Dear Prince of Peace Parishioners,
This is the last weekend that I will be at the parish. I should be around this next week to a certain degree but this will be my last time to see you all on a Sunday. I want to say thank you for your hospitality this summer. I really enjoyed my time here. It was a very important experience to be assigned to a parish of this size. While I got to know only a small portion of you, I have seen that there are a lot of truly wonderful people in this Parish. You have an excellent team of priests watching over you and I know that the Lord has great things in store for you in the future. Who knows? Maybe I will be assigned here one day.
I suppose I wanted to leave you with one final message before I leave: The Lord can do great things with small acts of trust. As we hear in the Gospel, the Apostles were surprised that Jesus was going to try to feed 5,000 people with a few loaves and fish. Phillip asks the Lord, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat? Two hundred days wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have only a little.” While Phillips' concern is certainly understandable, he made the mistake of believing that it was up to him and the other Apostles to provide for the people of God. If we approach the Lord with the little gifts that He has bestowed upon us, He can turn those gifts into miraculous fruit for the people of God.
It can be very intimidating to be assigned to a parish of this size, but thankfully I was able to see that the Lord was not asking me to care for each and every one of you, but rather He was asking me to work to the best of my ability, and to trust that He would multiply that effort into something much greater than I ever could have done by myself. The Lord’s response to Phillip is the same one that He gives to us, “Have the people recline.” Jesus effectively tells the Apostles to settle down and to trust in what He is about to do. We do not need to kill ourselves with work to build up the kingdom of God, but rather we are asked to abandon our lives over to Christ and then in a way, sit back and watch Him work.
One resource that I have found incredibly helpful for this is the Surrender Novena which was revealed to an Italian Priest. Jesus told Fr. Dolindo, “Why do you confuse yourselves by worrying? Leave the care of your affairs to me and everything will be peaceful. I say to you in truth that every act of true, blind, complete surrender to me produces the effect that you desire and resolves all difficult situations.” He was then instructed to say 10 times, “Jesus I surrender myself to you, take care of everything.” This prayer is incredibly helpful in trying times. Repeating that phrase over and over throughout the day can really draw us into a deeper trust in the Lord. It helps us to let go and allow Christ to work, and if we do so, the outcome we desire is actually more likely to come about.
So I leave you with this encouragement: surrender your lives to God and He will take care of you. We do not need to accomplish all the tasks before us, but rather we are asked to abandon them over to Christ that He may work in our lives.
In Christ,
Colm Larkin