THE CONCHO PADRE POST

Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin is local bishop.

Rescuers in central Texas are still searching the wreckage after an explosion Wednesday night at a fertilizer plant killed as many as 15 people, and injured more than 160 others. The blast destroyed over 50 homes and an apartment complex, and also damaged a school and a nursing home in the small town of West. A group of volunteer firefighters and a police officer are believed to be among the dead. They had responded to the initial fire call an hour before the explosion.

The town is home to less than 3,000 people, and the disaster is affecting everyone.
“It’s brought everybody together,” said Father Ed Karasek, the pastor of St. Mary’s Assumption Catholic Parish in West. “It’s a very close-knit community. Everbody is related to each other, and they are all supporting each other.”

The Bishop of Austin, Joe Vásquez, said the Catholic Church has been helping since the disaster struck.

“First of all, the priests in that area have reached out to people,” he said. He mentioned many of the injured have been taken to Catholic hospitals in nearby Waco and Temple, where the local clergy have been on call.

“Of course, our Catholic Charities will take a lead role in this as we try to reach out to those who are suffering and hurting and need support and need help,” Bishop Vásquez told Vatican Radio. “It’s going to be monetarily; it’s going to be through prayers; it’s going to be through material goods…that people are going to need.”

The Bishop said the explosion is devastating for the people of West.

“It’s going to have a profound effect on them. People’s lives have been changed,” he said. They have experienced tremendous loss…not only those who have lost loved ones, but those who have lost homes…[and] so many other things. Just the sense of stability and wanting to have a stable life and security. All of those things are going to impact the people of that community.”

He said is confident the community will pull together in the wake of the disaster.

“My expectation is – and I think it’s been already demonstrated – is that people have gone out of their way to support each other,” Bishop Vásquez said. “That’s not just the Church community, but I think the whole community in general has reached out to want to be there for one another especially in this time of tragedy and sadness.”

Father Karasek has served the community of West for over 20 years. He told Vatican Radio what he thinks the people need most right now.

“I think a lot of prayers,” he said. “And if they wanted to make donations, we will see they get to the families who are in need of them.”

From Various Sources

The Concho Padre

(Vatican Radio) Faith is a gift that begins in our encounter with Jesus, a real, tangible person and not an intangible essence, ‘mist’ or ‘spray’. Our real encounter with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was the focus of Pope Francis Thursday morning celebrated with the Italian State Police who serve the Vatican area.

The Pope drew inspiration for his homily from the Gospel of John in which Jesus tells the crowd that “he who believes has eternal life”. He says the passage is an opportunity for us to examine our conscience. He noted that very often people say they generally believe in God. “But who is this God you believe in?” asked Pope Francis confronting the evanescence of certain beliefs with the reality of a true faith:

“An ‘all over the place – god, a ‘god-spray’ so to speak, who is a little bit everywhere but who no-one really knows anything about. We believe in God who is Father, who is Son, who is Holy Spirit. We believe in Persons, and when we talk to God we talk to Persons: or I speak with the Father, or I speak with the Son, or I speak with the Holy Spirit. And this is the faith. ”

In the Gospel passage, Jesus also says that no one can come to him “unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” Pope Francis said that these words show that “to go to Jesus, to find Jesus, to know Jesus, is a gift” that God bestows on us.

The Pope said we see an example of this in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, where Christ sends Philip to explain the Old Testament in the light of the Resurrection to an officer of the court of the Queen of Egypt. That officer – observed Pope Francis – was not a “common man” but a royal treasurer and because of this, “we may think he was a bit attached to the money”, “a careerist.” Yet, said the Pope, when this individual listens to Philip speak to him of Jesus “he hears that it is good news”, “he feels joy,” to the point of being baptized in the first place they find water:

“Those who have faith have eternal life, they have life. But faith is a gift, it is the Father who gifts it. We must continue on this path. But if we travel this path, it is always with our own baggage – because we are all sinners and we all always have things that are wrong. But the Lord will forgive us if we ask for forgiveness, and so we should always press onwards, without being discouraged – but on that path what happened to the royal treasurer will happen to us too”.

Pope Francis, what is described in the Acts of the Apostles, after the officer discovers the faith we also happen to us: “And he went on his way rejoicing”:

“It is the joy of faith, the joy of having encountered Jesus, the joy that only Jesus gives us, the joy that gives peace: not what the world gives, but what gives Jesus. This is our faith. We ask the Lord to help us grow in this faith, this faith that makes us strong, that makes us joyful, this faith that always begins with our encounter with Jesus and always continues throughout our lives in our small daily encounters with Jesus. ”

Vatican Radio

Today we all join in praying for those killed and injured, for their families, for those who have lost their homes and businesses, and for all others who have been affected by the tragic industrial explosion in the small town of West.

The Concho Padre

This is an op-ed piece by Dr. Jeff Mirus, president of Catholic Culture.

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=1072

The Concho Padre

Almighty ever-living God,
let us feel your compassion
more readily during these days when,
by your gift, we have known it more fully,
so that those you have freed from the darkness of error
may cling more firmly to the teachings of your truth.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
– Amen.