From the Pastor's Desk | August 25, 2024

Last week, we celebrated the Solemnity of the Assumption of our Blessed Mother.  In the chanted dialogue between the priest and the assembly at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer, we read, “For today the Virgin Mother of God was assumed into heaven as the beginning and image of your Church’s coming to perfection and a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people…”  I want to emphasize the phrase coming to perfection.  In his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes that “...we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us” (2 Cor. 4:7).

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read,

Since the Ascension God’s plan has entered into its fulfillment.  We are already at “the last hour.”  “Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even  now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect.”  Christ’s kingdom already manifests its presence through the miraculous signs that attend its proclamation by the Church (CCC, 670).    

We understand the Church to be holy.  Holiness is one of the four marks of the Church - one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.  The Church is all of those.  We also understand that we hold these treasures in earthen vessels.  In other words, the Church is made up of imperfect people.  I will most certainly point to myself.  Yet, Jesus - the Son of God - entrusted the greatest gift He could give to His Church to be the sign of unity; to be the dispenser of grace; to provide the revealed sources of salvation - the Sacraments.    

Sadly, so many people have walked away from the Church for various reasons, and I don’t think it would be fruitful to name them all here.  We’ve all been affected by friends or family leaving the Church, as we all certainly know some of them.  The imperfections of the people - the imperfections of the Church’s leaders - have overshadowed the great gift that the Church is and the greatest gift that the Church holds.  In the Gospel today, many of Jesus’s disciples also walked away.  They left Him and went back to their former ways of life.  

For us today, I think God is posing the same directive that Joshua instructed the twelve tribes of Israel to answer in our first reading, “...decide today whom you will serve.”  We find ourselves in the midst of a Eucharistic Revival in the United States, and some of us might be wrestling with similar questions or feelings.  Today is a good day to decide, once again, whom shall we serve.  It is a day to imagine Jesus looking at each one of us as He did His own disciples asking, “Do you also want to leave?”  

Despite all of the Church’s imperfections, Jesus is here.  Jesus is present.  Jesus is working.  The surpassing power is of God not of us.  Let us, together, reaffirm our service to Jesus alive in His Church, alive here in the Eucharist.  

Know of my prayers for you all! 

Fr. Ryan