Wonderful comments are coming right and left about the new sound system. I again commend everyone to say a prayer of thanksgiving and blessing to the two anonymous families that generously donated the funds to make this happen. This past week, several on staff and from the school staff learned about how to operate the system. We prayer the fine tuning will continue over the next few weeks.
On Monday, the school children here will dress up in costumes and have a Halloween parade. It is one more sign of leaving the isolation and cancellation of so many activities behind.
Halloween is a common way of speaking about the ‘eve of All Hallows’ or the eve of the feast of All Saints. Heaven is packed (comfortably) and we hope one day to meet our family and friends who we know are with God because of their faith, love, and lives. One day, we hope to be honored by those who will follow us and pray for us, especially at Mass. I have been writing about why we go to Mass and celebrating and praying for family and friends is an important reason. So, I invite you to come celebrate All Saints’ Day and on Wednesday, All Souls’ Day.
Once again, we invite you to bring a picture of your loved ones who have passed so that all of us can look at them and join you throughout November in praying that they are resting in light eternal and peace.
On All Souls’ night we have Mass at 7:00 pm, and we especially invite any family who held a funeral here in our parish since last November 2. We invite all to come and welcome these families and to come and pray for all of us who have lost someone this past year or even many years ago. Our hope is that they are already fully with God and praying for us until we meet again.
Last week, I asked and tried to begin to answer the question: “Why go to Mass?” Can’t I just stay at home, say my prayers, and do good deeds at home and in the world?
The importance of coming each week, joining the community (the Body of Christ), offering thanks to God, and joining with Jesus in his one sacrifice that is our one ticket to heaven can only be done when we join each other physically for Mass.
Fr. John Baldovin, S.J., Ph. D, continues to explain what is stated above and in last week’s bulletin. “(The Mass) Often referred to as ‘source and summit’ language, this affirmation about the centrality of the Mass is a stunning statement about its role in Christian living…the Mass goes to the heart of the human predicament and is so central to Christian identity and mission that it is hard to imagine a church that calls itself “Catholic” without Sunday Eucharist. For Catholics the Mass is not simply a way of worshiping God, it is the privileged means of experiencing the presence of Jesus Christ and participating in his work of redeeming the world.
We say Jesus saved the world, but Baldovin asks: :Saved from what?” Is there something about our human condition that really needs saving? The Christian answer to that question is yes. Human beings (as a whole and individuals) are trapped in a sinful condition and unable to be united to God, the true source of life, by their own efforts.”
“We are more than our bodies, human beings have always had a difficult time dealing with the limits that our bodies impose: we need food, drink, rest, we get sick, we grow old and inevitably we die. Our consciousness and our instincts tell us that we are more than this—and there’s the rub--- it’s the givenness of our bodies that we cannot escape as we strive to be more. The trap of the human condition is that we never consider enough to be enough.
Wasn’t that the real sin of Adam and Eve? They had enough, all they could ever need and were in paradise, but they wanted more—the serpent tempted them that they could be like God. That was the selfish sin, and they didn’t want more God’s way, they wanted it their way. They did this by eating what was not theirs to eat.
Baldovin explains: “if eating is the form of the Fall, it is also the form of Redemption. The Eucharist represents the powerful antidote to the origin of sin. When the second century bishop Ignatius of Antioch called the Eucharist, ‘the medicine of immortality’ he wasn’t talking about some kind of magic potion but rather affirming the fact that partaking of the Eucharist is the antidote to the food taken in Eden.”
Let’s reflect on that for now and I will present Baldovin’s conclusion next week. In the meantime, please invite a friend or neighbor to join you at a weekend Mass.