains that proactivity “…means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings we are responsible for our own lives.” He goes on to say that highly proactive people do not “…blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feelings.”
He is saying that based on the principles of which you speak we have the ability to choose our path, our actions, and take responsibility for our life [pause] [pause] [pause] … really.
I highly recommend the 7 Habits as a way of digging further into the theme of our current message series.
Thank you again for a great message series.
– Rich