Angelus News | January 12, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 1

NEW WORLD OF FAITH
ARCHBISHOP JOSÉ H. GOMEZ
Living our Catholic story in 2024
Every new year marks a new
beginning, a chance to make
a fresh start. This is a hopeful
thought and a very “Catholic” thought.
Our life of faith is always a work of
beginning and beginning again.
Following Jesus, becoming the person
whom God made us to be, is the
project of a lifetime and we carry it out
in the daily struggle against selfishness
and weakness. We make mistakes,
lose focus, and make wrong turns; but
always, we begin again.
What makes it all possible is God’s
great love for us.
I thought about that a lot during the
Christmas season. I thought especially
about how as Catholics, we belong to
a great narrative of love, the story of
salvation history that gives meaning
and purpose to our lives.
In its outlines, the story goes like this:
At a moment in human history, the
living God, the Creator of life, came
down to his creation, to live among us
in Jesus, a person both fully divine and
fully human. God came as a baby and
revealed his true face as a Father who
loves every person as his own son or
daughter.
In his life, death, and rising from the
dead, Jesus showed the depths of the
Father’s love, revealing the destiny of
our human lives, that we are made to
share in God’s own divine life as he
shared in our human life.
By his teaching, Jesus set out the path
we are to follow as children of God,
and our lives are now a journey of
love in his Church that leads beyond
death to eternal life with the Father in
heaven.
This is the beautiful story that we
have inherited as Catholics and the
story that we have become a part of in
our baptism.
This story tells us who we are, what
we are here for, and how we should
live. It tells us where we came from
and where we are going. This story
tells us what we should value and what
really matters.
Our Catholic story gives our lives
“roots” in the spiritual family we call
the Church. It is the source for our
prayers and worship, our teachings,
and all that we call our Catholic tradition
and culture.
We are in a moment when the Catholic
story, and the wider Judeo-Christian
story that formed the basis for Western
civilization, is being rejected. There
are many reasons for this, but we can
see its consequences in the crisis of
meaning that is spreading throughout
society.
This is also a challenge for us as Catholics,
as it becomes more difficult for
us to tell our story and to live according
to our beliefs.
That’s why I think it’s important, as
we begin the new year, to return and
reflect on our Catholic story and to be
renewed in its truth and promises.
The story we have inherited is a beautiful
and personal love story.
God wants nothing “out of us” but
our love. He created each of us for our
own sake, simply because he loves us;
it’s as if he could not imagine the world
without us.
God does not want to control or “lord
over” us. He simply wants to live with
us and be our friend.
The promise that God makes to us is
this: If we accept his love and believe
in his love, if we love him as he loves
us, and if we love others as he loves
them, then we can become like him.
And if we follow his way of love, he
promises that we can know the joy of
what Jesus called the abundance of
life.
In this coming year, let us ask for the
grace to deepen our faith in the power
of our Catholic story, in the truth of
Jesus Christ and his love for us.
In a practical way, we can be renewed
in this story through ever deeper devotion
to the Eucharist.
In every celebration of the Eucharist,
we pray the prayers of our ancestors,
hear their stories from the Scriptures,
and listen to the words of Jesus. Every
Eucharistic prayer retells the story of
his sacrifice of love and communicates
that love to us.
So, let us resolve again this year to
make the celebration of holy Mass, and
By his teaching, Jesus set out the path we are to
follow as children of God, and our lives are now
a journey of love in his Church that leads beyond
death to eternal life with the Father in heaven.
the encounter with the living God that
we have in the bread and wine, the
heart of our lives.
Pray for me and I will pray for you.
And let us ask our Blessed Mother
Mary to help us to tell the story of
her Son with new joy, confidence,
and courage, especially to our young
people.
January 12, 2024 • ANGELUS • 3