Pastor's Page:
"How Do I Love thee, let me count the ways"
-God's Great Affection for Us

In the Catholic high school that I attended, I was taught apologetics. Apologetics is the branch of theology
dealing with defending Christian doctrines or proving their truth. It comes from the Greek word "apologia’, a legal term meaning defense. I learned that the great doctor of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, a theologian of the early Middle Ages, sought to prove the existence of God using human reason alone. He wrote that since we exist and the world around us exists, there had to be a ‘first cause’ or ‘prime mover’ that brought all things into being. In other words, a creator that can be called God. God is the unmoved mover who always existed and brought all things into being.

Modern scientists posit our world, the universe, as 13.7 billion years old. There are an estimated 100 billion
galaxies in the universe, each galaxy having 100 billion stars of varying intensity. Some stars are 40 million
times brighter than our sun. Many scientists believe that our universe is still expanding in dimension.
We believe as Catholic Christians that this wondrous Creator, the First Cause, has a personal, intimate love for every human being on the face of planet Earth. This includes more than 6 billion of us who currently inhabit our planet, and the billions who came before us. The God who created the universe is passionately in love with each and every one of us. Throughout human history, and uniquely in his choice of the Jewish people thousands of years ago, God has entered into and continued a love affair that begins with God's initiative and
entices us to respond.

The covenant of love that cannot be broken, was entered into with the great patriarch Abraham, whom three
world religions call ‘Father Abraham’, renewed repeatedly through the centuries with the Jewish people, and
reached its pinnacle in the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus is The Perfect Lover whose every word and action has as its ultimate purpose to woo and entice us.
Jesus is The Bridegroom whose overwhelming passion is to give himself totally and unreservedly to his bride,
the people of God. God, he tells us, is like a prodigiously loving father yearning to have his son return even when the son has
wished him dead, and destroyed his honor and reputation.

God is like a nutty woman who loses a coin worth only a few pennies and crawls around her home on her
hands and knees to find it. And when she does so she is so overwhelmed with joy that she invites all her friends
to her home for a party to celebrate her finding it.

The one who brought all things into being, the cosmic Creator and Lord of all, has chosen to love human
beings - you and me. This God is the relentless lover who will not go away or repent of his compassion no
matter how irresponsible or unfaithful we are. Like the universe he brought into being, God's very nature is
eternally giving - and eternally hoping for our response. Will we say ‘I do!’ to the Bridegroom?
Easter joy to you!

Peace and love,
Fr. Bruce