10/22/2023

Recently I was walking through the cafeteria while our students were eating. One of the students told me she had a question. Her question was something like, if God created everything, and it is supposed to be good, how could God create Satan? So we had a chat and I told her that when God created Satan, his name was Lucifer and he was an angel of light, so he WAS good. After he was created, he decided to disobey God and became the devil that he is. She said “Oh,” and I went on my way.
A couple of days later, the same student had another question. She wanted to know what would happen if everyone worshipped Satan instead of God? I told her that would be hard, since in order to worship Satan one would have to separate oneself from God. God is the one who loves us and died for us and unites us with Him and one another. Satan divides and isolates us. Hell is being isolated forever, and that is what will happen to those who choose to worship Satan. So it is neither likely nor good for us, since we were made to worship God. Only God can make us happy, because God made us that way. The next time I saw her, we talked about eating an avocado, lest you think theology is the only thing we talk about.
Our students ask hard questions all the time. I am happy to entertain their questions. The trick is to be present while they are thinking about these things. Why? Because what they are doing is trying to figure out how their lives take on meaning. Does it come from money? Does it come from getting things that they want? Does it come from service of others? Does it come from traveling and seeing lots of different sights? There are many options – that is one of the problems with living in America now – we have too many options! What we are trying to do with our students is to acquaint them with the story of God’s love for us: how God pursues us, how God finds us, how God continually attracts us as a Church/bride to Him who is our Bridegroom. It is the greatest love story of all time.
But there are other stories which compete with the story of salvation. We compete with these other stories, whether they are other religions, materialism, atheism, agnosticism, the American Dream of success through hard work, or whatever. All of us seek to put our individual stories into the context of a greater story.
As Christians, we believe our lives take on meaning from Our Lord who created us, from His Son who redeemed us, and their Holy Spirit who transforms us into a new creation. God has set up a whole system for providing us with the grace to return to Him and be happy in union with God forever. The sacraments are the main channels by which God gives Himself to us, especially the Eucharist, but also Confirmation as will happen today (Sunday) at 1:30 PM. We believe in the creation, fall, incarnation, redemption, and the sending of the Holy Spirit to re-connect humanity to God, individually and as a group. We believe that there is no greater happiness than being in union with God, that the Holy Spirit fills the hole in our soul that causes us to long for greater meaning, and that God’s plan of salvation made all this known to us who are Christians. It is important to get this story out, but also to insert ourselves in this story as we continue our pilgrimage to heaven and union with our loving Savior.
It is a joy to be your pastor.

Father Albert, O.S.B