Bulletin: Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ 6/2/24

SAINT CHRISTOPHER CATHOLIC CHURCH

39 West 200 South, Kanab UT 84741

Office: (435) 644-3414 [Please leave a message and we will respond as quickly as possible]

stccc@kanab.net

WEBSITE: kanabcatholicchurch.org

Sacramental Minister Rev. Richard T. Sherman, Kanab, UT

SATURDAY VIGIL MASS  5:30 PM (Suspended Indefinitely)

SUNDAY MASS 9:00 AM

MASS DURING THE WEEK MONDAY – SATURDAY 8:00 AM

CONFESSIONS BY APPOINTMENT

NOTE: If you have a sacramental emergency after parish office hours, please call 435-673-2604 for assistance.

Social Hour after Sunday Mass – Coffee, juice and bagels or muffins are served up along with some fabulous conversation.

Adam and Eve are from Eden: Thursdays 5:00 PM.  June 6, 13, 20.  For this Thursday, please read Chapter 6 and maybe 7. 

Our next OPEN-DOOR SATURDAY is June 15, 2024 from 10:00 AM-Noon.  If you have friends or relatives that are interested in the Catholic faith, or are thinking of returning to the Church, please tell them about us and have them stop by. We would love to meet with them!  OPEN DOOR is scheduled every first and third Saturday of the month.

FINANCIAL REPORT:  May 26, 2024: Offertory: $1375; Donations Mail: $225; R&I:  $25

You can also donate on-line at kanabcatholicchurch.org

Development Drive (DDD) for 2024.  We’ve stalled out a bit.  Our goal this year is once again $8800.  We have $5910 pledged with $4437 paid in!!  Ten households have participated.  PLEASE JUMP IN AND JOIN THE FUN!!  Thank you all who have already given so generosity.

PRAY FOR HEALING:  Doug Ingram, Eva Montelongo, Louise Barnes, Victims of Natural Disasters, Warfare Casualties. Our Wounded Veterans.  If you have specific prayer requests, please leave us a phone message or send us an email.  We will get your intentions on the list.  We also remember all the sick and infirm at our daily Masses.

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament: Thursday from 4 to 5:00 PM.

Community Rosary:  After the Monday morning Mass

Religious Items:  While enjoying the fabulous conversation and refreshments during our social hour, take some time and browse our extensive selection of religious gifts including some amazing CLOSEOUT SPECIALS. 

YET ANOTHER Amazing Opportunity:  Have you been wondering how you can play an important part in the Church’s mission to make disciples of all nations?  How about helping to host our weekly social hour after the Sunday Mass See the sign-up sheet in the gathering space as well as the simple instructions for hosting the social hour.

Homily Reflections: Corpus Christi   Todays Gospel tell us to “Take it; this is my body.”  This is a directive; a command.  It goes with “Remember to keep Holy the Sabbath; the Third Commandment.

Why a commandment?  Why can’t it just be a gentle invitation or suggestion?  “Hey come on you guys, how ‘bout comin’ to Mass?  It’s only an hour.”  That is not the tone at all of the Scriptures or the history of the early Church.  Jesus gave this commandment at the institution of the Eucharist because He well understood the implications of resisting the power of the Roman authorities.  To really appreciate the command to ‘Take it’ one would have to have some familiarity with the reality of the life in the Roman Empire.  It was brutal.  For almost everybody.  Especially women and children.  Humanity needed a whole new reset.  It was a new age.  The Christians would need the sacramental power to ‘become one body, one spirit in Christ’ in order to survive the next ‘however many centuries’ before Jesus returned.  The Sacrament of the Eucharist provides the relational power to maintain the Trinitarian image we considered last week.  We are made in the image and likeness of the Trinity and have no real identity outside of Jesus and the community of believers.  To maintain this relational power, we need the Eucharist to fuse together the many parts of the one Body.  The Holy Spirit was then sent at Pentecost to seal within us the Gifts of God’s Wisdom, God’s Understanding, God’s Knowledge, God’s Counsel, God’s Strength which would be necessary to complete the mission for which our Church was established.  Again, as was mentioned last weekend, the mission ‘to go forth and teach the nations to observe all that the Lord had taught them.’  This was not a suggestion.

If we don’t take seriously our mission to teach the Truth, then trust and confidence within even our democratic societies will break down.  We won’t be able to trust the accounting systems, the judicial systems or even the honesty between spouses and friends.  We could become a deeply divided country and global community of nations.  Could happen.

Everything, really EVERYTHING, depends on our participation in the Eucharist that was instituted by Jesus.  Jesus, THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE.  There is no other.

As you know, we are in the process of a national revival of our Eucharistic Traditions.  Jesus of course did not change over the decades or centuries, but Catholics have changed.  Some even have become slackers.  Present company excepted, of course!  This revival came on the heels of a survey of baptized Catholics which revealed only about 30% of Catholics actually believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  As alarming and disturbing as this statistic is, it sort of follows the reality that about 30% of Catholics attend Mass with some regularity.  If Catholics actually believe in the real Presence of the Eucharist, (Body, Blood Soul and Divinity), they would take seriously the commands to be in Mass on the Sabbath and ‘to take and eat’ the Eucharist.  We are where we are.

As our religious practices loosen and unravel, our whole society is being weakened and corrupted with the newfound freedom of everyone making their own rules.

We know that BELIEVING in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is not enough.  We have to promise as the Israelites did in the reading from the Book of Exodus today, “We will do everything the Lord has told us!”  This was in Chapter 24 of Exodus, but by Chapter 32 they were fashioning the golden calf to worship as their god.  It would be another 1200 years from that point before Jesus would bring the Eucharist.  Now it’s 2000 years after the institution of the Eucharist and the command to ‘take it and eat.’  We must do better.

The big questions today are:

Are we really making the effort to ‘become One Body, One Spirit in Christ?  How has the Eucharistic revival helped us to develop deeper relationships in our communities?

Is it obvious to outsiders and onlookers that we are actually the image of a Trinity God?  Are we so linked as to be parts of the same body?  Branches of the same vine?

How are we cultivating the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to take God’s Truth to the world?

How are we avoiding the tendency to just slip into mindless slogans and meaningless rituals?  What are we really saying ‘Amen’ to?

We might be living in times no less critical than the days of the Roman Empire and the fall of Jerusalem.  This is a holy age.  This is the age of a great awakening.

Jeus is still on the throne.  We have received from Jesus all the power and authority of heaven and earth.  We have the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist. We have libraries and websites full of user-friendly instructional materials.  This time of year we frequently have a little church almost full of Catholics from all over the country and other countries.  This time we will do all that the Lord has commanded us!!s

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“Right is right if no one’s doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”  St. Augustine