Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

This weekend our Saint Mary pilgrimage group is leaving for the Holy Land. I’ve been typing up the booklet of Scripture that we will read at each place where we go — from the Mediterranean coast and Mount Carmel to Mount Tabor and the Sea of Galilee, from Cana and Nazareth’s Basilica of Annunciation, to Jericho, to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity. The first photo to the right above is all of us last year in the cave beneath the Church of the Nativity where Jesus Christ was born.

We get to spend a few days in Jerusalem, there is a lot to see. We will spend one day in museums, and go to the town where John the Baptist was born and where Mary traveled to the house of her cousin, Elizabeth, and the Basilica of the Visitation. The next day we go to the Mount of Olives alongside the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, where we will visit the garden of Gethsemane and the rock on which Jesus prayed the night before he was crucified. Nearby Mount Zion includes the upper room of the Last Supper, as well as the Basilica of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, and the church built on the site of Caiaphas’ house where Jesus was imprisoned after his arrest, while he was awaiting overnight for his passion. The next day we go from the Pool of Bethesday (within the old city of Jerusalem to the Praetorium where Jesus was condemned to die, beginning the Way of the Cross. This is the second photo to the right. Finally, our via dolorosa ends with Mass alongside the tomb of Jesus, beneath the great dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, celebrating resurrection.

From there we head into the Judean Desert – where we will visit Qumran, Masada and the Dead Sea. The desert continues as we cross the Jordan River into Jordan where we will travel through the desert to the land of the Moabites and the Naboteans, to Petra, the great deserts of the south near the Gulf of Aquaba and Sinai, the lands where Moses and Aaron led the people of Israel from Egypt to Madaba and Mount Nebo, where Moses saw the promised land but could not enter before his death.

Needless to say, we remember you in our prayers everywhere we go, and wish that all could join us on this adventure. I’ll send more from the road next week.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

It’s Ordinary Time, I need to speak about an ordinary thing. I realize that I’m about to step out on thin ice. It is socially incorrect now to make any public criticism of anyone’s behavior – please know that this is not a public criticism. It is just a series of analytical, objective statements.

1. I regularly receive letters and emails from people demanding that I do something about the order and behavior of the congregation during Mass.

2. There is a growing trend for people to do things during Mass which seem new, two arise in particular: Talking on cell phones or texting during Mass; not taking any action when children are clearly melting down and disrupting the entire congregation.

3. There are times I am unable to concentrate on giving a homily because of these behaviors. Sometimes I have to stop and restart my thoughts several times after I have lost my train of thought.

We welcome families and small children to Mass. We also acknowledge that there must be a level of consideration for those in the church who are trying to listen, to pray, to participate in the Mass, to proclaim the Scripture or offer a homily. This is a personal responsibility that is held by each person in the sacred space of the church. And we agree that we share this responsibility.

The cry room in the back of the church serves a particular function. If there is no crying child in the church, it should be completely empty. It is a space where people must be able to go when a disruption occurs. Once it is past, people return to the congregation. It is the place that must be reserved for those who need it at particular times.

I have discovered that the cry room is being used as a play room, or even a place for overflow seating, sometimes by people who don’t want to deal with the large congregation in the church. I beg you not to do this. Some parents have told me they don’t want to go in the cry room because it is being used as a play room, and they don’t want their children to think there is a play room alternative to Mass. Bad behaviors apparently can be learned there.

All are welcome, but all must serve the purpose of why so many people share one space for Mass: we must be together to be the Body of Christ offered to the Father. But we also must be able to think and to pray, and focus.

I ask everyone to please consider the necessity of this request and honor my words. Like I said, it is not intended to single out anyone, and I say these words in all charity and pastoral sensitivity. Someone has to say them. As pastor, I guess that someone is me. Please don’t contact me and condemn me for this message. Let’s try to be considerate of one another in the way we join together and fulfill our roles in the celebration of the Mass.

There is one other item of housekeeping that now is probably a good time to mention. I apologize for as often as we have broken kneelers in the church. There seems to be a design flaw in the quality of the metal pieces on which the kneelers hinge. They break when kneelers are in the up position and people push on them with their feet; I guess they were not made to sustain such pressure – and the legs have probably the strongest muscles in the body. Often people don’t realize how strong legs can be. So I ask your patience as we continue to repair them, and your consideration to take care of them. For being relatively new, our pews have taken a beating and are often found with excessive scratches, writing, sometimes even carvings (which I really can’t understand). Please take care of these things.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Happy Winter. Finally it came. When I was a kid “They” always used to say in Kansas that you needed a good cold snap in order for all the flu bugs to die for the coming year. For years I pictured it in my mind like a swarm of gnats. May it be so. Our offices and school are closed two days this week on top of a holiday; I hope you got some rest out of all this, too. There was one parent who sent out an email for the school: “I hope everyone is enjoying the snow and the kids at home. I know I am. If only I could be off work!…” Amen. ‘Cause when the staff is off, guess who does the bulletin! I’m just focusing on all the flu we are beating come April.

You should be receiving your statements for 2013 giving this week in the mail. As I look through them and sign each one I am filled with gratitude for so many of you who really do support the life of the parish in a significant way. The percentages are small — you can see the analysis on page 9 of the bulletin today — the majority of support in every group, church or association in the world is always through the generosity of the minority, what they call the 80/20 rule. We are not really the exception. Although 46% of our families (2,231) have used envelopes at least once during the past year, those who give $20 or more each week to the first collection (20% of the parish, or 997 families) represent 88% of our total donations.

I’m going to study these results in more depth with more time, but a few quick observations are interesting. The level of giving in an otherwise, relatively consistent pattern of giving, indicates that Holy Days of Obligation are largely overlooked. One of the things I’ve been wanting to talk about is the importance of these Holy Days. Not for the collection, either — they are days that are precious to our life of faith and require of us a particular level of attention. All of them are, on a deep level, intimately tied to our identity and responsibility as Christians and days of particular thanks due to God. They are like the birthday party or anniversary of a close family member that you would not dare miss. Something like that annual family event that you might even go to great lengths with travel and expense to attend. In a post-Christian era like ours it is hard for many people to believe that something like one day (24 hours) might be holier than another. Also, the changes about which years they count as days of obligation and which years they don’t have people confused, I think. More about that later.

At any rate, I am so very grateful for your contributions. We have a lot to do here, a lot of work yet to develop and a debt to pay off, and I thank you for keeping it going. Please continue to help the parish as we move forward in our mission of grow together in holiness and witness to the love of God in our world, where it so badly needs to be known. These are uncertain times for so many — which makes your gifts more meaningful, as well as more necessary as we reach out to as many people as we can in charity and compassion.

Finally, let’s remember all our Sisters, our teachers and faculty, our school children and their parents and families this week as we celebrate the wonderful presence of Catholic Education in our parish this week. Catholic Schools Week is a time to reflect on the blessing of Catholic formation and what is for the Church, I believe, one of the most important (if not the most important) apostolate given us by God: to form and educate, nurture and protect these young people and help them find their place in God’s creation. May they go forth from us and bring about God’s new creation in peace and justice, and goodness and truth.

God bless you.

 

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

This weekend we get a glimpse of our theme, “Liturgy is Life is Mission,” in two ways. Throughout the year we hope to express in our limited way the reality that everything we are flows from the Mass, and everything we hope to accomplish brings us back to the Mass to give thanks and share in the offering of Jesus of himself to the Father, now as members of that same Body of Jesus.

At the Presentation of the Gifts this weekend, children from our Religious Education Program are bringing back to Mass what they love and what they pray for. Mostly photos of people — family, friends — whom they hope will be remembered in all our intentions at Mass this weekend.

They have completed, as families, a class on how the Mass is a powerful way of offering our intentions to God, and that the value of the Mass is infinite, great enough to include the desire of every heart in creation for all time, even if at just one Mass. Each family brought a photo of someone living or deceased, or drew a picture of someone, or included their prayer intention on a paper flower petal, which were then combined as classes where possible, so that these beautiful arrangements of prayers can be brought up the aisle with the gifts of bread and wine and made a living offering to God.

You may have heard of spiritual bouquets before — when you might give a gift to someone which says how many prayers, acts of kindness, or things you might offer up for their intention.

This is a bouquet of a different type: it is directly to God, not for our enjoyment or recognition, but a huge arrangement of photos and messages, longings that only God will see and each of which he will recognize in the Mass. This is who we are, as well, in the pews each time we gather for Christ’s Mass. We are the signs of thanksgiving and petition, and our lives are the petals of the arrangements which are presented to God, to be consecrated. Spiritual writers in the Church have said in their reflections that perhaps Jesus did this when he was on the cross: in that eternal moment he brought to mind every person who would ever live — every person — and remembered them to God, with their intentions, with their offenses, with their desire for  reconciliation. He represented us on that cross, and in that way presented us personally to the Father.

The other way we will see our lives flow out of the Mass today is at the end: we will have a sending forth prayer this weekend in which we will be sent to go out into the world and offer the invitation of Christ to someone to come home. To rediscover the real meaning of the Mass and open their hearts to God again and this community. We can be powerful instruments of the love of God when we offer that welcome, and give people a glimpse of the goodness that waits for them in Christ. I have seen it time and again. Sometimes the hurts are very old and the difficulty great for people to forgive. Sometimes it has been years. And sometimes people are just waiting for somebody to come along and ask them to come home.

The end of the Mass’ Latin text literally, after the final blessing, says, “Go, it is sent.” The word misa, “sent,” is where the word “Mass” comes from. The Mass is literally a sending, then, a time in which we receive everything, more than we can even imagine, but not for ourselves alone. What we receive must be shared. What we have learned, we must teach. What has nourished us must benefit the many who hunger for truth and peace. So it is we who are sent, and it is in this sending that we find our meaning. The mission to which we are sent is the beginning of our fulfillment.

God bless you.