Greetings brothers and sisters,
This weekend is Most Holy Trinity’s Bazaar weekend! I’m excited and looking forward to it. Although sometimes it seems like the Bazaar is a wonderful way to support our parish, I believe it is an even more wonderful way for all of us to come together as one community and just celebrate! It takes many people to make the Bazaar a wonderful experience that everyone can enjoy. Not only that, but people from all sides of our community come together to work with each other. There is a synergy that happens when we celebrate! But what are we celebrating? Why are we celebrating?
I remember growing up and celebrating birthday parties, and even some years, putting on my own birthday parties for people to come. Perhaps back then, it was more about the gifts than really celebrating the day of my birth, celebrating the gift of life and the gift of having family and friends in my life.
Celebration, festivals and feasts must be a response to something, and more importantly a response to someone. As Catholics, we celebrate Mass every Sunday. It takes a collaboration of a priest, deacons, sacristans, acolytes, altar servers, musicians, singers, lectors, and even the assembly of people to make happen well. But in the midst of the things we must do, the way we do it, we cannot forget what we are celebrating and why we are celebrating it. If we do, our celebration will become cold, mechanical and forced. Mass becomes simply an obligation and not a celebration. Bazaars are only fundraisers. “I’m only at this birthday celebration because my parents made me go.”
"There needs to be a reason for the feast, an objective reason prior to the individual’s will. In other words, I can only celebrate freedom if I am free; otherwise it is a tragic self-delusion. I can only celebrate joy if the world and human existence really give me a reason to rejoice. Am I free? Is there a cause for joy? Where these questions are excluded from the 'party'—the post-religious world’s attempt to feast—is soon revealed as a tragic masquerade." - Joseph Ratzinger, Feast of Faith, 63
Ultimately, our reason for rejoicing, our reason for celebration and feasting must come from God. If I do not see my life as a gift from the Creator of all life but rather just an accident of circumstances, then what is there to celebrate? Who do I offer gratitude to? We celebrate because we have received joy, life, freedom from God. We celebrate because “...God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16).
"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song." - St. John Paul II
It is because of Easter, it is because of the Resurrection that we celebrate. We celebrate that Christ has died and rose from the dead, so that we may also rise with him! It’s because of this, that every week, every Sunday we remember and rejoice in this reality with joy and thankfulness! This is the reason for our joy and is what is at the root of every one of our celebrations.
You are in my prayers this week and I will offer a Mass for all of you.
Pax,
Fr. Khoi