Corpus Christi Blog

In celebration of Easter and with Pentecost drawing near, our Music Director, Matthew Henry, and I thought it was time for something new—time to change the Mass parts that are sung. Over the next couple of weeks, I strongly ask you to come to Mass a few minutes earlier so that we can all learn and practice the new melody. With this in mind, I found the following excerpt from a sermon by Saint Augustine to be inspiring:

Let us sing to the Lord a song of love

Sing to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints. We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new song. A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life. The new man, the new song, the new covenant, all belong to the one kingdom of God, and so the new man will sing a new song and will belong to the new covenant.

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Today we celebrate what is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, as our Gospel reveals the nice and comforting truth that we have a Good Shepherd who will take care of us who entrust ourselves to his care.  We need to live this as though we believe this, so in order to appreciate this truth more fully, let us look first at our 1st and 2nd readings.

Our God loves us so much that he would do what many think is unthinkable. God sent his only begotten Son to become human. The Father wanted Him to take on our finite human nature in order to allow us to share in His infinite divine nature. To what extent are you and I doing that?

I am excited to preach at all the Masses to share a very important opportunity for you.  But before I share what it is, let me relate it to our Gospel today.

This story in our Gospel is the 3rd encounter that the disciples have with the Resurrected Jesus.  After fearfully locking themselves in the upper room, they decided they needed to do something, so they went back to what they knew, their previous job and lifestyle.  Simon Peter and the other disciples went fishing.  Remember it was at the Sea of Galilee where Jesus first encountered Simon and the sons of Zebedee, and after calling them to follow him, it is there that he prophesied that they would become fishers of men.  It is telling, therefore, that this encounter of the Lord, out on the sea, is the same place of their first encounter with Jesus.

Last week I revealed some of what God had done in those who were able to attend the Discovering Christ series. Today I want to share with you some of the testimonies of those who came to the Parish Mission that was held March 14th-17th. I share these as a way to perhaps inspire us to desire and grow closer to God all the more, because when I hear what God is doing in the lives of others I am certainly inspired to want that too. Additionally, when we desire God more and take steps to grow closer to Him, such as attending a Parish Mission, God is faithful in meeting that desire in some way.

There is so much we are celebrating today.  We celebrate not only the 2nd Sunday of Easter and the fact that Christ is risen from the dead for the forgiveness of our sins, but also we celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday.  Do you know the story?   In the 1930’s, Jesus appeared to a humble nun, St. Maria Faustina in Poland.  Jesus called her to be the secretary and apostle of His mercy, and instructed her to keep a diary and record His Words of Mercy for the whole world, of which I will quote a little from. It is Jesus himself who asked that this day be the Feast of Mercy, and so Pope John Paul II announced, the Sunday after Easter is Divine Mercy Sunday. In April 2000 John Paul II canonized Sr. Faustina. Pope John Paul II committed his Papacy to spreading the message of Sr. Faustina and God’s unfathomable mercy through the Sacrament of Reconciliation Christ gave to His Church. John Paul II himself went to confession every week and spent 1 to 2 hours in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament every single day. After he was shot in 1981, the Saint asked that Sr. Faustina’s diary be re-read to him in its entirety. And God honored His servant by calling him home in the beginning hours on the vigil of the Feast of Divine Mercy on April 2nd, 2005.

In this Year of Mercy, on this Divine Mercy Sunday, I wanted to share with you how good God has been to His people of Corpus Christi through the Discovering Christ series and Lenten Parish Mission. I share it to give glory to God for outpouring His love and life so generously, as well as to open our hearts to appreciate and desire the goodness of God even more.

You might remember in December I advertised an Evangelizing series called ChristLife to help individuals come to know and form a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through His Church. ChristLife is a three-part series — Discovering Christ, Following Christ, and Sharing Christ. Each series includes seven weekly meetings and a day-long retreat.

My brothers and sisters in Christ,

Happy Easter! What a glorious time this is. Our Lord, out of love for each and every one of us, gave up his life for our sake, for our salvation, because that is what love does. Our Lord submitted himself to the laws of the underworld so that by his rising again he could destroy the laws of sin and death. Because of what the Lord has done, now death is only temporary and not eternal. Our Lord has made eternal life possible, but to attain what the Lord has made for us we must die to ourselves and live for Him. We must submit our whole selves to his care and let Him lead us, and we must choose to follow Him every day of our lives. If we do, then we will begin to experience his love more and more in our everyday lives. God has so much life and love that He wants to give us, beginning here in this life, and all the way to eternal life through growing in faith and absoluteknowledge of His love and providence for us.

Happy Easter everyone! We come now to the end of the 3 holiest days of our year- on Holy Thursday our Savior gave us His Body and Blood in the Eucharist through His ministerial priesthood and on Good Friday Jesus died upon the Cross for the forgiveness of sins. Today Christ is risen from the dead. As we journeyed toward Easter, each of us are called to experience the joy and glory that our Lord has for us; but like our readings today teach us, faith is a journey and it takes time for the understanding and joy to sink in. In order to grow in faith and fully appreciate the fact of Jesus’ Resurrection, we must place ourselves with the disciples so we can feel what they felt and experience what they experienced. Join me as we reflect on their journey.

Today is Palm Sunday, the day we celebrate Jesus the Messiah's entrance into Jerusalem to fulfill his Mission—to make salvation possible for every person. We have begun Holy Week—the week in which we celebrate Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection through which we receive our salvation.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, let us not let this week be just an ordinary week. Throughout Lent, many have given up something, sacrificed some pleasure, given of themselves in some way to others, and/or spent more time in prayer. Now that Easter is drawing near, some have the tendency to slack off a little in their Lenten resolution and practices. Similarly, there are some people who do not come to any of the Holy Week festivities, except maybe Mass on Easter Sunday. But we cannot not fully experience the joy of the resurrection for ourselves if we do not first journey with our Lord through His suffering and death. So instead of slacking a little on our Lenten practices, let us enter even more so for one more week. Let us pray even more ardently. Let us offer sacrifices and fast even more. Let us purposely unite all of our sufferings and pains with Christ's. Let us be willing to die to ourselves a little more this week so that we can more fully experience the true life in Christ through the Resurrection. It is important that we enter into this holiest of weeks with a lively faith in our hearts.

Dear Parishioners,

I was asked to write a short letter giving an update on my time in the seminary. I am in my fifth year of seminary studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. I studied for two years at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, OH before being asked to transfer to Catholic University as part of a three-year scholarship program. I am now in the third and final year of that program. I graduated last year with a Bachelor's in Philosophy, and this year I have been working towards a Licentiate in Philosophy. A Licentiate is the equivalent of a Master's degree, but it is an ecclesiastical degree that will give me the ability to teach philosophy at a Catholic university or seminary if the need arises.

The Pastoral Council at Corpus Christi consists of seven voting members (excluding clergy and staff) of the lay faithful who are active parishioners. The council helps to promote communication, understanding, and resolution among Parish ministries/organizations and parishioners. The council meets with the Pastor about once a month to help discuss, prayerfully discern, and advise me on various topics or issues regarding the parish. I would like the members to be of various ages and areas of involvement, but still have a well-rounded knowledge of the parish as a whole.

If you would like to be considered, please write a letter or send an email to pastoralcouncil@corpuschristiphx.org. It should be at least a paragraph in length and should introduce yourself, what ministries/organizations you have been involved with in the parish, and whyyou would like to serve in this capacity. Thank you.

My brothers and sisters, our readings this week reveal who God is, as well as how we should approach Him.  Let us open our hearts to learn from our readings to know and appreciate who God is in a deeper way.

In our 1st reading, as Moses was tending the sheep of his father-in-law, God reveals himself to him through a burning bush.  Moses sees a bush on fire, but notices it is not being consumed.  Understandably curious, Moses approaches the bush for a closer look.  As he approaches, he hears the voice of God calling him by name.  So first, we learn that God knows Moses by name, he has intimate knowledge of who Moses is.  Then God tells him to come no nearer but to take off his shoes for He is on holy ground.  This gives us some insight to how we should approach God.  The burning bush is extra-ordinary, no one, including Moses, has ever seen a bush on fire but not being consumed.  And so it should be approached differently, more special, than we approach anything else. God is extraordinary, and so we should not approach God with a casual attitude.  We should approach God in reverence for who He is, but to do so we must come to know who God is for ourselves.

My brothers and sisters, in our 1st reading, God enters into a Covenant with Abram. A covenant is a sacred oath saying that God will be faithful to Abram and Abram will be faithful and let God be God in his life. However, we know that God’s people didn’t uphold their vow to the Lord, but God had mercy and entered into other covenants over the centuries with Moses and David. Jesus Christ has entered into a final and ever-lasting covenant with us, and this and every Mass, indeed every Sacrament, is a renewal of God’s and our vows of faithfulness to each other. Although we so often don’t keep our vows to the Lord, God is merciful and invites us to repentance and renew this covenant once again. Mindful of this covenant renewed in this Mass, let us see how this covenant is played out in our lives.

We have entered into the great season of Lent. We can call it a desert time--a time to grow in simplicity and purification and to focus on building a deeper relationship with our Lord.  St Luke in our Gospel tells us that before Jesus begins his public ministry, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert, if you are familiar with the bible you will notice that before the important figures of salvation history can begin their work, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Jeremiah, David, and so on, there is a period of testing or trying. Much like after the schooling, medical students, for example, will go through an internship, a period of testing, before they can begin their work.  And this time is important; it has a very significant purpose.  Just as Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert, so we too are led by the Holy Spirit into our desert during this season of Lent.   May we see Lent as an important time for us. 

Even though we are still in Ordinary time, at least until Wednesday, still we are called to conversion.  Each of our readings today speak to us about a transformation that God desires for each of us, for our own good.  Let me start with our Gospel and as I describe the scene, I invite you to picture yourself as Simon.

Our Gospel from Luke comes shortly after Jesus began his public ministry in which he preached in the Synagogues around Galilee and was praised by all.  He even went to his hometown of Nazareth and proclaimed that He was the Messiah, the fulfillment of all the prophets. And although those in Nazareth threw him out, many people throughout Galilee were seeking Jesus and bringing to him all who were sick, or possessed with a Demon, and Luke says that He healed them all.