September 2014
V
ISITATION
of Our Lady Parish Newsletter
Good Stewards Know Peace Comes From
The Cross, Not From The Beach
In this issue
-2 Disability Ministry
Mark Your Calendar
-3
VOL Welcomes New Teachers
Family Day Picnic
-4
Former VOL Student Travels to Africa to Teach;
Learns Lessons of Her Own
-6
It All Adds Up: 40 Days of Prayer to End Abortion
-7Parish Mission
We want peace. In the world, certainly.
But, perhaps even more so, in our own lives.
The world just seems too complex. Too hard.
There almost never seems to be enough money.
Someone in the family is too often messing-up
and causing us grief. Health problems abound.
Murders seem to surround us. Democrats and
Republicans seem out, not to covert each other
or to compromise with each other, but to
DESTROY each other. The Middle East and
now Eastern Europe seem bent on precipitating
World War III. There never seems to be enough
time to relax. Not enough time to, God help us,
just SLEEP.
What’s wrong? Why can’t we find
peace? Well, I have an answer. Let’s back into
that answer.
Jesus did not have the kind of peace
alluded to above. Jesus did not have an absence
of conflict in his life. He was poor. He was, for
all practical purposes, a slave of the Romans.
His own religious leaders rejected him. The
man he would later name the first pope rejected
him three times. But, after sweating blood in
the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus accepted his
Father’s will and found peace. He retained that
peace, even though he was brutally tortured. He
Continued on back cover