Pastor's Letter -- August 8, 2021

Greetings of peace and goodwill to you and your households!

This week we have our parish summer picnic after the 11:30 a.m. Mass. Apart from the excitement of finally getting to partake in the popular Corn and Sausage, I am looking forward to the opportunity of spending more time with and getting to know some of our parishioners. We are grateful to the Lord for making it possible to hold this picnic this year. And we continue to pray for an end to this pandemic that has impacted, not just our physical, but also our mental health. Along with other dimensions, humans are social beings, and the ability to interact with other people helps foster this dimension of our being. I also wish to express my gratitude to members of our staff, especially Jenny Peterson, Roy Lawson, Darlene Pruett-Taylor, and Gail Waltman, and all our wonderful volunteers, for the work that has gone into planning toward this annual event. It is my hope that you would enjoy this opportunity to visit with your parish family again; and may this demonstration of our love for one another bear fruits in abundance. Amen. 

We congratulate the Knights of Columbus of our parish for the successful installation of their officers last Sunday. We are proud of them for the award as Star Council for the third consecutive time in three years. This recognition is a testament to the good work you are doing, and your faithful witness to our Catholic faith. As the saying goes, “the reward for hard work is more work.” We count on you for more dedicated service to our parish and to our community. 

I would like to share with you a prayer from the Divine Office for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. It is from a dialogue On Divine Providence by Saint Catherine of Siena, virgin. I’d like to invite all of us to pray it for our church and for each and every member of our parish:

My sweet Lord, look with mercy upon your people and especially upon the mystical body of your Church. Greater glory is given to your name for pardoning a multitude of your creatures than if I alone were pardoned for my great sins against your majesty. It would be no consolation for me to enjoy your life if your holy people stood in death. For I see that sin darkens the life of your bride the Church – my sin and the sins of others. 

It is a special grace I ask for, this pardon for the creatures you have made in your image and likeness. When you created man, you were moved by love to make him in your own image. Surely only love could so dignify your creatures. But I know very well that man lost the dignity you gave him; he deserved to lose it, since he had committed sin. 

Moved by love and wishing to reconcile the human race to yourself, you gave us your only-begotten Son. He became our mediator and our justice by taking on all our injustice and sin out of obedience to your will, eternal Father, just as you willed that he take on our human nature. What an immeasurably profound love! Your Son went down from the heights of his divinity to the depths of our humanity. Can anyone’s heart remain closed and hardened after this?

We image your divinity, but you image our humanity in that union of two which you have worked in a man. You have veiled the Godhead in a cloud, in the clay of our humanity. Only your love could so dignify the flesh of Adam. And so by reason of this immeasurably love I beg, with all the strength of my soul, that you freely extend your mercy to all your lowly creatures. 

With blessings from my heart,