Dear Friends,
Today we joyfully celebrate Catechetical Sunday. The 2020 theme is, “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.” Catechetical Sunday is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the role that each person plays, by virtue of Baptism, in handing on the faith and being a witness to the Gospel. Today is an opportunity for all to rededicate ourselves to this mission as a community of faith. Are you called to be a catechist? We need you! Please contact Dawn Hurley at the office.
Please pray for our dedicated catechists using this prayer: Lord God, source of all wisdom and knowledge, you sent your Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us and to proclaim his message of faith, hope, and love to all nations. In your goodness, bless our brothers and sisters who have offered themselves as catechists for your Church. As you strengthen them with your gifts to teach by word and by example the truth that comes from you, enkindle in us an intense passion to hand on the living faith we have received. We ask this through Christ our Lord. R/. Amen.
We have begun our Religious Education Program in earnest. I thank all the parents for your patience and love in nurturing our Catholic faith in your homes.
I request all the women of our parish to come together at 6.30 p.m. on 7 October 2020, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, for a time of prayer and reflection. We will be launching some wonderful programs to enrich our women’s spiritual life.
On Tuesday, 29 September, the Feast of the Archangels, we will celebrate the Blue Mass at 12:00 p.m. to honor our First Responders. Please come and pray for our first responders and thank them for their services to our community.
On this 25th Sunday A, we are invited once again to reflect on God’s generosity which is beyond our realm of reasoning. Through the parable of the landowner and the hired laborers, we come to understand the divine goodness and mystifying nature of his generosity. Let each of us make an attempt to imitate God.
Be Blessed!
With love, Fr. John
Ecclesia De Eucharistia
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraphs 23 and 24 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. In these paragraphs Pope JP II explains how the Eucharist Builds the Church.
- Eucharistic communion also confirms the Church in her unity as the body of Saint Paul refers to this unifying power of participation in the banquet of the Eucharist when he writes to the Corinthians: “The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17). Saint John Chrysostom's commentary on these words is profound and perceptive: “For what is the bread? It is the body of Christ. And what do those who receive it become? The Body of Christ – not many bodies but one body. For as bread is completely one, though made of up many grains of wheat, and these, albeit unseen, remain nonetheless present, in such a way that their difference is not apparent since they have been made a perfect whole, so too are we mutually joined to one another and together united with Christ” (In Epistolam I ad Corinthios Homiliae, 24, 2: PG 61, 200; Cf. Didache, IX, 4: F.X. Funk, I, 22; Saint Cyprian, Ep. LXIII, 13: PL 4, 384). The argument is compelling: our union with Christ, which is a gift and grace for each of us, makes it possible for us, in him, to share in the unity of his body which is the Church. The Eucharist reinforces the incorporation into Christ which took place in Baptism though the gift of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 12:13, 27).
The joint and inseparable activity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, which is at the origin of the Church, of her consolidation and her continued life, is at work in the Eucharist. This was clearly evident to the author of the Liturgy of Saint James: in the epiclesis of the Anaphora, God the Father is asked to send the Holy Spirit upon the faithful and upon the offerings, so that the body and blood of Christ “may be a help to all those who partake of it ... for the sanctification of their souls and bodies”( PO 26, 206). The Church is fortified by the divine Paraclete through the sanctification of the faithful in the Eucharist.
- The gift of Christ and his Spirit which we receive in Eucharistic communion superabundantly fulfils the yearning for fraternal unity deeply rooted in the human heart; at the same time it elevates the experience of fraternity already present in our common sharing at the same Eucharistic table to a degree which far surpasses that of the simple human experience of sharing a meal. Through her communion with the body of Christ the Church comes to be ever more profoundly “in Christ in the nature of a sacrament, that is, a sign and instrument of intimate unity with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 1).
The seeds of disunity, which daily experience shows to be so deeply rooted in humanity as a result of sin, are countered by the unifying power of the body of Christ. The Eucharist, precisely by building up the Church, creates human community.
Questions for Paragraphs 23-24
1.) According to St. John Chrysostom, what really becomes of those who receive the Body of Christ?
2.) What reinforces our incorporation into Christ which was begun at Baptism by the gift of the Spirit?
3.) According to the Liturgy of Saint James, the Body and Blood of Christ “may be a help to those who partake in it… for the sanctification of their and .
4.) Who fortifies the church through the sanctification of the faithful in the Eucharist?
5.) The Eucharist, precisely by building up the Church, creates .
6.) What does the gift of Christ and his Spirit in the Eucharistic communion fulfill in our hearts?