S2 E5: God Will Bring Us Home

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. 

In this final episode with Father Mark in his role as our Pastor, he invites us to pause and consider what we really mean when we use the word family, looking to the Holy Family to help broaden our understanding of the word and to see family as those who journey with us through life in relationships of mutual love, trust, hope, and respect, along with the belief of our faith that we are truly being led by God. 

Here’s Father Mark

“God Will Bring Us Home,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

Father Mark Suslenko:

I always told my students that, if you were going to embark upon a true understanding of something, you had to first define your terms because how we understand a particular word is going then determine whether we pursue an understanding of that word without an error in our thinking. And, so, that's especially true today with the word family.

Similar to the word love, we all have different understandings of what a family is. So, for the sake of today's reflection, and being open to the understanding of the Holy Family, and the riches they share with us, let's define family in this way: a family are those people who journey with us through life in a relationship of mutual love and respect.

Now, given that particular understanding of family, it broadens us a bit and doesn't limit us to those people who simply live in the same house with me, because our families can sometimes become very complicated, but, nonetheless, are an important part of our lives. Our families can be a source of great joy and well-being, but they can also be a source of struggle and conflict as well.

But if we're talking about those people who journey with us through life, then as we look at one day unfolding to the next, those people in a relationship of mutual love and respect can share with us those moments of exaltation and joy. You know, the wonder of human life is we never know what's going to happen in the next few seconds from now, and we certainly don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. And sometimes our tomorrows are filled with exciting adventures. Our tomorrows are filled with new things to discover and new joys to encounter. Sometimes, our tomorrows are filled with great struggle and pain, with a sense of unknowing and mystery, with a sense of fear and anxiety. Sometimes, we know basically what our tomorrows may look like. Other times, we can find ourselves turned upside down and forced to leave what was comfortable and warm and venture out into something unknown and uncertain. In times of uncertainty, in times of mystery, in times of struggle, we can often find ourselves offering resistance. We can find ourselves pushing back a bit, even becoming a little bit angry, so much so that it upsets our family units and it spills over into the lives of others.

If you look at the example of the Holy Family, one of the big takeaways was how they encountered the uncertainty of their life. They had to flee. If they didn't leave what they knew to be home, they would certainly face an unpredictable future. And so they set out. Did they know where they were going to end up? Perhaps not. But what they brought with him is what we can bring with ourselves as we encounter our lives, as we go through the stages of becoming who we are, and that is a deep faith and trust that even though we go out into the unknown and the mysterious, even though we're asked to change, we do so with that sense that we are being led by God, and that's what they knew. They knew that regardless of how they felt, how fearful they may have been, how uncomfortable the struggle really came to be, they knew that they were being led, and that's what gives us a sense of security and peace. That's what erases the bitterness. That's what dispels the fear. That's what calms the anxiety. That's what gives us peace.

So as we go through the journey of life with those people around us who share with us a relationship of mutual love and respect, and it can even be the broad vision of a parish family, let us do so knowing that whatever life brings, we are being led, and God will bring us home.

Carol Vassar:

Father Mark Suslenko is a Senior Priest with the Archdiocese of Hartford, 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.