Last week, we reflected on the important and inseparable connection between the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist.  Today, I would like to invite us to see how that connection extends in a special way to the priests of the Church.  On the night of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, when Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist as a sign of His enduing love for His people, He also instituted the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  It was His intention to make the gift of the Eucharist dependent on the ministry of His Apostles and their successors, the bishops, and those who share in their sacramental ministry, the priests.  Priests are therefore united to the Heart of Jesus in a special way, as described simply but beautifully by St. John Vianney, the Patron of Priests: “The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus.”

Last year, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart fell on June 19.  Providentially, that was the day to which we transferred our priesthood ordination for the year due to pandemic restrictions in place.  It was so fitting to celebrate this gift of priestly ordinations on that day on which the Church remembers the great love Christ has for us.  In his ordination homily, Bishop Paprocki made the following point about the essence of the priesthood, pointing to the example of one of the greatest priests of our diocese, Venerable Father Augustine Tolton:

If you look to the heroic virtue of Father Tolton, this holy priest of Jesus Christ will teach you how, again and again, no matter the joys and sufferings you will experience through your ministry, to allow your hearts to be pierced out of love for God and neighbor; he will teach you how to lead others into the Sacred Heart so that they might know how much God loves them. This, after all, is the principal mission of the Diaconate and of the Priesthood.

Two of the men ordained to the priesthood on that day were our very own Father Peter Chineke and Father Dominic Vahling.  It has been a real joy to witness their first year of priestly ministry.  In their own way, each of them has done as the Bishop has encouraged them, to lead people to know how much God loves them.  Also ordained to the diaconate on that day was Deacon Chris Trummer, who was just ordained to the priesthood this past  Saturday (June 12).  We pray that his ministry will follow this same direction, that those who will encounter his ministry will grow in their understanding of God’s love for them.

In conclusion, I invite all of us to join in prayer for all of those who are in Holy Orders in our parish and in our diocese.  There are a lot of different things that we do in service to our parishes and our diocese, but we must never forget that everything should be directed toward leading all of you to that deeper encounter with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose love for us has the power to transform our lives here, and prepare us to be with Him forever in Heaven.

Father Alford     

One of the major concerns we have today as Catholics are the fleeing of our Catholic brethren from the faith. While some of our brothers and sisters leave the faith for other religions or churches, most of those who walk away avoid religious identification or affiliation. A good number of them, directly or indirectly, prefer to be identified as “non-practicing Catholics.” In addition, I recently found out that some people leave the Catholic faith because of their doubts over some of our Catholic Christian teachings and practices.

I recently met a young adult who stopped attending Masses and other Church activities when she discovered that Saturday is the Sabbath according to the Bible. Still, Christians ignore it and observe their Sabbath on Sundays. I gently inquired from her what efforts she made to find out why this “wrong practice.” She explained that she came across that in her study of the Bible and never bothered to make a further inquiry from anyone since the Bible is the highest source of truth for Christians. I appreciated her efforts to read her Bible – a practice that is, unfortunately, rare among many Catholics today. But I also encouraged her not to limit her search for the truth in her Bible studies. Sometimes, asking questions for clarifications from Catholic friends and families or sharing ideas with them can be helpful.

Although old and very established text, the Bible is a living text with deep spiritual, theological, and historical elements. These things make the Bible, sometimes, more challenging to understand than it may appear. For this reason, reading and studying it and sharing the fruits of our studies with others increases our chances of a deeper understanding of the Bible texts.

It is easy to agree with me for encouraging the young lady not to limit her search for the truth in her studies of the scriptures and share with others and ask questions. But unfortunately, we live in a time and culture where radical individualism and subjectivism have become moral virtues instead of the social vices they are. Regrettably, individualism and subjectivism as social ills have continued to negatively impact how we live our lives, not only as Catholic Christians but as human beings in general.

While I took time to explain why most Christians celebrate the Sabbath on Sundays instead of Saturdays, I will summarize my explanations here.

The realization of Saturday as the Sabbath and not Sunday is most probably a product of a plain reading of the Old Testament bible. This O.T is a story of the revelations that God made in and with his people – the Ancient Jews. While these revelations are still true and valid for us Christians, Jesus Christ – the Son of God and second person of the Trinity, is the fullness of God’s revelations. Therefore, while everything in the O.T is still true and valid, Christ, who is the fullness of God’s revelations and his teachings in the New Testament, completes the O.T.

Jesus Christ resurrected on a Sunday – the Easter Sunday. His resurrection is most critical for the salvation of humanity and very central in our entire Christian life and practice. Therefore, instead of celebrating the Sabbath on a Saturday as the people did during the Old Testament times, Christians choose to celebrate this wonderful day of rest and worship on Sundays to honor Christ and mark the glorious day Christ signed our salvation.

Feast Day: June 19^th 

We are plunging along in our summer “bible study” with the saints.  This week we find ourselves around the year 1000, in the Benedictine monastery of St. Apollinare (near Ravenna, so, a bit North of halfway between Venice and Rome in Italy).  The Abbot, Romuald, is putting the finishing touches on his rule.  Unlike that of Augustine (used by the Dominicans), or Benedict (Benedictines), or Albert (Carmelites), his rule is found in its entirety below:

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish,
The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

If you have just come to the monastery,
and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.

And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.

Realize above all that you are in God’s presence,
and stand there with the attitude of one who stands
before the emperor.

Empty yourself completely and sit waiting,
content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing
but what his mother brings him.

And that is the whole thing!  Might I invite you to pray to the Holy Spirit and read through that again?  This is scriptural prayer at its best, and most basic, and if it is enough for Camaldolese Monks, it is probably enough for much of your or my spiritual life too!

Recognize that wherever you are right now, God is close.  Paradise is near.  Let His quiet fill your heart.

Take up a Psalm, or another line from scripture.  Let it sit in your mind.  Consider it.  Plunge its depths.  Return to it.  Repeat it slowly.  Let the Lord speak to you through it.

Now return to God.  He is with you.  He loves you.  He gazes upon you.  Look up at Him.  Love Him.  Wait on Him.  Just be with Him.  

 Fr. Dominic Rankin usually goes long on these little articles.  This week he is taking a card from St. Romuald and keeping it simple.  Let Scripture do the work.  Let God to the talking.  Let your love be carried aloft by Him.  God’s “liturgical providence” provides us these words today:

Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar, and will set it out; I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it upon a high and lofty mountain; ²³  on the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bring forth boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar; and under it will dwell all kinds of beasts; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. ²⁴ And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.”

^{Ez 17:22}

It is good to give thanks to the Lord 
to sing praises to your name, O Most High; 
² to declare your merciful love in the morning, 
and your faithfulness by night, …
¹² The righteous flourish like the palm tree, 
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 
¹³ They are planted in the house of the Lord, 
they flourish in the courts of our God. 
¹⁴ They still bring forth fruit in old age, 
they are ever full of sap and green, 

^{Psalm 92:1}

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? ³¹ It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³² yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” ³³ With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; ³⁴  he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

^{Mark 4:30}

Last month, I offered a three-part Adult Faith Formation series on St. Joseph, a fitting topic given our Holy Father declaring this to be a Year of St. Joseph.  In my third and final session, I addressed various devotions to St. Joseph.  One of the general points that I made in that presentation was how the Church connects her devotional life to the rhythm of the days of the week and the months of the year.  For example, Sunday is a day on which we as Catholics are called to have a greater devotion to the Resurrection, for it was on Sunday that Jesus rose from the dead.  The month which we just concluded, May, was given as a time to give special devotion to our Blessed Mother.

As we begin this new month of June, the Church invites us to fix our attention on the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart almost always falls during this month (June 11^th, this Friday, this year), so it is a fitting time for us to focus on the Heart of Jesus, which burns with love for us.  This devotion has been one that I have loved for many years, first having been introduced to it when the pastor of my home parish would have the congregation join in praying the Litany of the Sacred Heart on the First Friday of every month.  Throughout this month, I will be reflecting on this beautiful devotion in my bulletin articles.

As the Church celebrates today the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus (also known for it’s Latin title of Corpus Christi), there is an important connection between the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Sacrament, for the Eucharist is the most profound expression of the love of the Sacred Heart.  St. Julian Eymard makes this point in a succinct but profound way: “Let us learn to honor the Sacred Heart in the Eucharist.  Let us never separate them.”

One part of the devotion to the Sacred Heart is the notion of reparation for how often humanity has rejected the love of Christ, especially in the Most Holy Eucharist.  In His revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the Apostle to the Sacred Heart, Jesus had these unsettling words to say:

Behold this Heart which has so loved men that It spared nothing, even going so far as to exhaust and consume Itself, to prove to them Its love. And in return I receive from the greater part of men nothing but ingratitude, by the contempt, irreverence, sacrileges and coldness with which they treat Me in this Sacrament of Love.

I have never forgotten these words, and it prompted me to confess any times that I had treated the Lord in this way, especially if I had received the Eucharist unworthily.  On this Corpus Christi Sunday, I invite all of us to take these words to heart, and to ask the Lord to help us to be aware of the times when we have received Him with irreverence or coldness of heart.  In particular, let us be aware of any times we may have received Him unworthily, meaning having committed a mortal sin, then going to Holy Communion without first going to confession.  To do so is to commit the sin of sacrilege, and this is one of the greatest offenses to the love of the Heart of Jesus.  If we are aware of this, then please go to Confession, and be sure to ask the Lord for forgiveness for receiving Him unworthily.  Then, let us promise never to receive the Lord unworthily again, even if it means we refrain from receiving Holy Communion until we make it to confession again.

Father Alford     

Summer vacation is usually a beautiful opportunity to step out of one’s place or routine to see something new, visit a new place, or bond with friends or families. This is especially true in places like the United States, where the summer is a distinct climatic season with warm weather that allows for outdoor activities. Living in the United States for the past five years now, summer is gradually becoming for me what it is for Americans – a special time to do something fun. I have often given little or no attention to the question: what are your plans for the summer? But this time, I have been paying attention to it – more seriously than in previous years. And so, what are my plans for this summer? Am I keeping Christ in those plans?

When I started thinking about some possible things I can do this summer for fun, the first two that came to my mind were to take a week off for hiking somewhere in one of the states I have not been to. The second was to take a week off to visit my aunt and her family in Florida. Whichever one will be the option, the next thing I had to deal with was during that one week off, where will I be attending or celebrating daily Masses? When this question came to my mind, I wondered if I started thinking this way just because I am now a priest, or have I always thought that way? Then I recalled a few incidents in the past where I canceled or rescheduled trips because of the improbability of daily Masses. At that point, I reminded myself that this has nothing to do with my being a priest now. Instead, it is a question about personal priorities – trying to keep Christ in all I do, including my vacations.

So, I began to wonder whether daily and or weekly Masses’ possibilities are among the priorities for people when they make plans for their summer trips and vacations? Thinking about this, I remember one of the gentlemen in my Cursillo group who usually travel to Hawaii for holidays. In one of our meetings recently, something came up. He narrated how having a Catholic Church within walking distance to wherever he was going to stay during his vacations in Hawaii is a critical part of his planning. How awesome! How beautiful it is for us to keep Christ in our vacations?

While vacations are beautiful opportunities to take some time away from work, school, or normal life’s routines to do something fun, it is not a time to separate ourselves from Christ. We are Christ’s. We belong to Him in very inseparable ways. Any attempt to force that separation always, directly or indirectly, results in spiritual dryness, emotional discontentment, sadness, loneliness, misery, and fear even amid families, friends, and fortunes. This summer, as we plan our vacations and trips, let us keep Christ in them all. We can do this by making sure we attend daily Masses where and when possible and weekend Masses unfailingly during our vacations and trips. Let us keep our spiritual/prayer lives even stronger. Happy Summer!