Whenever I go to visit my hometown in Puerto Rico, I love spending time with my parents and sharing a bit in their day-to-day lives, whether it is just hanging out at home, visiting the sick and the lonely, or checking in with family and loved ones. My parents have been Catholic missionaries most of their adult lives, following in the footsteps of my maternal grandparents, who themselves were Catholic missionaries spreading the good news of Christ’s love to communities that had been growing ever more separated from the faith of our ancestors.  We do not tend to think of where our faith comes from, but for me, it is as easy as to look at the lives of those who preceded us. The lives of my ancestors, including my parents’ lives, show me what faith in action looks like and what active thanksgiving can do for the world. Their lives and others like them show a path we can use to connect back to God the Father.
 
When I come back from those cherished trips to visit my parents, I bring back whatever latest artifact I have collected from the lives of my ancestors, an old rosary, a well-used old book, some guidance notes from a talk, or an old and worn crucifix, or maybe a statue or a picture, or some recording from a mission long ago, and I regale my wife with the new stories that I have learned. Some of these are stories of great sacrifice, love, faith, and conversion, of much risked and much gained. A few are stories of courageous people staring evil in the face and standing their ground. Some stories are of great hurt and even greater mercy and forgiveness. Yet other stories are of great sadness over opportunities lost, of someone not able to accept God’s call. What all the stories depict is the openness of God’s people to put effort into their call, for that is all that we can guarantee when doing God’s work... I really get into the stories when I tell them, almost as if I can see us present there, and my dear wife laughs and cries with me. When I was done with the retelling of the stories from this last visit, she looked at my face, grabbed my hands, and said: "Rick, this is your patrimony, it is OUR patrimony", and I could feel my face lighting up.

​A heritage! And not just my heritage, but our heritage. And not just my inheritance but our inheritance, passed down through the generations by the life of our Mother Church, by the call to serve Him who loves us and His loved ones. This feels BIG and complicated, and probably hard to understand for the many, but for the faithful, we need only respond to the call with openness and a willingness to work within the call. From our heritage, the understanding will come.
 
When I think back to my grandparents’ lives, I have no grand understanding of how they came to be that way, other than knowing they understood clearly their call to live a life of love, faith, and hope. They received the call, accepted it, and acted upon it. My grandfather understood that we are, through Christ, the inheritors of the Father. Our call to live the life God wants us to is “inherited,” it is built into our very beings. In simpler words, who we are is meant to match who we were created to be…
 
We accomplish this “becoming who we were meant to be” by living the love and mercy we receive, and by using the gifts we are granted on this earth to love one another and glorify God with our thoughts and actions, with all our might and all our strength. These gifts that we receive, wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and awe, are there for us to share with our brethren, with those who need us, and with those who walk with us.  The gifts of the Holy Spirit are the tools in our toolbox, and these are part of our inheritance. Through baptism, we receive our status as inheritors of God the Father as His children.  Our status as inheritors, as well as our call to share in the Eucharistic Communion along with our access to His gifts for us, are all our patrimony.
 
Therefore, it is clear, that we are inheritors of our predecessors, physically, genetically, culturally, and spiritually. Notice that our inheritance is not just spiritual, there is also the physical, day-to-day component of our inheritance.
 
As children of the Mother Church, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, we also have access to her patrimony. 

​Our patrimony is not of things that pass or end, but of things that persist, build us up, and are life-giving, generation after generation, until the end of the age. Our patrimony is our beautiful churches, cathedrals, and basilicas. It is our small, humble chapels. Our patrimony is our rosary beads as well-used reminders of our prayer offerings. It is our statues and images, recordings, and writings. It is our oral history, passed down through those who came before us and are now gone to share in Christ’s light. Our patrimony is our right to our Faith, Hope, and Love, it is alive in the trust, charity, and hopefulness that we espouse every day.
 
During my last visit to the island, I stopped to spend time with my youngest brother, Father Victor Manuel Hernandez, at his parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Juana Diaz. While there, I stopped to look at his desk, and there among many other things was this beautiful “Cheo Crucifix”. A Cheo Crucifix is given to every person who finishes missionary formation and is inducted into the Lay Missionary Congregation of Saint John the Evangelist (better known as the “Hermanos Cheos”). This is the missionary congregation to which my grandfather, Marcelino, my grandmother, Gina, my father, Manuel, and my mother, Vicky, have belonged to for decades. The Cheos have been a central part of my family’s lives since long before I was born, and it brought me great amazement to see that crucifix on his desk, for I know my dear brother is not a “Cheo”. He smiled when I brought that up and told me to pick it up to take a good look.
 
The crucifix was made in Germany of wood and metal. It felt solidly built and had the inscribed metal plates quite faded from use, yet there, right in the middle where I expected it, was the number “4”. This was my grandfather Marcelino’s crucifix, one that had gone to every town on the island, a witness to a life of toil in the service of the greater, the holier, and the sacred. I stooped a bit because the weight of the history in my hands became apparent, and my heart swelled, remembering that towering and courageous man going out into the world trying to fulfill his mission. This IS patrimony, a reminder to us that we are all part of something greater, holier, and sacred. The weight of that crucifix on my hands reminded me that our mission to let God’s love for us be known to the whole world has been passed down to us, and we must strive to pass it down to others... This I pray for all of us, that our lives may act as a witness to God’s love for us. May we accept our call to mission, love, mercy, compassion, companionship, friendship, and active witness. May we recognize our patrimony and receive our inheritance, and may we make good use of it while on this earth.
 
Let us pray: Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name, may your Kingdom come, and may your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven! Help us this day to do your will. Help us to accept your call to serve. May we grow to be as You created us to be and pass our knowledge of You to all generations until the end of the age. Amen.

Dearest Eucharistic Family,   
  
 In God’s perfect design, we are given life, the most mysterious gift, formed in love, created for Heaven in faith, and in hope we live. It is not easy to imagine we will all be gone from this place one day, the inevitable reality of our existence. On the way to Heaven, we are called to love. The birth of Jesus Christ into the world and our lives is a present for us to keep, a keepsake is God’s love. Saint Peter Julian in the reflection below describes the intimacy Mary and Joseph had with Jesus. Mary was blessed to follow and to serve Jesus and to prepare herself for suffering.   ​

Yet another gift is our Church and its formation to help us live in a pattern of prayer. Mary was the first to show us the way to the heart of Christ through her love. The Eucharist, our glorious Lord in the sacred Host as humble as the baby He came to reveal His life on earth, is our greatest treasure. We are blessed to RECEIVE, to LOVE in response, and to further our devotions in Jesus Christ.   

Prayer changes things!  

I have had this little saying by my Blessed Mother statue for years and every time I read the words, they mean something more. They bring a desire to offer a prayer assured God will hear us. In the silence and conversation, we nourish our relationship with God.     
In our prayer, we desire something to happen, birth, life, gift!  

It seems the faithful, the saints and martyrs of our Church followed in imitation of Christ so intensely that their Cross was expected and their time on earth known to be passing. The embrace of every other situation offered up for the gift in knowing it has a purpose, this changes everything, just like prayer changes things. To live knowing the unknown is in God is a comfort and a place to find joy.   

Praying for souls and the sanctification of ours with theirs is a great mission, a gift for JESUS.   

I am currently caretaking my husband. The wound-care dressing change twice daily is something I did not expect to do when my husband first encountered a septic infection. Months later God brought me to this place of total nurturing, a chance to love and put before myself another. In sickness and in health, the promise of our sacrament of matrimony. We can find many “visitations” in our very own homes, and communities. The contemplation of God’s love can be found in “baby things” in a small-scale. Jesus came to show us the way to humility. Our love for others will manifest a stirring of the Holy Spirit in their lives and give a chance to know JESUS is living in us, and a chance to birth Jesus in someone by the love we offer to them at Christmas.   ​

If we were traveling through a long tunnel, the halfway point would be the darkest. We can’t see where we came from, and we probably can’t see where we are heading. In the middle of that darkness, we might be tempted to go back to where we came from, to the old, the familiar, but then we spot it. A sign that says we’ve made it halfway! We’ve come this far, we just need a little encouragement to keep going. We pause, take a breath, and rejoice. We then take one more step in the right direction and we are now closer to the end than to the beginning. We can do this; no point going back now. We are halfway there!

As I pause and think of the words “we are halfway there”, a song from the 80s pops into my head and sings, “Living on a prayer, take my hand…we are living on a prayer.”  And just like that, a hit from the 80s (Bon Jovi), opens my eyes to the universality of this experience. We all know what it feels like to be in a dark place without a sense of direction, sometimes wondering if we are going around in circles. Are we even getting anywhere? Is there even a point in continuing to try?

​When our sins, our faults, our failings mock us saying, “Well hello there, welcome back my friend, why don’t you just stay here in this familiar place, why continue to fight? Look, you are the same you were two weeks ago, two months ago, two years ago.” And we begin to listen to the lies, and we think that all our efforts have brought us nowhere.

​But then we go to Mass and hear: 

Indeed, He will come and save us. Every time we fall, every time we fail, every time we look away, He will extend His arm and invite us back to Him. If we stay close to the Sacraments, even in the dark halfway points of life, we will see the signs. We will be encouraged and strengthened as we live on a prayer. 

The Third Sunday of Advent is Gaudete Sunday, the midpoint of the penitential season of Advent. We have spent two weeks preparing for Christmas, and we have two more weeks left of waiting. And at this point, Mother Church invites us to pause, take a breath, and REJOICE! 

Rejoice, and then keep going, because the Light of the World is coming, indeed, “the Lord is near” (Philippians 4:4).
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