Sing the Mass!
As announced before the Mass, here are the links to singing the Mass parts in harmony! Below please find the video playlists for the four voice parts, from high (soprano) to low (bass). Email Tom Oram at oramt@olgcparish.net with any questions and thank you!
A Farewell Message from Anthony Feola
Dear OLGC family,
The Lord has opened a door into a new season of mission for me and my family. Through much prayerful discernment, I have accepted the position of Associate Director of Discipleship Formation for the Archdiocese of Detroit, which begins October 10.
I truly thank God for you and for my time with the OLGC family! Each of you has helped me grow more in love with Jesus and His Church in unique and beautiful ways. Thank you for your genuine faith and authentic love.
There is so much gratitude in my heart for the OLGC staff members, lay leaders, and ministry volunteers I have been honored to labor alongside over these several years through many challenges and victories alike. Your faithfulness to the mission as well as your friendship has blessed me on so many levels. I take with me the many lessons we learned together to my new assignment!
I would especially like to thank Msgr. Todd, Fr. Anthony, and Fr. Zaid for your steady, sacrificial, and prayerful leadership. What a gift you are, not only to this parish, but to me personally. It has been an honor to serve this parish with each of you.
I would like to leave you, my fellow missionaries, with something very close to my heart as I enter this new season. I invite you to embrace this wholeheartedly as well.
“The missionary must be a ‘contemplative in action.’ He finds answers to problems in the light of God’s word and in personal and community prayer…the future of mission depends to a great extent on contemplation. Unless the missionary is a contemplative, he cannot proclaim Christ in a credible way. He is a witness to the experience of God, and must be able to say with the apostles: ‘that which we have looked upon…concerning the word of life…we proclaim also to you” (1 Jn 1:1-3).’” -Pope John Paul II,Mission of the Redeemer
Brothers and sisters, may we all be contemplatives in action who prioritize the presence of Jesus in Sacred Scripture and prayer. Jesus is always the Way, the Truth, and the Life we are seeking. God is calling each of us to intimately look upon, touch, and encounter His Son without ceasing, contemplating His face continually. Let today be the day you decide to relentlessly draw near to God, committing unashamedly to do whatever it takes to enter into deeper union with Him. There is always more!
Out of this lifestyle of abiding with Jesus grows a fruitful lifestyle of holiness and mission resulting in the salvation of souls. As we step into tomorrow let us cry out in unity today this prayer by St. Thomas Aquinas:
Adoro Te devote
Jesus, for the present seen as through a mask,
Give me what I thirst for, give me what I ask:
Let me see your glory in a blaze of light,
And instead of blindness give me, Lord, my sight.
Amen.
Your brother in Christ,
Anthony Feola
Church Updates Due to Fall Bash
The Church parking lot by the garage/day chapel will be closed for the Fall Bash event setup beginning at 9am this morning and reopen midday on Saturday, October 1. The Blessed Sacrament will also be reposed starting at 3pm on Friday, September 30 until after the 8am Mass on Saturday, October 1.
Theology of The Body
Life According to the Spirit
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5).
Who is capable of true love—the God-kind of love that is free, total, faithful, and fruitful? St. John Paul II says, “Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love.” Chastity is the virtue that frees us from the selfish attitude of using others, making us capable of this love that images God. Purity of mind, heart, and body enables us to order our sexual desires according to our own dignity and the dignity of others.
This lifestyle is not realized through religious rigorism or legalism. The “purity of heart about which Christ speaks in the Sermon on the Mount is realized precisely in life “according to the Spirit” (John Paul II, TOB 50:5). In other words, it results from yielding completely to the Holy Spirit instead of the “flesh,” that unrepentant part of the human person rooted in the sinful nature and shaped by worldviews and cultural constructs that are set against God and natural law.
Ask God to fill you and those you love with the power of the Holy Spirit Who frees us from the spirit of slavery to sin into true freedom as a child of God (Romans 8:14).
In Christ,
Anthony Feola