Dear Friends,
At last, the excruciating wait for the election is over. As we live with the results of our choices, let us continue to pray for our leaders and our country that the Lord may protect us as one nation under God.
During the MONTH of November, we remember the Holy Souls. I was thrilled to see so many of you at the three Masses celebrated on 2 November, the Feast of All Souls. As Catholics, it is a special privilege for us to pray for our beloved deceased, as they desperately need our prayers to move from purgatory to heaven. St. Faustina describes an experience of her vision of purgatory: “I asked these souls (in purgatory) what their greatest suffering was. They answered me in one voice that their greatest torment was longing for God.” Longing to see the face of God is our heart’s greatest desire. As Catholics, we are offered the personal experience of being with the Lord here on earth when we attend Mass and consume the Holy Eucharist and when we spend time in prayer and Adoration. These precious moments reveal to us the joy that awaits us in heaven. Our ultimate goal in life is to attain heaven, and we do so by becoming saints. Heaven, however, is a place where no impurities can enter (Revelation 21:27), so we must first be purged and purified of our venial sins through time spent in purgatory. We believe that every soul in purgatory WILL someday become a saint; it is a powerful Catholic teaching and a cause of great hope for every Catholic. But a soul cannot do anything to move from purgatory to heaven on its own – that soul needs our prayers and sacrifices! During the month of November, please continue to pray for the souls in purgatory and visit the cemeteries, if possible. At the gravesite of your loved one, I would suggest you offer this prayer: O God, by whose mercy the faithful departed find rest, send your holy Angel to watch over this grave. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.
We have a binder in the Narthex for you to write the names of departed souls, and it will be carried to the Altar to be remembered during the weekend Masses in November. The Mass is the highest form of prayer in the Church and the most effective one that can be offered on behalf of those who have gone before us.
Today we celebrate the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, and the Scriptures invite us to think about our preparedness. How prepared are you to meet the Lord? Are you as vigilant as the wise virgins, or are you as lackadaisical as the foolish ones? At the end of our life, the most terrible and unspeakable experience would be to hear these words from Jesus: “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you” (Matthew 25: 12).
Be Blessed!
With love, Fr. John
Ecclesia De Eucharistia
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraphs 38-39 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 the 4th chapter we study the vital relationship between “The Eucharist and Ecclesial Communion.” It highlights the fact that since the Eucharist is the summit of the spiritual life and the goal of all the sacraments the recipients must be free from manifest grave sins.
- Ecclesial communion, as I have said, is likewise visible, and finds expression in the series of “bonds” listed by the Council when it teaches: “They are fully incorporated into the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept her whole structure and all the means of salvation established within her, and within her visible framework are united to Christ, who governs her through the Supreme Pontiff and the Bishops, by the bonds of profession of faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government and communion” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 14).
The Eucharist, as the supreme sacramental manifestation of communion in the Church, demands to be celebrated in a context where the outward bonds of communion are also intact. In a special way, since the Eucharist is “as it were the summit of the spiritual life and the goal of all the sacraments” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 73, a. 3c), it requires that the bonds of communion in the sacraments, particularly in Baptism and in priestly Orders, be real. It is not possible to give communion to a person who is not baptized or to one who rejects the full truth of the faith regarding the Eucharistic mystery. Christ is the truth and he bears witness to the truth (cf. Jn 14:6; 18:37); the sacrament of his body and blood does not permit duplicity.
- Furthermore, given the very nature of ecclesial communion and its relation to the sacrament of the Eucharist, it must be recalled that “the Eucharistic Sacrifice, while always offered in a particular community, is never a celebration of that community alone. In fact, the community, in receiving the Eucharistic presence of the Lord, receives the entire gift of salvation and shows, even in its lasting visible particular form, that it is the image and true presence of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” (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), 11: AAS 85 (1993), 844). From this it follows that a truly Eucharistic community cannot be closed in upon itself, as though it were somehow self-sufficient; rather it must persevere in harmony with every other Catholic community.
The ecclesial communion of the Eucharistic assembly is a communion with its own Bishop and with the Roman Pontiff. The Bishop, in effect, is the visible principle and the foundation of unity within his particular Church (Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 23). It would therefore be a great contradiction if the sacrament par excellence of the Church's unity were celebrated without true communion with the Bishop. As Saint Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “That Eucharist which is celebrated under the Bishop, or under one to whom the Bishop has given this charge, may be considered certain” (Ad Smyrnaeos, 8: PG 5, 713). Likewise, since “the Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity of the Bishops and of the multitude of the faithful” (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 23), communion with him is intrinsically required for the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Hence the great truth expressed which the Liturgy expresses in a variety of ways: “Every celebration of the Eucharist is performed in union not only with the proper Bishop, but also with the Pope, with the episcopal order, with all the clergy, and with the entire people. Every valid celebration of the Eucharist expresses this universal communion with Peter and with the whole Church, or objectively calls for it, as in the case of the Christian Churches separated from Rome” (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), 14: AAS 85 (1993), 847).