Dear Friends,
We have now entered joyfully into Ordinary Time and will be reflecting on the life, teaching, preaching, and healing ministries of Jesus, primarily from the Gospel of Mark in cycle B this year. Because Mark is a very short Gospel, the Church also uses the Gospel of John. On this 2nd Sunday, we hear in John’s Gospel the call of Andrew and his influence in bringing Peter to Jesus. I would ask that you take a moment to thank the person who brought you to Jesus. Furthermore, might you be instrumental in bringing someone to Him this week?
I take this occasion to thank you for your overwhelming support of my becoming a citizen of the United States of America. It was a difficult decision to surrender my allegiance to India, which I will always love dearly, but it was likewise quite difficult to become an American citizen during this tumultuous time in the history of our nation. As long as we remain committed to the motto “In God we Trust,” we should be filled with the hope that we will always be a nation set apart, a God-fearing beacon of freedom. Let us resolve to work together to heal our bruised nation.
I would like to thank Fr. John Patrick for his assistance with youth ministry during the month of December. While he plans to continue his pastoral support of our youth programming, we are pleased to announce several new leadership roles:
I am happy to introduce Schonda Rodriguez who will be joining our Faith Formation staff and assisting primarily with our youth ministry programs. Although Schonda has lived in Florida for more than half of her life, she still considers herself a midwestern girl. If you attend the Sunday 4:30 p.m. Mass, you probably have seen her and her family. Schonda has been involved in many parish activities, to include the International Festival and Divine Mercy prayer services. She also serves as an EMHC and a reader at Mass. Schonda will be assisted by two young, enthusiastic, and talented co-coordinator youth ministry volunteers:
Tiffany Wieckowski was born and raised in Brevard County and was thrilled when she found a community in St. John the Evangelist. In college, she rediscovered her faith through involvement with the Catholic Student Union. Tiffany is a Registered Nurse in the Level 3 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Her goal is to share her passion and experiences and guide the youth of St. John's to a life filled with love of Christ and our Catholic faith. Tiffany will coordinate the EDGE program.
Megan Flautt is also a Brevard County native with a passion for high school and young adult ministry. When the national organization Young Catholic Professionals (YCP) launched in Orlando, she served as the Vice President and Director of Outreach in its inaugural year. Megan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker focusing on mental health issues at a local high school. She has a particular interest in highlighting the cultural norms of today’s society and facilitating open, honest, and empathetic conversation to live a more spiritually and emotionally fulfilled life in Christ. Megan will coordinate the Life Teen ministry.
Thank you Schonda, Tiffany, and Megan for your passion and commitment to sharing the Good News of Jesus with our young people. We invite our middle and high school students to join us for “New Beginnings” in 2021.
With love, Fr. John
Ecclesia de Eucharistia
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraphs 59 & 60 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. With these paragraphs, we conclude of the encyclical. Here, St. John Paul II is calling us to undertake with renewed enthusiasm the journey of Christian living, and the implementation of this program passes through the Eucharist.
CONCLUSION
- Ave, verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine! Several years ago I celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of my priesthood. Today I have the grace of offering the Church this Encyclical on the Eucharist on the Holy Thursday which falls during the twenty-fifth year of my Petrine ministry. As I do so, my heart is filled with gratitude. For over a half century, every day, beginning on 2 November 1946, when I celebrated my first Mass in the Crypt of Saint Leonard in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, my eyes have gazed in recollection upon the host and the chalice, where time and space in some way “merge” and the drama of Golgotha is re-presented in a living way, thus revealing its mysterious “contemporaneity”. Each day my faith has been able to recognize in the consecrated bread and wine the divine Wayfarer who joined the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and opened their eyes to the light and their hearts to new hope (cf. Lk 24:13-35).
Allow me, dear brothers and sisters, to share with deep emotion, as a means of accompanying and strengthening your faith, my own testimony of faith in the Most Holy Eucharist. Ave verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine, vere passum, immolatum, in cruce pro homine! Here is the Church's treasure, the heart of the world, the pledge of the fulfilment for which each man and woman, even unconsciously, yearns. A great and transcendent mystery, indeed, and one that taxes our mind's ability to pass beyond appearances. Here our senses fail us: visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur, in the words of the hymn Adoro Te Devote; yet faith alone, rooted in the word of Christ handed down to us by the Apostles, is sufficient for us. Allow me, like Peter at the end of the Eucharistic discourse in John's Gospel, to say once more to Christ, in the name of the whole Church and in the name of each of you: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).
- At the dawn of this third millennium, we, the children of the Church, are called to undertake with renewed enthusiasm the journey of Christian living. As I wrote in my Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, “it is not a matter of inventing a 'new program'. The program already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition; it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfilment in the heavenly Jerusalem” (No. 29: AAS 93 (2001), 285). The implementation of this program of a renewed impetus in Christian living passes through the Eucharist.
Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination. In the Eucharist we have Jesus, we have his redemptive sacrifice, we have his resurrection, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have adoration, obedience and love of the Father. Were we to disregard the Eucharist, how could we overcome our own deficiency?