Fr. Rick’s Pastoral Messages 3/5/23
St. Christopher’s Has Suspended the Saturday Vigil Mass Indefinitely for the primary purpose of encouraging a closer and more genuinely Eucharistic Community. This realization is particularly important during our 3-year Eucharistic Revival as we reawaken the power of actually becoming One Body, One Spirit in Christ. Currently our tiny community does not need two Masses to accommodate our members even when considering the presence of our many visitors. Things DO change, however and perhaps we will reconsider the Vigil in the future.
Eucharistic Minister Training: Fr. Dave Bittmenn, our pastor from St. George, will be here this coming Wednesday, March 8 at 6:00 PM, to conduct a Eucharistic Minister Training. If you are interested and regularly at Mass, are in good repute in the larger community and your marriage (as applicable) is blessed in the Church, you are invited to attend. We will be needing primarily ministers of the Precious Blood and it would be preferred that you be willing to consume the remaining sacrament at the end of communion, but that is not required. Questions: Ask Fr. Rick
Senior Activity Center – Please see the flyers in the gathering space to discover the many activities offered to seniors in our area.
Share the Fun: Remember that we are a ‘Hospitality Parish’ with a major outreach to our many visitors. Please sign up to help host our Sunday morning Coffee and Muffin gathering. Sign up list is in the gathering space.
Please get Vaccinated and Boosted: A friendly reminder from the Utah Department of Health and Human Services via the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City.
THANK YOU VOLUNTEERS Last week at theKnights of Columbus meeting, as is required internally by KC Councils and Round Tables, our local Knights reported that they had completed 1900 hours of service to the parish over the past year. Thank you Knights!! This activity reminded me yet again of ALL THE MANY HOURS so many of you contribute during the year, whether it be in the parish or throughout the wider Kane County community. THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING SUCH GOOD STEWARDS OF YOUR MANY GIFTS OF TIME, TALENT AND TREASURE. As Billy Crystal would say, ‘You’re Marvelous!’
Living Faith Daily Devotional booklets are still available in the back of the church and the gathering space. Especially good for Lenten meditations.
Homily Reflection:
Today’s first reading from Genesis (12:1-2) proclaims, ‘The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”’
This also recalled to mind the well-known line from earlier in Genesis (2:24), “a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.” Footnotes to this line on the U.S. Bishops’ website states, ‘One body: lit., “one flesh.” The covenant of marriage establishes kinship bonds of the first rank between the partners.’
If we are living in Kane County Utah, we have very likely left the ‘land of our kinsfolk’. If we are baptized then we have given our lives to God and thus, theologically, we’re brought here by God. We are indeed part of a great nation and we have been made great so that we will be a blessing. That is an awesome calling and maybe one that was not at the very front of our minds when we made the decision to move to Kanab. Last week in my homily and in the bulletin notes I asked you to reflect on how you decided to move here. This is a beautiful, uncongested, incredibly quiet place, particularly suited for elders of the tribe. Recall that Abraham and Sarah were called to this new land in their ‘old age’. God was calling them to a whole new life at a time when they had been strengthened, enlightened and humbled by many decades of living.
That has to resonate with us and perhaps to most Americans who don’t tend to settle in one place for life? Why would God want us here? In this place and in this particular time? What blessings are needed by our nation and our world right now? How do are vocations to Matrimony, Holy Orders or the Sacred Single Life (all forms of marriage) play out in our ‘leaving home’? Sacraments call us to new kinship bonds. What old ways have we left behind and what has been the newness of our lives since then?
If our children and grandchildren are baptized, what awareness do they have of God’s personal call in their lives as they change locations, employment, relationship status? Do they consider themselves as part of a great nation set apart and blessed in order to bless the world?
These questions are particularly pertinent during our 3-year Eucharistic Revival as we consider the radical oneness and interdependence to which we are called as a Eucharistic People. How is our sacramental sense of community a blessing to our town and nation and world?
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“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” St. Francis of Assis