I hope you’ll be joining us this Sunday night at 6:00pm for our annual Parish Picnic – it will be a great evening of food, games and activities and time to spend with family and friends. We don’t have a Family Dinner Night this month because of the Parish Picnic, so please join us as our parish family gathers for a great time together! (Our next Parish Family Dinner Night is scheduled for Friday, July 26).

This Sunday you’ll notice that our vestments are back to the color green – the first time on a Sunday since February 10. The Sundays of Ordinary TIme are lived out in the light of Pentecost – these are the days when we continue the mission of the Church that was launched on Pentecost Day, when the disciples were set on fire with the love of God and pushed out by that love into the world, so that all might know and experience the love of God made real and visible in Jesus. Even though the summer is often a more relaxed time, the liturgical color of green reminds us that the Lord is always offering more life and growth in our spiritual life, both individually and as a parish. Please know of my prayers for you in these coming weeks that you will continue to grow close to the Lord, with your hearts ever set on fire with love of the Lord and neighbor.

In the coming week we will be getting ready to say goodbye to Nick Sungenis, as his time in the parish comes to a close. It has been a blessing to have him with us, as he shared his love of God in service to our parish and school over this past year. Please keep Nick in your prayers as he follows the Lord and says yes to all that He has in store for him. We will also be getting ready to welcome a new pastoral year seminarian: Josh Laws. Josh is completing his third year of theology at the Pontifical North American College in Rome (my own alma mater) and will be joining us for the upcoming year, through the summer of 2014. We are blessed to have the presence of so many seminarians in our parish and I pray that their example will inspire the young men and youth of our parish to think about God’s call and plan in their own lives.

Have a very blessed Sunday and new week!

This Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord – Corpus Christi. This annual celebration always follows on last Sunday’s feast of the Most Holy Trinity and is a wonderful time to reflect on the gift we receive each Sunday but at times, perhaps, we take for granted. Communion can become something we do out of habit, just because it’s what we do. I’m aware of this each Sunday when a fair number of parishioners move immediately from receiving Communion to the exit and onto the parking lot, without any time for prayerful thanksgiving for the gift they have just received. While there may occasionally be extraordinary reasons that require someone to leave right after Communion, I do think it has simply become a habit for some. This feast of Corpus Christi is a great time to ask the Lord for the gift of having our hearts connected more deeply to what our bodies are doing at Communion. When our hearts realize what is happening, and when we see in the Eucharist the most amazing love we could ever hope for, then our actions tend to follow. So my prayer for all of us is that our hearts might be filled with a sense of wonder and awe in God’s presence in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ.
On Sunday, June 16, at the 11:00am Mass we are looking forward to having Deacon Allen Greene return to celebrate with us and preach for the first time here since his ordination to the permanent diaconate earlier in May. Please join us for this time to celebrate with Allen and share in the new ministry that the Lord has given him through the laying on of hands of the Archbishop and the call to serve the Church.
Congratulations to all of our recent graduates, especially the 8th grade students here in our own parish school who graduated this past Friday. We continue to keep all of the recent graduates in our prayers! Finally, I hope you’re planning on joining us for our upcoming Parish Picnic next Sunday, June 9, at 6:00pm. You can sign-up in the narthex or online at our parish website. We’d love to have you join us for a great evening of grilled food, desserts, games and activities for the kids, and time to spend with family and friends. All are welcome!

Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the Church! I pray this is a very blessed celebration for you, one that renews in you the graces you personally received in the Sacrament of Confirmation. Without this gift of the Spirit the Church would never have come to life. And the heart that does not actively welcome the actions and workings of the Holy Spirit remains asleep, dormant. The Lord does not want us to be “sleepwalking Catholics”, where the exterior of the Christian life is present, but in whose heart there is no life. When we consciously and deliberately welcome the Holy Spirit, we wake up to our real identity in Christ, we become aware of our purpose in life and begin to live life intentionally, as disciples of the Lord Jesus. I pray and hope that the Lord will give each of us this grace at Pentecost! In preparation for this day, I want to offer thanks to Fr. Dave Pivonka for leading our Parish Mission this past week and to all who helped make it such a blessing to our parish and those who attended. The days leading up to Pentecost have been a great blessing for us and I pray that the seeds planted during our Novena, Mission and Pentecost celebrations will bear great fruit.

Don’t forget our upcoming Parish Picnic on Sunday, June 9, following the 5:00pm Mass. Please sign up in the narthex or online (just visit our parish website and click the link). Please feel free to invite family and friends – we want others to experience the same blessings we have experienced here in the life of our parish family!

Finally, please keep all of our graduates in your prayers: those completing 8th grade and moving onto high school, all of our high school graduates who are taking the big step to college, and those who earned their undergraduate or graduate degrees and are now moving out into the world. Each of these represents a big step in life and we pray that the Lord will guide them and guard them in this time of change.
Have a very blessed new week!

Next weekend we will have Fr. Dave Pivonka with us, preaching at all the Masses, in preparation for the start of our Parish Mission on May 13, 14 and 15 at 7:00pm. I hope you’re planning on joining us for what will be a great and very dynamic time of prayer and preaching. No RSVP is needed, just join us each night! All are welcome!
Finally, we are looking forward to our annual Extended Pentecost Vigil Mass on Saturday, May 18 at 7:00pm. This Mass has become our parish’s way of entering even more deeply into the mystery and power of Pentecost as we gather in vigil for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and in prayer, worship and Scripture join with the Apostles and Virgin Mary as we ask the Lord to pour out the Spirit on us and our parish family. The Vigil Mass is followed by a great time of fellowship as our kitchen crew prepares some of the best homemade pizza you’ll ever have. Please join us – all are welcome!

A crowd of 75,000 joined us, but we were blessed to be near the area where Pope Francis passed in his Pope-mobile. The crowd was excited and Pope Francis had a big smile on his face as he made his way around the square in the open-air Pope-mobile.

During the audience itself the Pope continued his catechesis on the Creed during the Year of Faith. Here’s a good summary of his catechesis from the Vatican News Service.

It was a blessing for us to be there in Square with people from all over the world – what a great reminder of the universal nature of the Church!

The catacombs of St. Sebastian was a very moving visit to some of the earliest catacombs where the early Christians buried their dead and also met for prayer and worship. Unlike the Romans who cremated their dead because they believed the body to be useless after death, the Christians buried their dead in sure hope that they would share in the resurrection of Christ. Thus, the Christian catacombs were known as “dormitoriums” – places where the dead were merely sleeping as they await the resurrection.

Our day ended with Mass at the Basilica of St. Paul, outside the walls of Rome. Here, St. Paul was buried after he was martyred (by beheading). It was amazing to pray at the tomb of the great Apostle who traveled the known world to spread the Gospel of Christ. Paul’s conversion so radically changed him that, brought into friendship with Christ, he would spend the rest of his life making Him known to the world. Paul’s greatest witness to Christ was the shedding of his blood for Him.

This day brought us face to face with the vibrant faith of the early Church, a faith not diminished by persecution but made stronger and more believable by it.

We visited the French church dedicated to St. Louis, king of France, where three beautiful Caravaggio’s can be found, each telling the story of St. Matthew: his calling at the tax collectors post, his inspiration to write his Gospel, and his martyrdom.

From there we visited the Church of St. Augustine, where the tomb of St. Monica, the mother of Augustine, is located. St. Monica prayed for thirty years for her son to end his restless search for truth and give his heart and mind to Christ. Monica’s prayers and perseverance were not in vain as Augustine finally chose to be baptized and turned his gifts and thirst for truth over to the Lord, who finally brought peace to his restless heart.

God’s care for His restless and prodigal children is brought to life in the Caravaggio that adorns a side chapel at St. Augustine: Madonna of Loretto (or Our Lady of the Pilgrims). Mary, holding the child Jesus, is dressed as one of the simple poor, and before her are two pilgrims kneeling in prayer, the dirt of their feet visible as they approach in humility. The painting caused scandal at the time because Mary was portrayed as a simple commoner, not in full glory as was normally done up to that point. Caravaggio was reminding us that God indeed came to us in the flesh, sharing in our poverty and suffering, and thus making himself approachable to us.

The final church we visited was Santa Maria del Popolo, which has two more Caravaggio’s: the conversion of St. Paul and the martyrdom of St. Peter. The conversion of St. Paul captures the moment when the Lord has appeared to Saul, called him by name, and begins the transformation that would completely change his life.

In the midst of the churches we visited, we also stopped in some of the best known piazzas and markets, and were also joined by Fr. McLean for part of the day.

Our day began with a visit to the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. Here, in an upper chapel, are preserved some of the relics associated with the Passion of Christ, including a piece of the True Cross. The chapel is solemn and simple, allowing pilgrims to focus on the relics themselves.

Following our visit to the Basilica we spent some time at the Scala Santa, the Holy Stairs. Brought over to Rome by St. Helen (mother of the emperor Constantine), these are the marble stairs that ascended to the praetorium of Pontius Pilate, which Jesus stood on during his Passion and trial. Pilgrims climb the steps on their knees, remembering the Passion of Christ.

In addition to this theme of the Passion that dominated our day, we also focused on the Motherhood of Mary, visiting the patriarchal Basilica of St. Mary Major, one of the four principal basilicas in Rome and one of the earliest churches to honor the motherhood of Mary.

We followed that visit by heading to the church of St. Alphonsus where the original Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is present. We celebrated Mass here at the main altar, with the icon looking on behind us. The Icon unites our two great themes for the day of the Passion and Motherhood of Mary: the icon depicts the moment when the child Jesus, having seen a vision of his Passion, flees to his mother’s arms for comfort and help. He has run so quickly that one of his sandals dangles from his feet. After Mass we were able to kneel down before the Icon as we prayed for the parish and all of our special intentions.

Our day ended with some of the pilgrims heading back to St. Peter’s Basilica to enjoy the facade and fountains illuminated at night.