Dear POP folks,

In a few months, we will celebrate the beginning of the Year of Faith, proclaimed by our chief pastor, Pope Benedict XVI.   This special year will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and the call to the New Evangelization.  The New Evangelization, in simple terms, is the realization that we are not a Church called to send missionaries to New Guinea, as much as we are a Church called to bring the Gospel to the world.  That includes far-off lands.  It also includes your heart and mine.  The mission of the Church begins and ends with the conversion of the human heart.

The Second Vatican Council’s first great document, On the Sacred Liturgy, teaches that the aim of our liturgy, our worship, is full, conscious and active participation.  If I am a spectator at an event (even a religious one), I remain only an onlooker.  If, on the other hand, I am a participant, I am a part of the action, I do something, I give and I receive. That’s another way of saying full, conscious and active participation.  It also signifies that I am evangelized, that the Gospel is at work in my heart.  If I am simply an onlooker, my heart is like the New Guinea of the 14^th century where the Gospel had not yet been heard or accepted.   My heart is mission territory.

A few years ago, our Pastoral Council – after much discussion and consultation and with the support of the staff and clergy – declared our parish Mission Statement:

We, as a Catholic faith community,

answer God’s call to live out the Gospel

through Sacramental worship, formation,

evangelization, and serving those in need.

   After “trying that on” for some months, I was asked, as pastor, to formulate a simple Vision Statement for Prince of Peace.   Again, after consultation, I offered this as our vision:

Full, conscious and active participation

in the life of the Catholic Church.

   To share and spread something important, we must believe in it, own it, be embraced by it.   We cannot give the Gospel until we have been gotten by it!

Living the Gospel to the full involves all of the elements in our Mission Statement.  Teaching and preaching are as essential as caring for the needy.  Worship is as important as formation.   The Bible, the Sacraments, and the Church are all essential elements of our formation by Jesus in his own image and likeness.

I offer you, brothers and sisters, some difficult truths:

• Not all churches are the same or equal.
• Churches are not interchangeable in the life of faith.
• The important thing is never just believing in God.
• The Christian life must always involve the Church community, it cannot be lived in isolation.
• Faithfulness to the call of Jesus involves response to the whole Bible, not just pieces of it.
• To be whole Christians, we must sit as disciples at the feet of Jesus and at the feet of the lived experience of the Church throughout the ages:  Sacred Tradition.
• There is objective truth and not simply subjective personal interpretation of the Bible and the things of God.   The Church is the teacher and custodian of this truth.

With all this in mind, I beg you to take seriously the hearts and faith of your family this summer.  Do not easily choose to omit Mass and Communion, to take a vacation from prayer, to postpone faith until September.

If you are weak in your prayer life, lax in your faith, inconsistent in your worship, distanced from the Bible or drifted, even estranged, from the Church, come and visit.  Visit in the quiet of the cool, darkened weekday worship space or at the fullness of Sunday worship.  Call, e-mail, text, fax, write, Twitter or Facebook us and let’s talk.

And whether you are here or away, lapsed or fervent, I heartily recommend a wonderful website:   Catholicscomehome.org.   It is truly a gift.

This month of May we will celebrate Pentecost:  the outpouring the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the Church.  The Church was born from the wounded side of Jesus and the fire and wind of his own Breath.  She and her message are important:  the presence of God in history, in the world and in each of our hearts.

Father John

p.s.  …and try The Catholic Directory app for Mass times, or www.masstimes.org on the ‘net.   They will find you churches, Mass times and other interesting stuff!

Dear POP Folks,

This is a month of life and death.  In the emergence of spring in our hemisphere and the arrival of Easter in our Church calendar, we step again into the cycle of dying and rising.  This is the theme song of the planet earth and of every life that dwells upon her.

Lent and Holy Week of 2012 will be remembered in history for the great cultural war that rages within our nation.  The violent taking of human life in war has forever scarred the human race.  The violent ending of human life before birth not only wounds us all, but steals our very soul as a people.  We righteously speak and write of our outrage that the captain of an Italian cruise ship scrambled to insure his own safety before attending to the women and children under his care.  Yet we have learned to live with the unspeakable violence done to women and children in scores of antiseptic clinics, hospitals and pharmacies.  Their lives have become – and remain – devalued and expendable.

This time of Holy Week offers us a pause, a breath in the urgency of living to look with fresh eyes at the Christ-Event.   We cannot do so without being confronted by its similarities to the fate of the unborn in 2012 America…

Jesus became flesh in the womb of a woman who was unmarried, too young, afraid.

His conception itself was illegal.

In Bethlehem, it became clear that there was no room for him.

King Herod pronounced him a threat and an inconvenience.

Visiting his home town, he found himself unwanted.

In the garen, he experienced aloneness, rejection, abandonment.

Standing before Pontius Pilate, he heard his own people choose his death.

He heard himself pronounced expendable.

Time and again, he was in the way, an obstacle, a burden, an embarrassment.

And all that happened to him was legal.

The crucified Jesus Christ cried from the cross the words of David in Psalm 22:  “Why have you abandoned me?”

That same cry has come from uncountable wombs:  “Why have you abandoned me?”

As I write these words, my mind moves beyond Bible stories, images of Washington DC and Planned Parenthood clinics, and anguished young women wrestling with the challenge of choice.

I see the faces of a truly wonderful married couple here at Prince of Peace.  Their relationship is strong, their faith powerful, their lives emotionally, financially strong.  Their womb is empty.  They are ready to give birth to a family, but are unable to do so.  As a result, they give their time and their hopes to studying, learning, applying and waiting for the phone to ring.  Waiting for that unwanted child they can adopt and offer a wonderful, love-filled life.  A life that will bless and change the world.

As we, brothers and sisters, do battle with the evil of abortion, it is essential that we commit ourselves not only to saving lives, but to creating families.  We must help these mothers and fathers choose life for their unborn children…and then help these children in their journey from their birth parents to waiting adoptive parents.  Every infant that dies unborn leaves two empty spaces:  one on the planet she would have inhabited, the other in the family that would have loved her beyond all imagining.

There is a wonderful saying among those who love life:    Everyone deserves a birthday.

And we could add:  and every child deserves the open arms of an accepting parent who smiles, “Welcome home!”

Father John

Dear POP folks,

In spite of my consistent avoidance of reality television, I occasionally get hooked on an episode of one of those programs that feature rebuilt homes for in-need families or out-of-control brides or the visiting nanny who helps desperate parents.

Maybe the most intriguing reality series of all is about hoarders.  I don’t know that I’d ever heard the word before seeing it on television.  If you’re not familiar with the program, it focuses on people whose homes are filled/filling up with stuff.  There may be internet purchases or newspapers or groceries or garbage or electronics or a combination of things.   The hoarders and their families are being strangled by their own possessions.

The stuff in itself may keep them from moving easily around the house or using the kitchen or letting company in the door.  The thousands of pounds of stuff may also be harboring roaches or spiders or rats.  It may be pressing on support beams or even splintering furniture or kitchen counters.

On the program, specialists in waste disposal, construction, counseling, extermination, medicine, the veterinary sciences, and even hazardous materials join with family or friends to intervene and help the hoarder choose life instead of stuff.  Occasionally, the decision-making is spurred along by public health, law enforcement, and legal authorities.

As the process begins, the hoarder reacts with anger and sadness, and often shame.  Next s/he allows others to start the cleaning up and eventually becomes personally involved.  Finally, s/he begins to live a “new” life free of the burden of all that stuff, even becoming proud of the home again.

The great spiritual teachers talk about a similar process in our own interior life.  They summarize it as

Confrontation, Conversion and Consolation.

Please note the order here.  It cannot vary.  This is where we run into problems, because many of us respond to the call of Christ Jesus saying, “Yes!”, as long as we start with Consolation.  That, unfortunately, gets us nowhere.

The Christian walk (and especially the season of Lent) is a call to confront or be confronted by our own inner filth (see my Pastor’s Letter in the March e-newsletter).  Our response to a word from the Bible or a homily or an awareness of personal guilt is often to move into denial or the safety of, “well, everybody does it” or “I’m too old to change now.  God has to take me as I am.”

The Lord does, indeed, love us as we are.  And he wants us to be truly happy and fulfilled.  This is why he sent prophets and the Messiah, and friends and family who care about us and confront us.   We are not storage vessels for sin.  We are clay (Isaiah 64:8), the image of God (Genesis 1:27) called to be transformed, liberated, de-trashed, and glorified by the action of Jesus Christ in our hearts (see Romans 12:1 ff).

Nothing changes until I enter into the confrontation, like the arrival of the TV crews to face off with a hoarder who is sitting on his pile of sinful stuff.  St. Paul says that our task is like that of an athlete, a runner preparing for the big race (I Corinthians 9:24-27).  An athlete works to find and eliminate anything in him/herself that will stand in the way of the best performance.  Christians are called to do the same.

Simply because it’s already the middle of Lent does not mean that I can’t start now.  The process is simple.   I acknowledge one of my areas of sinfulness:   I face it, name it, own it.

Conversion comes as I give it to Jesus (in prayer, the sacrament of Penance, at Mass) and yield to him to replace the sin (not just take it away) with grace.   As I do this, I experience divine comfort.   I may slip, fall back, wander off.   But God is always here waiting.  The process doesn’t change:   Confront.  Convert.  Be comforted.

Turn away from sin and renew your life in Christ Jesus.  For this he came…

Father John

Dear POP Folks:

One of the great gifts we treasure as Catholic Christians is our awareness of the Saints in heaven.  Saints (with a capital “S”) are men and women who have led holy lives and who have taught others how to follow Jesus more closely.

When you or I hit a roadblock or a challenge in our spiritual lives, we have the writings and instruction of hundreds of spiritual Fathers and Mothers to help us on the road.  They masterfully blend the inspired Word of the Bible with their Spirit-filled experience of life to nourish, enlighten, and support us.

Most of us struggle with finding the time and opportunity to grow closer to God, especially in prayer.   St. John Vianney, the patron of parish priests, worked incredible hours…and dreamed of the life of quiet and recollection that he yearned to live in a monastery.  St. Gregory the Great bemoaned the busyness of being a Pope and how distracted bishops were by their many concerns in the day-to-day life of the Church.  St. Francis de Sales warned people about trying to live someone else’s spirituality:   a married woman with children cannot have the same prayer life as a nun;  a businessman will be unable to live the daily cycle of prayer of a monk.   We are each called to discover our unique spirituality, our relationship with God, in the state in which we live—realistically.

On Ash Wednesday each year, we hear Jesus teach us about prayer.  “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.   And your Father who sees in secret will repay you” (Matthew 6:6).

The Savior is not counseling us to avoid public prayer or community gatherings.   Rather, he is reminding us of the absolute necessity of Solitude.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his unfinished spiritual classic, On the Song of Songs, teaches us that spiritual, psychological, mental, and emotional Solitude  can be found and savored in our daily lives, even if we cannot “get away from it all” as often as we’d like.

Bernard teaches from his own experience.   He tells us that we can enter into that Solitude (and the peace it brings) in numerous ways, among them the following:

• Refuse to share in gossip with the group;
• Do not rush to join the crowd in the current trends, fashions, and attractions of the moment;
• Be willing to reject what everyone else seems to covet;
• Avoid disputes;
• Make light of losses;
• Pay no attention to injuries;
• Avoid curiosity about other people’s conduct;
• Do not be quick to judge others, but rather anxious to excuse at least their intentions, if not their actions

These may seem like acts of simply avoiding sin (gossip), practicing positive thinking (excusing people), and maybe poverty of spirit (not coveting).    In reality, they form a great Inner Room in the midst of life that enables you and me to accept the peace that Jesus is already offering to us (John 14:27).

We begin Lent by recalling that Jesus himself was led by the Holy Spirit into Solitude for 40 days before he did battle with Satan.  That same Spirit enables us to enter into an inner Solitude not just for 40 days, but for a lifetime.

I invite you to embrace Bernard’s description of Solitude and ask the Lord for the gift to live it during this Lenten season.  Choose one of the elements of Solitude to begin with on Ash Wednesday.   Take the first step into the inner room of your heart, into the grace of Solitude, into the plan of God for your peace.

Father John

Dear POP folks,

Twice each year, the bishops of the United States meet to pray and to confer in their role as our shepherds, our servant-leaders.

At this past November’s plenary session, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, gave his first “state of the Church” address to his brothers.  During his remarks, he quoted one of the great Christian writers of our generation:

      “As Father Ronald Rolheiser wonders, we may be living in a post-ecclesial era, as people seem to prefer…

a King, but not the kingdom, a shepherd with no flock, to believe without belonging, a spiritual family with God as my father,

   as long as I’m the only child, ‘spirituality’ without religion, faith without the faithful, Christ without His Church.”

The term, “post-ecclesial”, translates roughly as “after the Church”, or, more accurately, as “the time after the called-out community”.  This should not come as a surprise to any student of Western, specifically American, culture.

In the past 200 years, there has been a shift away from the Biblical emphasis on the community of faith as God’s instrument for salvation.  It has been replaced with a sort of “Bibliolotry” that enshrines the Bible as the only source of God’s Word and individual interpretation as the sole arbiter of the meaning of that Word.

In effect, more and more well-intentioned Christians have reduced the faith to the individual practice of prayer and reading the Bible.  All that is needed is the Book and a good heart.

This has “opened wide the doors” to a phenomenon that early Christians would not recognize if they came back from their graves to visit us today.  It is the stay at home Christian who prays, reads the Bible and claims to be living the Christian life.  This Lone Ranger approach to the faith is further enhanced by the availability of religious programming (some of it quite good!), televised worship, and electronic giving to assist the needy in third-world countries and following natural disasters.  There is even an abundance of uplifting Christian music on the radio, You Tube and on thousands of CDs, iPods or MP3 players.

In effect, you can order, subscribe or tune in to everything you need to make your own solo faith journey.  In the last and greatest of challenges, the individual can create a DVD of himself, supplemented with graphics, dubbings and renderings of art, music and photography, all to be played as his do-it-yourself funeral.  Apparently, it no longer takes God’s involvement to proclaim that “all things are possible” (Mark 9:23).

Interestingly, however, if the stay at home Christian actually does read the Bible  and listens to the Voice of God there, he will become increasingly more challenged and uncomfortable with doing faith on his own.

Jesus speaks:

-          Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”  The presence of Jesus is attracted to the gathering of his people.

-          Matthew 18:19:  “If two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.”  There is a unique power to praying with others.

-          Matthew 18:12-14:  “If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?  And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices…”  God wants his flock together, not scattered.   This isn’t just his hope, but it is a source of joy for God when the Lone Ranger sheep is joined again to the community.

-          Acts 2:1:  “When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.”   As the very first Christians experienced uncertainty, anxiety, and hope, they gathered together (as opposed to fleeing to save their individual skins).  Only when they had come together in community did the Holy Spirit in all his fullness come upon them.

-          Acts 2:46 :  “Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.”  The early Christians gathered for prayer in the temple every day and then adjourned to their homes for the Eucharist (the Breaking of the Bread).   This was in response to Jesus’ direct command to  “Do this in remembrance of me” (Acts 11:24, 25).

There are many other Scriptures as well as teachings from the early Fathers of the Church and the current Catechism of the Catholic Church that describe our identity as persons-in-community, not simply individuals of faith.

It bears repeating: Jesus never told his disciples to go home and remember what he said.  He called them to shared life, to community, and to “encourage one another and build one another up…”  (I Thessalonians 5:11).

We, as a Prince of Peace community, are called to gather and to support and nourish one another in our faith in Jesus Christ.  Our renewed worship space is set aside as a holy dwelling for God and a great room for us to become faith-full individuals in a faith-filled community.  We offer the sacrifice, we celebrate the sacraments, we speak the prayers, we reverence and learn from the images, and we are moved and uplifted by the sound of voice and instruments and song.  It is a place for God to dwell among his people.

If you are tempted to make the journey alone with only the Bible as your companion, pause and open the book.  Read it.  It will tell you to get to church. Your brothers and sisters are waiting for you there.

Father John

Dear POP flock,

We have, these past seven months, been challenged and gifted.

The challenges have centered around the shift from a stable weekend worship space to dual locations with 13 liturgies.  Our wonderful volunteers, liturgical ministers, staff, and clergy have worked hard to serve us and make our liturgies and liturgical spaces prayer-events.

As the worshiping community, you have been supportive and affirming.   When I celebrate Eucharist in other places, I am always struck by what a great gift we have here at Prince of Peace as we continue to grow as a more attentive, prayerful worshiping community.  Thank you!

These past few months have brought us many wonderful homilies, both from the gifted visiting priests and from our own clergy.  I am saddened that not every member of the community has been able to hear and be enriched by each of these sermons,

As we move back into a single-weekend worship space, we will return to our past practice of hearing one homilist at all weekend English Masses and one at the Spanish Masses most of the time.  Christmas and holy days will probably be occasions when individual presiders preach at their respective liturgies.

During this Advent season, we are reminded that we are a people of the Word, who became flesh (John 1:1ff) and comes to us in the Scriptures and the Sacraments.  The Bible is broken open and set out for us as a great banquet by the Church in the refreshing stream of the Sunday readings and in the homilies that flow from them. The homily is to the Scripture readings what communion is to the Eucharist:  breaking, sharing, receiving.

It’s essential for us to be reminded that we do not gather to be entertained, but to worship and be nourished by our God.  The breaking open of God’s Word in the homily is a dialogue, which means there are two ends, two sides to it.

At the AMC theatre, we do our part when we pay money for the ticket and purchase popcorn.  Large.  In a tub.  With extra butter.   And a coke.    In the liturgy, homilia happens when the preacher speaks to me, and my heart or mind takes, eats and owns at least some of what he is proclaiming.

In our churches, according to the most ancient of practices, there are two tables: the altar for the Eucharist and the ambo for the Word. From both we are nourished and built up.

In one of his homilies, the great preacher and pope, St. Gregory the Great, said this to his flock:

“…frequently the preacher’s tongue is bound fast on account of his own wickedness; while on the other hand it sometimes happens that because of the people’s sins, the word of preaching is withdrawn from those who preside over the assembly.”

     Gregory goes on to lament that his many duties and responsibilities shepherding the Church often steal time and energy away from prayer and preparation for preaching.  This is certainly true today for bishops, pastors, and clergy entrusted with the care of souls.

But there is another element to his remarks:  “the people’s sins”.  These, he says, can actually cause the quality and message of preaching to be damaged and diminished.  Translating:  you know that examination of conscience and repentance at the beginning of Mass?  As we recall those sins that have distanced us from God, we should also be aware that those same sins may be having a direct impact on the quality of the homily.  Each time a bishop or priest or deacon steps up to the mic to preach, it is essential that you and I be aware that the quality of our own lives may bear directly on the quality of the homily. There are many people who make a beeline from Mass to their cars, homes or a local restaurant, anxious to discuss and criticize the preaching.  How does this compare with the number of people who pray regularly for their homilists and their message?

The Church says that homilists absolutely must pray, study, practice, improve, and do a better job at preaching.  No question.  But a homilist who preaches to a community that is praying for him, and trying to live the virtues, is a man who really “has a shot” at being his best.

Do you pray for your homilists?  Do you open your heart to receive what God has to say?   “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16).

May the new environment for our worship reflect a renewal in our hearts and minds:  quality lives, faithfulness to prayer, and an unwavering commitment to pray for those who preach, that they will truly be “generous distributors of God’s manifold grace” (1 Peter 4:8-10).

Father John

Preacher and Hearer

Dear POP folks,

In a few days, the Community Center will again become a hub for social, formation, and educational activities.   As we dismantle the worship area, we will not be rebuilding the interior walls.   The elongated space will permanently extend from the exterior windows on each end of the building, giving us a great parish living room for our active and growing faith family.

The church now has a “front door”, as Dr. Fogarty reminded us at the many capital campaign receptions.   It opens onto the fountain in the fellowship plaza.  It will be no ordinary door, but the John Paul II entrance, framed by the great cry of his pontificate:  “Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!”

The interior entrance to the Main Church will be familiar.   The perspective of the space will not.  Stepping through the doors and peering over the expanded, raised, double-fountain baptismal pool, you will see the new arched marble wall of the sanctuary, mirroring the arches of the John Paul II entryway.   The altar, the ambo, the chair, and the crucifix will all be the familiar furnishings that have graced our parish sanctuary since 1994.

The baptistery forms a Circle of Life with the two new Penance Rooms (confessionals), the oil ambry and the reliquary.  The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the renewal, the extension of the Sacrament of Baptism;  the graces of that first great cleansing continue to flow through the ritual prayer of forgiveness.

Within the circle, flanking the doors are two arched niches set into the walls.  On the right is the ambry of the holy oils.  It contains and protects:  the Oil of Catechumens (for anointing those preparing for baptism); the Oil of the Sick (for the seriously ill seeking healing); and the Sacred Chrism (the perfumed olive oil used at baptism, confirmation, and for the ordinations of priests and bishops).  These oils are blessed by the Cardinal, gathered with the bishops and priests of the Archdiocese each year during Holy Week.  They are not only channels of grace, but also visible signs of our unity as a local Church.

On the left of the doors as you enter is a niche containing the reliquaries.  These are small containers holding pieces of bone or blood certified by the Church to have been taken from canonized saints. They remind us of those who have gone before us, and that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses:  those who have passed through the waters of baptism and gone before us into glory, and who now cheer us on and support us with their prayers (Hebrews 12:1).

This assembly of ritual places and materials speak the great message of initiation and salvation:  the waters of baptism, the oils of faith, the bodies of the saints, and the tiny chapels of forgiveness.  It is truly a Circle of Life.

As Catholic Christians, we believe that Jesus is in our midst wherever two or three gather in his Name (Matthew 18:20).   We also share the belief of our ancestors that there are places on the earth that are sacred because they are dedicated to God.  The church building can never be just an auditorium.  It is the gate of heaven and the dwelling place of the Most High God.  It is a place of rest, comfort, and remembering for us on our pilgrimage of faith.

This great building exists to praise God and to sanctify us, his people.  The Church prays in Preface II of Dedication:  Father…you give us grace upon grace to build the temple of your Spirit, creating its beauty from the holiness of our lives.

     As King David sang:  “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’” (Psalm 122:1).

Fr. John

POP’s Main Church Rededication, Nov. 22, 2011

Dear POP folks,

If we peek around the calendar this time of year, we spy a turkey or a pilgrim or even an American flag:  reminders of the coming of Thanksgiving Day.  It also is a reminder to me, as the blessed pastor of this wonderful community, to give thanks to God and to YOU for your continued support of the life and ministry of this parish.  So many of you are involved in ministries and organizations.  So many of you support the parish financially through the collection or envelopes or automatic fund transfer or checks in the mail or credit cards.  So many of you stepped up to the plate to support the building campaign for our renovated worship space.  So many of you make real the Kingdom of God as you pray daily and worship at Mass.  As God has blessed us, so we have blessed God in return.  THANK YOU!

Speaking of Thanksgiving Day, to our elementary schoolers, the stretch of time from Mother’s Day to Turkey Day feels like forever.  To our over-80 seniors, it may seem as if it passes with the speed of the roadrunner in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.  And yet, the “time of exile” from our family worship home is almost at an end.

Last May, it seemed like we would be out of our church building forever.  And yet, even in that first month worshiping in the expanded Community Center and the Mary Chapel, people were saying, “Hey, I like this!  It’s more intimate; it feels like we’re closer to one another at Mass.”   So, yes, many will be missing the old gym and the Mary Chapel when we make our pilgrimage back into the Main Church.

As we prepare for the dedication on November 22, we are excited and hopeful, dubious and fearful, grateful and maybe even humbled.  Those of us who have labored on this huge project live daily with the question, “What if they don’t like it?”

The deeper issue, however, is whether this renewed building helps us to worship our God.  Does it create a space for feeling God’s presence?   Is it welcoming to the hurting and the unchurched?  Does it form a locus with light and color and sound that is a worthy container for birthing and dying, for the forgiveness of sins and the healing of the sick, for married love and the magnificent covenant of the Eucharist?

As we reclaim this sacred space, we also will be joining with Catholics throughout the English-speaking world in returning to a more faithful, Scriptural, reverent, even mystical translation of our prayers and worship.  As we do so, you and I have the opportunity to PAY ATTENTION to the prayers and the worship that we have come to take for granted.   Our words will be more frequently drawn from the very text of the Bible, as well as from the great prayers of our fellow Christians through the ages.

Both the space and words are opportunities to pray more deeply, to experience God more effectively.   We will draw closer to the Living God!

Brothers and sisters, let’s be blunt.  In this age of doing your own thing, of creating something new, it is not difficult for the average Christian to reduce Church to a personal invention or a group democratic decision.  From there it is just a step to the world of entertainment and market share.  This happens often unconsciously because there is no skeleton, no framework upon which to build.  This trend might be compared to groups of people deciding on their own what it is to be Americans, without consulting the constitution or U.S. history.

The Bible and 2,000 years of wrestling with God’s Word and the challenges of the Christian life create a foundation and an infrastructure for our lives and worship.  This is why we celebrate Eucharist, avoid polygamy, believe in the forgiveness of sins, and rejoice in the symbol of the Cross.  We must always begin with Jesus as Founder of the Church and walk hand-in-hand with our brothers and sisters who have prayed and struggled and believed over these 20 centuries.

The symbols in our renewed worship space, the fresh translation of the words of our prayers, and the very fact that we come together to hear the Word and break the Bread have long, long, long roots, nourished by the blood of martyrs and planted in the person of Jesus Christ, the Christ of 30 A.D. and 1000 A.D. and 1750 A.D. and 2000 A.D.

If you and I approach God, even in a new space with new words and new music and new colors, expecting to be entertained or transported, we are eventually going to be disappointed.   If we come willing to look and smell and hear and taste and reach out to the God who hungers to embrace us, then Covenant will begin to happen.

As we prepare to walk back into the holy space that is ours, let us enter into the radical commitment of daily prayer.  And let us be prepared to open our hearts and lives to the God who awaits us in his temple.   He can, he will, and he does do great things in the midst of his people, in the temple of his glory, on the holy ground on which we stand.

Some months ago, I was startled by the words of Genesis 28.  They spoke to me and I pray they speak to you the dream of our renewed church building and our renewed worship:

“When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’  He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’”

Father John

Dear POP folks,

     A couple years back, the parish staff and Pastoral Council crafted a mission statement for our community.  It reads as follows:

“We, as a Catholic faith community, answer God’s call to live out the Gospel through Sacramental worship, formation, evangelization and serving those in need.”

As a foundation for the statement of our mission, those who work with leadership and staff formation advised me last year that I should offer a vision statement for the direction of the parish. Borrowing heavily from the first document of the Second Vatican Council, I offered this to the staff and to you as our vision:

“Full, conscious, and active participation in the life of the Catholic Church.” 

     At the very least, these two statements call each of us to a life that includes:

• Daily, exclusive prayer time (even if only a few minutes)
• Daily time with the Bible (even if it is only a few verses)
• Sunday (day or vigil) worship and Holy Communion
• Ministry (some form of service) as God calls
• Financial support of my parish as God calls

This is the time of year when we issue an annual report, detailing some of the activities of the parish and reporting on the financial status of Prince of Peace over the previous year.  This year, we are striving to be better stewards of our finances and our environment and in the next few weeks, we will be offering this report on-line at www.pophouston.org.  We will let you know as soon as the online report is available. And, for those of you who would like a hard copy of report, you may contact Charles Butler at (281) 469-2686 (ext. 226) and charles@pophouston.org.

Our annual report can be viewed as a compilation of facts and photos for people who are interested in our parish.  More importantly, it is a glimpse into the activity of Jesus Christ here in our midst.  When Jesus became human and offered himself to us (John 1:1-14), it was his plan that we would continue to be his presence in the world (John 14:12).  When you or I look at the faces of the members of this community at Sunday Mass or the Thanksgiving food distribution, Bible study or home visitations, we see the face of Jesus…that is, if we look with faith.

Faith also tells us that it is only because of our prayers that Jesus is alive and active here.  Those prayers are spoken to God, but they also are acted out in service/ministry and supported by our financial offerings.  We are not funding and getting active in an institution or a movement, we are allowing Jesus Christ to make himself present in the world through us.  On behalf of this faith community and the God whom we serve, I offer heartfelt thanks to everyone who has prayed, donated or worked to build the Kingdom of God here at POP.

As you read the annual report (or even if you decide to skip it), please take a few moments to review that list of five faith-actions detailed above.  Your personal conversion of heart and the ongoing life and effectiveness of Prince of Peace depend on your accepting and then sharing Jesus Christ in these five ways.  No one substitutes for any other.  These can be compared to five central ingredients to a successful marriage:

• Communication
• Listening
• Intimacy
• Actively serving the other in the home
• Sharing financial blessings for the good of the family

As the year turns yet again with the coming of September, examine your life and see if you have these five active elements of a healthy God-relationship in your daily/weekly life.  If not, then it’s time to be reconciled to God!  Turn back to him (see II Corinthians 5:18-21) with your whole heart. Pray, receive, give.

This is the reason that Prince of Peace exists.  Come to God.  Let us help.

Father John

Dear POP folks,

If you’ve been to the beach this summer, you’ve probably been reminded of the Bible; specifically the book of Genesis where Adam and Eve are running around first without clothing, then clad only in a few leaves.  There’s also a narrative in there about temptation and the first sin, which launched Original Sin.  In Genesis 3, this event is described complete with the appearance of the evil serpent, the enticing fruit, and the first fatal exercise of human freedom.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes this event for us:   “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of.  All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.  In that sin, man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good.” (nn. 397-398)

The sin of Eve, and then that of Adam, were two tragic events in human history.  They are the representation of that first immoral choice that humankind made.  In this, it was not only an episode, but an act of abandoning true freedom, human dignity, and the right relationship humans were created to have with God.

This new, twisted, dark non-relationship has been labeled Original Sin.  It is the state into which we are all born, because our birthright of divine relationship with God was thrown away by the first sinners.   We are born into spiritual and moral poverty.

St. Paul describes this:  “Through one person, sin entered the world and through sin, death and thus death came to all inasmuch as all sinned…Through one transgression, condemnation came upon all…”   (Romans 5:12, 19)

“Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination toward evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam’s sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the ‘death of the soul’.” (Catechism n. 403)

Christians are freed from this sin in baptism.  However, the consequences of Adam’s sin, its results, continue to plague the world.  You and I have been set free from slavery to sin.  In our vacillating human weakness, we sometimes accept grace and conquer it.  At other times, we yield to the darkness and freely choose to sin.

In a recent interview with Pope Benedict, a reporter asked him about the reputation the Vatican has for intrigue, ambition, and internal conflict.  Without a pause, he replied that everyone who works at the Vatican is acutely aware of the effects of Original Sin.  Every human being struggles with it and most of us have given in, whether frequently or occasionally.

We all need heroes: examples we can look up to and aspire to imitate.  If we’re serious about the moral life, about relationship with God, we are hungry for spiritual heroes as well.  Catholics justifiably enjoy reading, learning about, and retelling the lives of the great saints—heroes.  Holy heroes.  But anyone who delves deeply into the lives of the holy ones eventually finds sin, the presence of evil.   This is similar to the activities of builders and explorers.   When they dig long enough in the earth, they eventually find rock.  It’s everywhere.

The saints, and you and I, struggle with the universal presence of evil and darkness.  Whenever we expect to find a person or a place that is totally free of the taint of Original Sin, we are eventually disappointed.  Every day, people leave the Church because they have been disappointed or shocked to find fallible human beings running the show.  Hopefully, the fallible human beings are filled with the Holy Spirit and are at least attempting to follow his lead and to rely on his strength.  But there will always be the effects of Original Sin.   Even if you were to find a person or a church that was free of the taint of evil, you would still encounter darkness because you brought it in yourself.

Thanks be to God who forgives sins, and thank God for the Church that is in the business of forgiving sinners.

Unfortunately, the Church is being lead and served every day by…sinners.  Some might say the inmates are running the asylum.  Others might see that the Church is filled with sinners and they will always disappoint anyone who comes there seeking holiness.  At the same time, they will never disappoint someone seeking holiness.  In the Church dwells the Spirit of God, and he will never abandon us to the ravages of Original Sin.  His job is to bring us to final victory, to bring us home to the Father.

Father John