Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

06-28-2020Pastor's LetterFr. Dan Connealy

Happy Sunday!

This weekend we celebrate the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time. In our Gospel this weekend, we hear the Lord Jesus reminding us, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Here we learn once more from the Lord about the need for complete abandonment into the Father's hands. Our life is only truly found in Jesus Christ. To find one's life and then to lose it means to recognize and live from the truth that everything comes from God and goes back to him. If I find my life, I must surrender it back to Jesus who is the desire of ever y human heart. If I lose my life for his sake, then it is as St. Paul says, "Christ who lives in me." This is one of the paradoxes of Christianity, that to find my life I must give it away.

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The Real Fatherhood of St. Joseph

06-21-2020Pastor's LetterFr. Dan Connealy

In the summer of 1989, on the Solemnity of Mary’s Assumption, Pope St. John Paul II gave the Church an apostolic exhortation on Mary’s husband, St. Joseph (Redemptoris Custos [RC], “The Guardian of the Redeemer”). In this exhortation, the Pope wished to shed light on Joseph’s fatherhood, highlighting that he was not an “apparent” father or a “substitute” father of Jesus. Rather, Joseph was a true father in every sense of the word because, through the mystery of the Incarnation, he “fully shares in authentic fatherhood and the mission of the father in the family” (RC, n. 21). The Pope said that Joseph is more than just a “model” of fatherhood, or that he merely “shares” in God’s Fatherhood; he also authentically gave a fatherly face to the human growth of the Incarnate Son. In fact John Paul II went so far to say that God the Father in some sense made a kind of “covenant of fatherhood” with Joseph, giving him a role more important than Abraham!

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Solemnity of Corpus Christi

06-14-2020Pastor's LetterFr. Dan Connealy

Happy Sunday!

This weekend the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, or the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord. We celebrate and revere the great reality of Christ's presence with us in the Eucharist. In the Mass when the bread and wine are consecrated they no longer have the substance of bread and wine, but are actually transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict XVI reminded us of this mystery in 2011 when he said, "changing the substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is the fruit of the gift that Christ made of himself, the gift of a Love stronger than death, divine Love which raised him from the dead. This is why the Eucharist is the food of eternal life…" Not only do we encounter God physically and tangibly in the Eucharist, we encounter Him to our benefit. God literally gives Himself to us for our own good. This is the great gift of the Eucharist, that in receiving Him we continue to receive from His bounty.

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Holy Trinity Sunday

06-07-2020Pastor's LetterFr. Dan Connealy

Happy Trinity Sunday!

With great joy the Church celebrates Trinity Sunday this weekend, the first Sunday after the Easter Season. In seminary we took a course on the Trinity which was called "God Revealed". I remember thinking at the time that they should have just called it "The Trinity". However, God Revealed is a great way to understand it. We speak of the Trinity often, we know we refer to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the novelty is that God has revealed Himself as three persons. That is, the Trinity is not something we have discovered by our own powers, but rather God sharing with us His life.

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