Fr. Rick’s Pastoral Messages 6/19/22

Fr. Rick’s Pastoral Messages       June 19, 2022

Annual Special Collection for Peter’s Pence Next Sunday.

“The faithful’s offerings to the Holy Father through the Peter’s Pence Collection are destined to Church needs, to humanitarian initiatives and social promotion projects, as well as to the support of the Holy See.” USCCB  See: 

https://www.dioslc.org/eucharistic-revival

Annual World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests

The Diocese of Salt Lake City is participating this year in the Worldpriest Annual Global Rosary Relay for the Sanctification of Priests, on Friday, June 24, 2022, 4:00 – 4:30 PM at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. Please join us at St. Christopher’s (or in your own homes) for the rosary this Friday at 4PM.

Religious Freedom Week 2022: Life and Dignity for All

Religious freedom allows the Church, and all religious communities, to live out their faith in public and to serve the good of all.  Beginning June 22, the feast of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher, the USCCB invites Catholics to pray, reflect, and act to promote religious freedom.  See:

https://www.usccb.org/committees/religious-liberty/religious-freedom-week

Homily Notes and Reflections for Corpus Christi

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”   1 Cor. 11:26

Proclaiming the Lord’s death means to internalize or personalize or imitate His death, i.e., the total surrender of His will to the Father.  When we are baptized into Christ’s death and when we proclaim the death of the Lord when we eat His Body and drink His Blood, we are offering ourselves back to God.  We are dying to self.  We are promising to follow Jesus faithfully throughout our whole lives.  AMEN to the Body of Christ means AMEN to the Mass, the Mission, and the Body of Christ sitting in the pews next to us.  It means AMEN to the authority of the teaching magisterium of the Church which is guided by the Holy Spirit.  It means making a total gift of ourselves back to God, His Church and its mission.

In order to stay faithful to following Christ throughout our whole lives we need a special kind of nourishment.  We are already nourished at the ‘table of the Word’ and the Lord knew we would need something more.  We would need His very Body and Blood.  Today in the Collect, (the opening prayer) and then in the Eucharistic Prayer we are reminded that we are to be fruitful.  We are commanded to bring the next generation of disciples into the world and then to go out TO ALL NATIONS and teach and baptize.  We teach most effectively with the example of our own day-to-day lives.  This whole enterprise is indeed otherworldly.  It requires more than human ingenuity, human volition, good intentions and well-choreographed rituals.  It requires God among us and God within us.

Since April we have celebrated the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost and the Trinity… all to remind us of our true identity.  And for the renewal of our minds and hearts in order to bring to the world what it and what WE really need.  “YOU give them something to eat,” says the Lord in today’s gospel (interestingly, right after the disciples instruct Jesus to dismiss the crowd so they can go feed themselves, however and wherever they are able).

This is God’s Church and God’s world. The world needs the Church as much now as ever in human history.  God has made us in the image and likeness of the Trinity, has sealed us with His very Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge and Strength and gives us His very Body and Blood for spiritual food along the journey. Today marks the beginning of a three-year Eucharistic Revival for the Catholic Church in the United States to help us renew and rediscover the source and summit of our sacred journey as God’s holy people.  See bulletin today for renewal opportunities.