Alongside our blessings, many of us may be feeling the weight of changes and challenges in our own lives, our parish and our world. St. Paul’s answer to changes and challenges seems to have been perseverance and hope. “I am convinced,” he wrote to the Roman believers, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)​