December 2023 - 12/11/2023

President's Message

St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “In the fullness of time God sent forth His Son.” (Gal. 4:4) Luke, in his Gospel, makes careful note of the time of Christ’s birth: “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.” (Luke 2:1-2) And Matthew, in his Gospel account of Christ’s birth, begins with a time reference: “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king...” (Matt. 2:1)

God, the Creator of time and Lord over time, entered into time and became subject to it when He was conceived and born into this world. Why? To redeem, to make new and holy, not simply time, but your time. In our ever-busy and hectic holiday season, keep this in mind and take time to consider, and give thanks for, God’s redemption of your times and days in Christ!

I recently found time to read a portion of a sermon from St. Augustine, the 5th century bishop of Hippo. May your time be blessed as you consider what he says!

“With the fullness of time He appeared—the One who wanted to set us free from time. For, set free from time, we would be able to reach that eternity which is beyond time. We would therefore no longer need to say: When will the hour come? For it would be an eternal day. No yesterday would precede it and no tomorrow would follow it.

In this world, however, days go by and others come. No day remains. Even as we speak, the moments pass, the first syllable pressed on by the second that is waiting impatiently to be heard. As soon as we have spoken, we have become a little older. I am certainly older now than I was this morning. Nothing stands still. Nothing remains firm in time. We must therefore love the One through whom the times came to be, so that we may be set free from time and become established in eternity, where time and the changes it brings no longer exist.

It is, then, a great mercy on the part of our Lord Jesus Christ that He, through whom the times came to be, came to be for our sakes in time, that He, through whom all things came to be, came to be in the midst of all things, that He became what He had made. For He became what He had made. He, who had made the human race, became human, so that what He had made would not be lost.”

Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, now and through all time!
President Beinke