Happy February 1^st, everyone! And Happy Catholic School’s Week.

A few things I wanted everyone to know about:

Tomorrow (February 2) the Church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation, also known as Candlemas, the day that candles are blessed. If you would like to have candles blessed you can bring them to one of our Masses tomorrow. Please note that the blessing takes place at the beginning of Mass and then there is a procession into the church. The procession/blessing will take place from:

Holy Trinity (8:10 am Mass) – church social hall

Holy Family (8 am Mass) – back of the church (near front doors)

The memorial of St. Blaise is on Friday, February 3. We will have the blessing of throats at these two Masses that day:

Holy Trinity (8:10 am)

St. Pius (11:30 am)

Finally, I wanted to share with you the reflection on the Mass that was on the bulletin cover this past week. This is the first in a series of reflections on the Mass to help us to go deeper into this mystery. God bless you! Fr. Matthew

The 2^nd Vatican Council, in paragraph 11 of its Constitution on the Church (also called Lumen gentium), called the Eucharistic sacrifice (a.k.a. the Mass) the “source and summit” of the whole Christian life. Another translation says “fount and apex”. This is pretty dramatic language to express the importance of the Sacred Liturgy in our lives as Christians.

This means that the Mass is basic to our faith: As the “source” of our whole Christian life, the Church is saying that we cannot have a Christian life without it. We can try … or pretend … but we would not actually have what we need – which is God’s grace to live as a Christian.

And the Mass is the “summit” or “apex” of the Christian life. This means that the Mass is the most important thing we can do. It is the fulfillment and perfection of our faith. The whole sentence written in Lumen gentiumhelps us to understand why: “Taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is the fount and apex of the whole Christian life, they offer the Divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with it.”

The culmination of Jesus’s life was the offering of his body, blood, soul and divinity to God the Father on the cross. The resurrection affirms that Christ’s self-offering on the cross is the “apex”: the fulfillment and summation of his whole life. As Christians, this is the “apex” of our Christian life as well – Jesus’s offering of himself to the Father and our offering ourselves to God along with him. This is exactly what happens at Mass, according to the Second Vatican Council: Those who prayerfully participate at Mass “offer the Divine Victim (Jesus) to God, and offer themselves along with it.” There’s nothing more important that we can do or achieve in our Christian life than by simply prayerfully participating in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, offering Jesus to God and ourselves along with him.

Because the Mass is the “source and summit” of our whole Christian life, I want to be focusing more and more on how we celebrate the Mass. Is our experience of the way Mass is celebrated consistent with what we believe about the Mass – that it is our offering Christ’s sacrifice to the Father and our offering ourselves to the Father along with him? If someone were to attend Mass without knowing anything about it, would they understand that something extremely sacred is happening here? The most sacred thing we have?

I would like to continue to reflect with you on the Mass and what the 2^nd Vatican Council says about its celebration, so that we continue this journey of faith together and, especially, experience together more and more, at our parishes, how the Mass is the “source and summit” of our whole Christian life.