Dear Friends,
I wish to begin by offering a huge THANKS to you for responding to our request for clothes for our homeless brothers and sisters at Daily Bread. Deborah Phebus who coordinated this effort was astonished as she had no words to express her amazement at the generosity of our parishioners. Some of you went all out to ensure we had more than enough supplies. I would ask you to suspend this effort for now until we come back to you for more help to reach out to those in need such as the farmworkers.
Your generous donation of non-perishable food has been well received. We were able to help those who really are in need of food. Our Outreach Ministry has been active in distributing food to those who come to us for help. What a blessing it is to be able to help our hungry brothers and sisters at a time like this.
Molly Smith, Coordinator of Youth Ministry, along with the core team of volunteers were able to kick off an in-person Life Teen session this past Sunday. I thank the Teens for responding to this invitation.
Despite the challenges associated with the demands of strict safety guidelines the teens had a blast of a time. Please send your teens so we could cultivate their love for love for Jesus Christ and our neighbors.
I request parents who have children from K through 6th grade to register their children for the Religious Education Program and attend the MANDATORY Parent Pick-Up Party in the Parish Hall on Sunday, September 13, following the 11 am Mass, 12:30 – 1:30. We will be introducing our team of catechists, the new curriculum (Pflaum Gospel Weeklies), and our plan for the combined once-monthly, in-person sessions and at-home instruction beginning Sunday, 20 September. There will be games and prizes!
On this 23rd Sunday A, we are invited to reflect on the huge responsibility God entrusts to us to care for our brothers and sisters especially if they are erring members of our family or community. But we have to do it with extreme care. We pray this week for those with whom we might have some misunderstanding. May the Holy Spirit work in and through us to fill us with peace and love.
Be Blessed!
With love Fr. John
Ecclesia De Eucharistia
Paragraph 20
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraph 20 of the encyclical, “Ecclesia De Eucharistia” (The Church draws her life from the Eucharist) by St. John Paul II on the vital role the Eucharist plays in the life of the Church. This brings us to the end of chapter one.
- A significant consequence of the eschatological tension inherent in the Eucharist is also the fact that it spurs us on our journey through history and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us. Certainly the Christian vision leads to the expectation of “new heavens” and “a new earth” (Rev 21:1), but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the world today (Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 39). I wish to reaffirm this forcefully at the beginning of the new millennium, so that Christians will feel more obliged than ever not to neglect their duties as citizens in this world. Theirs is the task of contributing with the light of the Gospel to the building of a more human world, a world fully in harmony with God's plan.
Many problems darken the horizon of our time. We need but think of the urgent need to work for peace, to base relationships between peoples on solid premises of justice and solidarity, and to defend human life from conception to its natural end. And what should we say of the thousand inconsistencies of a “globalized” world where the weakest, the most powerless and the poorest appear to have so little hope! It is in this world that Christian hope must shine forth! For this reason too, the Lord wished to remain with us in the Eucharist, making his presence in meal and sacrifice the promise of a humanity renewed by his love. Significantly, in their account of the Last Supper, the Synoptics recount the institution of the Eucharist, while the Gospel of John relates, as a way of bringing out its profound meaning, the account of the “washing of the feet”, in which Jesus appears as the teacher of communion and of service (cf. Jn 13:1-20). The Apostle Paul, for his part, says that it is “unworthy” of a Christian community to partake of the Lord's Supper amid division and indifference towards the poor (cf. 1 Cor 11:17-22, 27-34) (“Do you wish to honor the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad. He who said: 'This is my body' is the same who said: 'You saw me hungry and you gave me no food', and 'Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me' ... What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger. Start by satisfying his hunger and then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well”: Saint John Chrysostom, In Evangelium S. Matthaei, hom. 50:3-4: PG 58, 508-509; cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (30 December 1987), 31: AAS 80 (1988), 553-556)).
Proclaiming the death of the Lord “until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26) entails that all who take part in the Eucharist be committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way completely “Eucharistic”. It is this fruit of a transfigured existence and a commitment to transforming the world in accordance with the Gospel which splendidly illustrates the eschatological tension inherent in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the Christian life as a whole: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).