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Dear Friends in Christ,

In the history of human life, there are certain dramas that play again and again - scenes of human interaction that occur daily - encounters that happen, or have happened to all of us. One of them goes like this.

You had a bad day at the office, or at school, or at the community center where you were doing volunteer work. Someone made you angry, or someone hurt your feelings, or someone was just plain mean. It doesn't matter where or why or what happened - but it made you have a very bad day. You come home, and at some point - at the dinner table, or around the television, your resentment about whatever happened that day comes out in the wrong way - you say something that offends everyone, or hurts everyone, or is just plain mean. You think letting go might make you feel better - but it doesn't. Suddenly, everyone you care about - mother, father, wife, husband, brother or sister - suddenly you have hurt all their feelings, you have cut yourself off, and you can't get away from them fast enough. You go off to your room - to the bedroom or your den or your workshop - it doesn't matter where - the point is just to be alone and to be left alone in your anger, your misery, your bitterness.

But after a while, as you sit there brooding, a knock comes on the door. You think, "I won't say anything and maybe they will go away." But something deep inside you really wants something very different to happen, and before you know it, you look up, and say, "Come in." And whoever it is - your mother or father, your sister or brother, or maybe a friend - whoever it is comes in, sits down beside you, and says, "Tell me about it - tell me what's wrong - tell me how I can help you - tell me how we can make everything OK again."

You try to talk - it's hard to get whatever is bothering you out, because when we are angry, or hurt, or guilty about something wrong we have done, telling someone else is never easy, because we are admitting just how hard things can be at times - work, school, dealing with our family relationships, dealing with our friends, dealing with life. But gradually, we talk it out with whoever came and knocked on the door - whoever it is who cares about us enough to try and help. We talk, it all comes out, and with any degree of luck, eventually we can smile about what happened, and even laugh at ourselves for being so foolish.

And then the person who helped us, especially if it is our mother or father, they take our hand, stand us up, give us a hug or a kiss, and say, "Come on back out into the living room now, come on out and sit down with everybody, and eat the rest of your dinner. We really want you to come back - we all understand - now everything will be alright.

And so we do - and even though this might happen a thousand times when we are growing up, and even though it might happen even after we are grown up and supposed to know better - the feeling of being welcomed back, of being forgiven, of having arguments and fights and angry or mean words put behind us - that feeling is one of the best things that can happen to us - and we know it, because our hearts tell us that it is so - and what is even more important, our hearts also tell us that this feeling - of forgiveness, of healing, of things broken apart made whole again, is a feeling that comes straight from God.

It comes to us first, when we are baptized - and it doesn't matter if we are two days, two, twenty or a hundred years old when it happens. When we are baptized, God is knocking at the door - He is saying, "Yes, Adam and Eve did a terrible thing, when they disobeyed me, for they made it happen that every child who comes in to the world, comes in separated from me. But now, I am forgiving all that - I am knocking at the door, and I want you to tell me to come in." And when we, or our Godparents for us, say yes, then God does open the door, He comes over and sits beside us, He takes our hand, and from that moment forward, we can believe that everything will be alright again - that no matter what life brings, God will always be there at our side, waiting for us to tell Him what is wrong, what we did wrong, what wrong was done to us - the particulars don't matter, for His love is great enough to forgive all, to look us straight in the eye of our faith, and to make us know that He is with us no matter what.

And God also speaks to us. We hear His voice in the voice of His Son Jesus Christ, who came and lived among us - who taught, and told stories, who had conversations, and knew everything there was to know about advising men and women about what they should do, about how they should act. These words we hear in the Gospels - in the wonderful books written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the record of all the Apostles and disciples remembered about what the Lord had said when He lived among them. When we hear these words of Jesus Christ, it is God who is speaking to us - sitting beside us in spirit, taking our hand in His, and telling us how to make right, whatever there is that is wrong.

And finally, God lifts us up, He takes us into His arms, He embraces us, and give us, like the loving Father He is, a kiss of peace upon our souls. He does this, by giving Himself to us, in the Body and Blood of His Son. For the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, which we receive in Holy Communion, is as close as God comes to us. When we take the Lord's Body and Blood into ourselves, God is filling us with His love, with His peace, with His grace, and saying, "Now, everything is made well - let's go back outside into the world, let's go back among people, and be joyful again, and share this great love around.

It is because we, as the People of God, realize the importance - the necessity of these contacts, these sacraments, between God and us, that we fill our churches with the signs and symbols of their presence. It is because we love God so much for loving us that we make these signs and symbols as good, as beautiful, and as permanent as possible. And it is to bless to our use, these instruments of the Sacraments, that we have gathered today.

The people of St. Philip Benizi Parish, in union with all who have come before us in this work, the living and the dead, and for the sake of all who will come here in the future - in union with all these, you have planned, worked, funded and produced what we bless today - this place and font of Baptism, this ambo for the proclaiming of God's Word, and this altar for the Holy Sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood.

May these instruments of our Sacramental life, dear friends, ever remind us of that love of God we profess and believe - not a distant love - but one that seeks us out, that sits at our side, that speaks in our ear, and that lifts us finally, out of ourselves, and into the embrace of eternal forgiveness and love.

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