We have been filling backpacks with new supplies and figuring out school bus and class schedules.  By the time we gather for this weekend’s celebration just about everyone is back in school, from pre-K to our college students.  A few of us might also be adjusting to new surroundings and schedules associated with new roles at work or with a new place of employment, period.
 
 Because Mass times and the general environment to which we arrive here, and even the people we greet seem not to change much, there can be less of a sense of times and seasons in the Church heralding truly new beginnings.  Crosses, for all their familiarity can come to seem static.  Holy water, bread, wine, hymns and Mass parts that sound familiar , they could fall short of engaging and energizing our life of prayer and our spiritual life and journey.
 
 If and when we can address those to heighten their effects on us, we are committed to do so.  In the far greater measure, however, it is the individual’s mind and heart where the mystery ever new is revealed and proclaimed.  Our families are “the same” day to day, year to year.  It is the sensitive ear or eye of a parent, sibling, grandparent or a spouse that can discern “something new” in someone, with potential effects on all those around, for good or for bad. 
 
 So it is with the vehicles of the Mystery of our salvation.  The Scripture readings, the prayers said, the music heard and sung, the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Our Lord broken and Blood or Our Lord poured out , we can tune it all out by degrees because it’s “old hat,” or we can commit to the grace within in such a way that we know there is more and there is new that we haven’t heard, seen, touched, or tasted yet.  It might just be that we’ll find it here!