Holy Ghost PNCC

What makes Christ’s prayer in the Gospel unique, apart from the amazing fact that He is praying for us, is that He is directly addressing His heavenly Father. Jesus is praying not only for His immediate disciples but for all of those who come to believe through their witness. That means us. We have an eternal destiny. All our desires and longings can be only be properly satisfied by God. God gives us that gift of happiness by sharing the divine life with us in eternity.

Christ has physically moved on, but He has not abandoned us. By the gift of the Spirit and by His presence in the sacraments, Christ is still with us. We are given this life to enjoy and be fruitful, and to persevere in times of trial. The great challenge Christians are called to face is to live life wisely and to the full, while remembering that we will only ever be fully alive in heaven. We are asked to build up God’s kingdom on earth, while looking forward to God’s eternal kingdom.

At the Last Supper, the night before He died, Jesus made His own last will and testament to His disciples. The great bequest that Jesus makes, His parting gift, is the gift of peace. It is the power of the Holy Spirit, which after His death and resurrection, Jesus will send from the Father to all who love Him and who keep His word.

The need for that Holy Spirit became evident very quickly in the life of the early Church. Some Jewish converts wanted the sign of their tradition, circumstances, to be demanded of the Gentile converts. All sides of the argument were presented and argued for. Judgment was made, wise judgment, but not at the expense of any side. All points were given due consideration and value. It was not about winners and losers, but about finding the right way forward.

“Peace be with you” is the Easter greeting of the risen Lord. That greeting is not merely a wish. It is a gift imparted to us. It is a responsibility. It is our vocation.

Happy Mother’s Day!

M – O – T – H – E – R

“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold;
“E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be,

Put them all together, they spell
“MOTHER,”
A word that means the world to me.

–Howard Johnson (c. 1915)

The origin of the conventional May devotion is still relatively unknown. It is certain that this form of Marian devotion began in Italy. There, in May 1784, at the church of Camillians in Ferrara for the first time May devotions were held publicly throughout the entire month. Until then it seems that May devotions were more likely a private exercise of piety, even when also partly in a public framework. Around 1739, for instance, witnesses speak of a particular form of Marian devotion in May in Grezzano near Verona. In 1747 the Archbishop of Genoa recommended the May devotion as a devotion for the home. In Rome by 1813, May devotions were held in as many as twenty churches.

From Italy, May devotions soon spread to France. One of the most prominent promoters was Rev. Pierre Doré (1733-1816) from Longwy in Lothringen. Doré learned of this form of devotion in Italy. May devotions spread in connection with the strong restoration movement after the revolution. They were understood as “the ecclesial contrast to the frivolous spring celebrations of the revolutionaries.” Indeed, from 1830 on, May devotions were celebrated everywhere. …

In Belgium the May devotions -– at least as a private devotion –- were also known since already in 1803 and in 1819 corresponding devotional books were published. … Also in Luxembourg sometime around 1840 May devotions were known. In Luxembourg May received an additional imprint through the annual Mary octave in honor of Mary as “Consolation of the Afflicted. In Switzerland in 1808, this devotion was celebrated for the first time in the College at Brigg (Sitten) … and also publicly since 1849 at the Monastery in Einsiedeln. In the Canton of Glarus the Monastery Näfels was the transmitting center of the May devotion from 1852 on. Around 1860, the Sunday “May sermons” became customary and soon became a specific characteristic of this Mary month.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus prepares His disciples for a different way of life, one where He is no longer physically present with them. He reminds them of His love for them, and teaches that they need to respond to that love and to express it, so that others may know that they are disciples of Jesus. As we hear throughout the Acts of the Apostles, the early disciples constantly had to face misunderstanding and even hostility. They faced crises – and they had to make major decisions about their identity as the Church.

Like the first disciples, we too are followers of Christ, and Christ calls us, as He called them, to be witnesses of His love for all. We are called to decide, like St. Paul and St. Peter early on in the Church’s life, what sort of community we should be: should we be restricted and closed, in order to protect ourselves and our faith; or should we be open, compassionate and welcoming? The early Church chose to reach out to others. Many people today are afraid of those who are different from them – and this fear limits them. The early disciples must have been afraid at times too, but their faith was so strong that they faced their challenges with confidence. Through prayer, through reflection and through meaningful conversation with others, we too can face our own challenges with confidence and trust in God.

The Plymouth Seniorate Council meeting was held Saturday, April 24 at 1PM at the Parish of the Holy Cross PNCC in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

St. Paul had been a senior Pharisee and the local Jews might have first thought of him as a visiting celebrity. Imagine their horror to find him preaching about Jesus and preaching to the pagans too. St. Paul makes clear that he has come not to his fellow Jews but to all who will accept Jesus. St. Paul paid for his radical ways over and over again as he was repeatedly ejected from places where he preached, was imprisoned multiple times and was finally executed.

Our second reading, from the book of the Apocalypse, describes John’s vision of the great crowd of the saved from all nations. Again this reinforces the idea of Jesus as the Savior not just of the Jews but of the whole world.

In the Gospel passage Jesus uses the metaphor of sheep and their shepherd. He promises that His sheep will be cared for; and that these sheep will not just be cared for in this life, but will have eternal life and can never be lost. We are lucky enough to be part of that great flock of sheep. Through the actions of the apostles and their successors, God’s word has been made available across the world. And over the centuries it has spread to people of all nations. We are promised the greatest gift of all: not just a level of love and mercy in this world which is beyond our deserving, but the promise of eternal life. All we are asked to do is to listen to the word of Jesus our shepherd.

“We hold our common assembly on Sunday because it is the first day of the week, the day on which God put darkness and chaos to flight and created the world, and because on that day our Savior Jesus Christ rose from the dead. For he was crucified on Friday and on Sunday he appeared to his apostles and disciples and taught them the things that we have passed on for your consideration.”

The Gospel passage contains the key that the other two readings depend on for their meaning. For here Jesus straddles two worlds, the earthly and the heavenly, as only God-made-man could do. The risen Christ calls the disciples to be fishers of people, to bring into community the great catch of believers. Seated by the fire on the beach, Christ wipes clean Peter’s shameful thrice-denying episode, which had recently taken place beside another fire, in the courtyard outside the place of Jesus’ trial.

Sometimes we are also so concerned to read this Gospel passage as a mandate for the leading role of Peter and his successors in the Church that we lose sight of the message it also has for each of us. We who recognize the Lord are either like Peter – leaping into the water, full of enthusiasm – or, like the other disciples, being carried in the boat of the Church, doing our bit to haul in the net, to evangelize and make new disciples.

We hope we will not be asked to suffer, as Peter did, but we cannot expect the way to be easy – self-sacrificial love never is. All we know is that we, like Peter, are called by Jesus: “Follow Me.”

For Poland, the homeland of our ancestors, during this time of national tragedy and mourning.

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon them.
May their soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.

Wieczne odpoczynek racz im dać Panie, a światłość wiekuista niechaj im świeci.
Niech odpoczywają w pokoju, Amen.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97, officials said.

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland’s political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Some of the people on board were relatives of those slain in the Katyn massacre. Also among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers’ strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity freedom movement. She went on to be a prominent member.

“This is a great tragedy, a great shock to us all,” former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said.

The deaths were not expected to directly affect the functioning of Polish government: Poland’s president is commander in chief of its armed forces but the position’s domestic duties are chiefly symbolic. Most top government ministers were not aboard the plane.

In Warsaw, Tusk also called an extraordinary meeting of his Cabinet and the national flag was lowered to half-staff at the presidential palace, where several thousand people gathered to lay flowers and light candles. Black ribbons appeared in some windows in the capital.

Kaczynski, 60, was the twin brother of Poland’s opposition leader, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Kaczynski’s wife, Maria, was an economist. They had a daughter, Marta, and two granddaughters.

Lech Kaczynski became president in December 2005 after defeating Tusk in that year’s presidential vote.

The nationalist conservative had said he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall. He was expected to face an uphill struggle against Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, the candidate of Tusk’s governing Civic Platform party.

The constitution says the parliament speaker announce early elections within 14 days of the president’s death. The vote must be held within another 60 days.

Poland, a nation of 38 million people, is by far the largest of the 10 formerly communist countries that have joined the European Union in recent years.

Last year, Poland was the only EU nation to avoid recession and posted economic growth of 1.7 percent.

It has become a firm U.S. ally in the region since the fall of communism — a stance that crosses party lines.

“You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away from the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure and certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. […] This is the octave day of your new birth. Today is fulfilled in you the sign of faith that was prefigured in the Old Testament by the circumcision of the flesh on the eighth day after birth. When the Lord rose from the dead, he put off the mortality of the flesh. By his resurrection he consecrated Sunday, or the Lord’s day.”