Dear Friends,
The message in this weekend’s Scripture could not be more timely as we prepare to exercise our inalienable right to vote. Jesus categorically states that the whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments: You shall love the Lord, your God, with everything you’ve got, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love everything that the Lord loves. He loves life in all stages, he dispels darkness and brings light, and he transcends differences and treats everyone with love, especially the vulnerable, the aliens, widows, and orphans. He hears the cry of the poor with particular sensitivity. The more our country excludes God from its public discourse, the more we, as a nation, distance ourselves from these ideals. Who among the candidates will ensure the perpetuation of these commandments in our country?
Fr. Michael J. McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, will be beatified on Saturday, October 31st at 11:00 a.m. EST at Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in Hartford, CT. We take this opportunity to congratulate our own brother Knights and thank them for their services to our community. We will celebrate this momentous occasion in the life of the Knights at all Masses next weekend.
Molly Smith, our Youth Minister, has been offered a full-time position in her career field and, hence, will no longer be able to serve the teens of our parish. I thank her for stepping in at a very critical time to help sustain this program and pray that God will continue to shower His blessings on her and her wonderful husband Mark. I also want to thank Fr. John Patrick for his willingness to assume the responsibilities of youth ministry beginning November 1, 2020.
Covid-19 has impacted all aspects of our daily lives, challenging our adaptability. “Instead of cursing the darkness, learn to light a lamp” is a slogan many of us have heard in some form or another. With Covid as our backdrop, how do we celebrate Halloween this year? How do we light a lamp to brighten our spirits? Our team has come up with a plan that will both keep us safe and allow us to have some fun. Please plan to join us on Saturday, October 31st, for a drive-in and drive-through MASKED Trick-or-Treating event with fun for the whole family. There will be carloads of costumed kids, fun photo ops, a carved pumpkin contest, and MORE … all from the safety of your VEHICLE! So be there, if you dare … October 31st from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Be Blessed!
With love, Fr. John
Ecclesia De Eucharistia
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraphs 34-35 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 begin the 4th chapter titled: “The Eucharist and Ecclesial Communion.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE EUCHARIST AND ECCLESIAL COMMUNION
- The Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 1985 saw in the concept of an “ecclesiology of communion” the central and fundamental idea of the documents of the Second Vatican Council (Cf. Final Report, II.C.1: L'Osservatore Romano, 10 December 1985, 7). The Church is called during her earthly pilgrimage to maintain and promote communion with the Triune God and communion among the faithful. For this purpose she possesses the word and the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, by which she “constantly lives and grows” (Lumen Gentium, 26) and in which she expresses her very nature. It is not by chance that the term communion has become one of the names given to this sublime sacrament.
The Eucharist thus appears as the culmination of all the sacraments in perfecting our communion with God the Father by identification with his only-begotten Son through the working of the Holy Spirit. With discerning faith a distinguished writer of the Byzantine tradition voiced this truth: in the Eucharist “unlike any other sacrament, the mystery [of communion] is so perfect that it brings us to the heights of every good thing: here is the ultimate goal of every human desire, because here we attain God and God joins himself to us in the most perfect union” ( Nicolas Cabasilas, Life in Christ, IV, 10: SCh 355, 270). Precisely for this reason it is good to cultivate in our hearts a constant desire for the sacrament of the Eucharist. This was the origin of the practice of “spiritual communion”, which has happily been established in the Church for centuries and recommended by saints who were masters of the spiritual life. Saint Teresa of Jesus wrote: “When you do not receive communion and you do not attend Mass, you can make a spiritual communion, which is a most beneficial practice; by it the love of God will be greatly impressed on you” ( Camino de Perfección, Chapter 35).
- The celebration of the Eucharist, however, cannot be the starting-point for communion; it presupposes that communion already exists, a communion which it seeks to consolidate and bring to perfection. The sacrament is an expression of this bond of communion both in its invisible dimension, which, in Christ and through the working of the Holy Spirit, unites us to the Father and among ourselves, and in its visible dimension, which entails communion in the teaching of the Apostles, in the sacraments and in the Church's hierarchical order. The profound relationship between the invisible and the visible elements of ecclesial communion is constitutive of the Church as the sacrament of salvation (Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion Communionis Notio (28 May 1992), 4: AAS 85 (1993), 839-840). Only in this context can there be a legitimate celebration of the Eucharist and true participation in it. Consequently it is an intrinsic requirement of the Eucharist that it should be celebrated in communion, and specifically maintaining the various bonds of that communion intact.