Dear Friends,
On the 22nd November we celebrate the Feast of St. Cecilia, the Patron saint of musicians. This year since it falls on a Sunday it will not be celebrated. However, we want to take this moment for the many musicians and cantors and choir members our community has been blessed with. So we take this occasion to thank them for their commitment and for enhancing our prayer experience at SJE.
Today it the 34th Sunday of the Ordinary Time and it is the last weekend of the Liturgical Year and also the solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Over the past couple weeks, we had been reflecting on how to be prepared for the last days which would come unexpectedly. Today we are invited to reflect on the moment of judgment and how we will be judged. Will you be among those that Christ our King will say: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Or, will you choose to be the ones to whom he might say: “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
This final day of the Church liturgical year—and a year of grace—gives us a final chance to examine who we are before God and to make things right in our lives to the best of our abilities. Spiritually mature Christians like you will need no fear for you have been doing the will of God and are content with who you are. And if you think you are a perfect Christian then you are part of a rare breed.
Recently the Pope Francis was on the news for the remarks he had made in regard to the civil union of same sex couples in the documentary film “Francesco,” by director Evgency Afineevesky. It had created some speculations and elicited various reactions. The Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christopher Pierre has offered an explanation which reads this way: “More than a year ago, in the course of an interview, Pope Francis responded to two distinct questions at different moments that, in the said documentary, were edited and published as a single response without the necessary context, which has resulted in confusion. The Holy Father, first and foremost, referred in a pastoral manner to the need, within the family, for a son or daughter with a homosexual orientation to never be discriminated against.
The following paragraph from the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation concerning love in the family, Amoris Laetitia (2016), can shed light on those responses: “During the Synod, we discussed the situation of families whose members include persons who experience same-sex attraction, a situation not easy either for parents or for children. We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence. Such families should be given respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives.”
During a 2014 interview, the Holy Father expressed himself as follows: “Marriage is between a man and a woman. Secular States want to justify civil unions in order to regularize the various situations of cohabitation, driven by the necessity to regularize economic matters between persons, such as ensuring health care, for example. This relates to various forms of cohabitation agreement, which I would not be able to list. The different situations must be examined and evaluated, according to their circumstances.”
It is therefore clear that Pope Francis was referring to particular State provisions, and not certainly to the doctrine of the Church, which has been reiterated on numerous occasions over the years.”
Be Blessed!
With love, Fr. John
Ecclesia De Eucharistia
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraphs 43-44 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 you will read about the relationship of the Eucharist to ecumenical activity and about how the Eucharist is the apt expression and the unsurpassable source of that unity.
- In considering the Eucharist as the sacrament of ecclesial communion, there is one subject which, due to its importance, must not be overlooked: I am referring to the relationship of the Eucharist to ecumenical activity. We should all give thanks to the Blessed Trinity for the many members of the faithful throughout the world who in recent decades have felt an ardent desire for unity among all Christians. The Second Vatican Council, at the beginning of its Decree on Ecumenism, sees this as a special gift of God (Cf. Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, 1). It was an efficacious grace which inspired us, the sons and daughters of the Catholic Church and our brothers and sisters from other Churches and Ecclesial Communities, to set forth on the path of ecumenism.
Our longing for the goal of unity prompts us to turn to the Eucharist, which is the supreme sacrament of the unity of the People of God, in as much as it is the apt expression and the unsurpassable source of that unity (Cf. Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 11). In the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice the Church prays that God, the Father of mercies, will grant his children the fullness of the Holy Spirit so that they may become one body and one spirit in Christ (“Join all of us, who share the one bread and the one cup, to one another in the communion of the one Holy Spirit”: Anaphora of the Liturgy of Saint Basil). In raising this prayer to the Father of lights, from whom comes every good endowment and every perfect gift (cf. Jas 1:17), the Church believes that she will be heard, for she prays in union with Christ her Head and Spouse, who takes up this plea of his Bride and joins it to that of his own redemptive sacrifice.
- Precisely because the Church's unity, which the Eucharist brings about through the Lord's sacrifice and by communion in his body and blood, absolutely requires full communion in the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments and ecclesiastical governance, it is not possible to celebrate together the same Eucharistic liturgy until those bonds are fully re-established. Any such concelebration would not be a valid means, and might well prove instead to be an obstacle, to the attainment of full communion, by weakening the sense of how far we remain from this goal and by introducing or exacerbating ambiguities with regard to one or another truth of the faith. The path towards full unity can only be undertaken in truth. In this area, the prohibitions of Church law leave no room for uncertainty ( Cf. Code of Canon Law, Canon 908; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, Canon 702; Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Ecumenical Directory, 25 March 1993, 122-125, 129-131: AAS 85 (1993), 1086-1089; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter Ad Exsequendam, 18 May 2001: AAS 93 (2001), 786), in fidelity to the moral norm laid down by the Second Vatican Council (“Divine law forbids any common worship which would damage the unity of the Church, or involve formal acceptance of falsehood or the danger of deviation in the faith, of scandal, or of indifferentism”: Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 26).
I would like nonetheless to reaffirm what I said in my Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint after having acknowledged the impossibility of Eucharistic sharing: “And yet we do have a burning desire to join in celebrating the one Eucharist of the Lord, and this desire itself is already a common prayer of praise, a single supplication. Together we speak to the Father and increasingly we do so 'with one heart'” (No. 45: AAS 87 (1995), 948).