Pastor's Corner

Dear Parishioners, Appropriately, the Church celebrates Trinity Sunday on the Sunday following Pentecost, or “Holy Spirit” Sunday, since the earthly work of Jesus has been completed, and He has sent the Holy Spirit as He promised. The “Community of the Trinity” is now celebrated as the relationship between God - Father and Creator, God - Son and Redeemer, and God - Spirit and Sanctifier. If God the Father’s plan is to live in community, so it should be with us as the Father’s children, as the brothers and sisters of the Son and the Spirit. We are not designed or destined to live our Christian lives alone and isolated. God did not create Adam to be alone. God created Eve to begin a community of persons with Adam. Jesus did not preach, teach, and heal alone. From the beginning of His public ministry Jesus called 12 particular men around Him, as well as inviting many other men and women to be His disciples, or student followers. So just as Jesus from the beginning formed a community around Him, so did God the Father form a community of Himself, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit from the beginning of time. Our most important celebration of our faith, the Mass, is not celebrated normally by the priest alone, or just with a server or two; the Mass can be celebrated privately by the priest, but this is the exception and not the rule. Mass is celebrated with at least several people in addition to the priest to symbolize Jesus’ coming into the world for the salvation of the many, not just the few. It is not easy to try and explain the Holy Trinity – it never has and never will be – it is one of the “Mysteries of our faith.” It’s not something for us to understand fully, but to embrace fully in faith and trust God’s wisdom.

Dear Parishioners, As I have said before numerous times in these Pastor’s Corners and in homilies: God’s plan are perfect and full of all goodness and right. So why wouldn’t the Descent of the Holy Spirit as related to us in the Acts of the Apostles be anything but perfect, good, right, as well as dramatic – great material for a wonderful scene in a movie! Yet the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, our Blessed Mother Mary, and surely the other close disciples of Jesus, both men and women, was more than just a wonderful scene in a movie. This event changed the world and officially established Jesus’ Church by a public, fully audible and fully visible event. Public, because it was in the city of Jerusalem and there were lots of Jewish people present for the celebration of the Jewish feast of Pentecost – the fiftieth day; fully audible because of the sound of the strong driving wind, and fully visible because of the numerous tongues of fire that were seen to separate into individual flames over each of the followers of Jesus who were chosen to be specific leaders of the newly-born Church that day. This Christian Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem was, as I mentioned before, first a Jewish feast commemorating the fiftieth day of some Jewish event or observance, but God chose to use this day with all its festivities and Jewish people from far and wide in attendance to “give birth” to the Church that Jesus had successfully established by His Birth, Ministry, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Therefore, it is correct and right to call the Christian Pentecost the “Birthday of the Church,” of Jesus’ Church which He established on the Rock of St. Peter, His specifically-chosen Apostle, and about which Jesus said that the “gates of Hell shall not prevail” against this Church He was establishing. Not only were the strong, driving wind and the tongues of fire miraculous, the real miracle was when all of these Jewish people from different parts of the known Jewish world heard the Galilean-born Apostles, who knew no other languages, speaking in his or her own language! That was another miracles in addition to the great manifestation of God in the coming of the Holy Spirit in wind and in fire. Come Holy Spirit! Fill us with the fire of Your Love, and in us, renew the face of the earth.

Dear Parishioners, God’s plans and timing are always perfect and correct – how could they be anything else? So when God the Father sent His Son Jesus to the earth, God planned that Jesus would have a threeyear public ministry, undergo His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and ascend back to His Father in Heaven forty days after He rose. Also, there are really no coincidences nor accidents when we believe in God and His omniscience, His overall knowledge and control, of us and our world, and the entire universe for that matter. So it doesn’t matter whether Jesus ascended to Heaven after three, five, ten, 25, or 50 years of preaching, teaching, healing, and preparing His Apostles and disciples, there was going to be a time when He had to turn over His earthly leadership to the Apostles and preside over the developing Church from His heavenly Kingdom. God’s plan was three years, and since the Church founded by Jesus, with His delegation of the Apostles – the Roman Catholic Church – is alive and well all these centuries, we see that God’s plan of a three-year earthly ministry of Jesus was perfect – because it was from God. We as the apostles and disciples of today are called to be encouraged and strengthened by the fact that, with our faith in Christ as members of His Church, we can accomplish great things with the gifts which we have been given by God as His beloved sons and daughters. The original Apostles and disciples took up the challenge as soon as Jesus ascended from the earth, yet they were no different nor better equipped than we are to be witnesses of Jesus today exactly where we are. Even though we have not witnessed in our lives, nor will we ever, what the Apostles and disciples who knew, saw, talked with, and traveled with Jesus witnessed, we have the legacy of what these early Christians, the early witnesses, have left us. Today, we are witnesses of different things that help us to continue the work of Jesus and the Apostles. We don’t see Jesus Himself or the Apostles instantaneously healing the sick, raising the dead, changing water into wine, walking on the water, or anything like that today. But we believe this because of the testimony of our brothers and sisters in faith who actually did see these things because they happened to live at the same time and in the same place as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary, and the longawaited Messiah, who came to save us and to show us the way to the Father and to bring us with Him to everlasting life. Jesus could not stay on Earth forever—He stayed as long as God His Father planned for Him – a perfect period of time. The Church is still here today – because God’s plans are perfect.

Dear Parishioners, In our lives, when we take on a role that is not rightly ours, it usually causes major problems. A minor children is not supposed to take on the role of a parent. A teacher is not supposed to take on the role of a student. An employee is not supposed to take on the role of employer. In the biblical world, sheep are not supposed to be shepherds. I think you get the picture. So, since Jesus Himself, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, repeatedly tells us in the Gospels that we are the sheep and He is the Good Shepherd, why, as believers and thus, followers, would we want to reverse those roles, especially by not listening to His voice – the voice of the Risen One who gives perfect advice as the Son of God and yet is also our Brother? Listening and embracing and heeding what we hear from Jesus are “keeping His word,” as Jesus says in the Gospel this weekend. (see more)

Dear Parishioners, As you well know, the readings at Sunday Masses have been carefully chosen and arranged for each week for our benefit and our spiritual growth. The words contained in these readings are divinely inspired, with the words of Jesus Himself in the Gospels that we hear. In the second reading this weekend from the Book of Revelation, the passage ends with God saying “Behold, I make all things new.” Naturally, as human beings and not divine beings, we interpret God’s work in our world and in our lives differently and individually, yet as members of the Church and sheep of the flock, we are called to see God’s work as always beneficial for us, yet sometimes our interpretations don’t indicate that, at least not when God’s work first takes place in our lives. Yet, my brothers and sisters, this is where our faith becomes operative and that upon which we rely and depend—to see that God makes all things new in our lives, especially when change happens. (see more)