S1 E36: Living in Joyful Hope

Transcript

Carol Vassar:

From SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut, I'm Carol Vassar, and this is Living in Faith, Hope, and Love. Each week, our Pastor, Father Mark Suslenko, delves into Scripture, shares insights from the saints, prophets, and theologians, and discusses practical ways to cultivate faith, strengthen hope, and embody love in the world around us. Through his reflections and spiritual encouragement, this podcast aims to inspire you to live your Catholic faith with joy and purpose. Welcome. 

As we listen today, we hear Father Mark inviting us to consider the deep meaning of joyful hope in the resurrection — the hope that reminds us this life is not the end, but the beginning of God’s creative work within us. Along the way, he offers three powerful words to guide our journey of faith: presumption, purification, and prayer.

Taken together, these three “Ps” challenge us to look honestly at how we prepare our souls, to embrace the transformation that awaits us, and to lift one another in love through the power of prayer — for ourselves and for all who have gone before us.

Here’s Father Mark.

“Living in Joyful Hope,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

Father Mark Suslenko:

The opening prayer for Mass today reminds us that we live in hope of the resurrection. We live in hope of the resurrection. St. Paul in the New Testament reminds us constantly that that hope is also accompanied by joy: a joyful hope in the resurrection. Joyful hope.

As believers in Jesus Christ, we realize that this world is not the end of who we are. What we see in the mirror every morning is just the beginning of God's artistic creation of us. He is not done with any of his children, and we live in joyful hope that we will be completed and finished. That this rendering that God began will be brought to the fullness of its expression in the way that God intends us to be.

We walk in joyful hope of the resurrection.

There was a commercial on a while back that had to do with, I think, insurance, and there was this irritating lady who was part of the act for this promotion, and she had a hard time comprehending the three Ps. The three Ps. Well, there's three Ps today in our lesson about all souls, three Ps. The first: presumption, presumption. The second: purification, purification, and the third: prayer, prayer. Presumption, purification, and prayer.

You know, many believing Christians go through life with a good deal of presumption. And what do we presume? We presume that when we die, God's mercy is just going to be the big eraser over everything, and all is going to be fine and dandy, well and good. And so we presume that we're going to automatically see our savior face-to-face and be brought to the beatific vision. No effort, no problem. We presume this, and we put a great deal of presumption on God's mercy, and very little attention to what we are bringing to the process. In presuming the mercy and the goodness of God, we forget the work that we have to do to prepare for that day. We have to work on our souls and do our soul work so that we're not just lackadaisically placing ourselves at the throne of heaven, but we're doing so with eager faith and joyful hope of seeing our creator face-to-face and our brothers and sisters as well. And so presumption can really cripple us because it removes the responsibility we need to take for our eternal salvation. Presumption. And why is this important? It's important because of purification. Purification.

If you take a piece of wood and you place it in a fireplace and you light it on fire, that wood becomes transformed into flame. The flame heats the house and then the wood is transformed into ash. It's a process. The wood doesn't simply stay intact as it was when you first put it in the fireplace. It changes and it goes through a radical transformation in order to do and be what it was intended to do and be.

And so when we leave this world, we know very little about what we're going into other than the fact that we are going to be changed and we're going to be transformed. Hence, the word purgatory and this process of purification doesn't just happen automatically. Now, we don't know the details of how it all works, and we have to remind ourselves that there's no time in eternity. But that nonetheless does not negate the need to be purified. And so when we do leave this world, there will be some work that needs to be done to us. It's not just a magic act where we pop from one place to another, and so we have to guard against presumption, and we have to remind ourselves that we will be purified, and then comes the power of prayer.

See, prayer is very powerful for several reasons. First of all, it's an expression of love. And so when we pray, we stretch our arms and our souls and our hearts out to God in love, and we remind ourselves again and again through the power of prayer of how deeply we want to be united with our creator. How important it is to be one with him. How much we are anticipating and looking forward to the completion of his artistic design. But prayer also purifies, because it takes our soul, which can sometimes get tarnished, and purifies it and removes some of those stains. Prayer clears the cobwebs from our minds and opens our hearts, and makes us more able vessels for God's will to be done. And so the power of prayer's purification is necessary here, but also in eternity.

And so because we don't know how long this process of purification takes or really what it's all involves, it's necessary for us to pray for our departed brothers and sisters to keep them always in our minds and hearts as a statement, first of all, of our love for them, but also a statement of our eagerness that they be brought to the beatific vision and safely home to God. Put in that context, the Feast of All Souls is extremely important, first of all, for reminding us of who we are here and what we need to do, and the importance of extending ourselves into eternity and constantly praying for those who have gone before us, as you and I each day rekindle that joyful hope in resurrection.

Carol Vassar:

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. If you like what you've heard today, please subscribe to Living in Faith, Hope, and Love on your favorite podcast app and take a moment to leave a review.

SS. Isidore and Maria is an active parish community, so whether you’re a long-time parishioner or are just getting to know us through this podcast, we welcome you to join us at Masses or any of our other community events and services. Visit our parish website - isidoreandmaria.org - for a full schedule of Masses, services and other happenings. That's isidoreandmaria.org. We're also active on Facebook and Instagram.

On behalf of Father Mark, I'm Carol Vassar, and we thank you for listening to this episode of Living in Faith, Hope, and Love.