Summer blessings bestowed upon us

As we arrive at the month of June, we Catholics have so much to be grateful to God for in our personal lives and in our lives as members of His Church. When we examine carefully and prayerfully our own lives, we discover the many blessings we have received. More often than not these blessings came to us in the moments of our daily lives and perhaps, at first, we missed them, but the blessings were ours, nonetheless.

For a moment, let us look to the blessings the Lord God is and will give to us during this month. The first blessings come to us in the many beautiful feasts we celebrate in our sacred liturgy. The first Sunday of June is the beautiful Solemnity of Corpus Christi which gives us an opportunity to adore Our Blessed Lord present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament. We do so at Holy Mass and in solemn procession; in truth, the Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives.

This June 11, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Lord God will bless our entire diocese with His gift of the sacred priesthood as four men are ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ for the love and service of God and His Church. What a gift and what a response from God to our fervent prayers for vocations! As these new priests take up their priestly ministry among us, please continue to pray for them and all of our priests, but also continue to pray that the Lord will send more men to His vineyard because we know that the “harvest is great, but the laborers are few.”

Thursday, June 24 is the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Recall that only two saints in the entire history of the Church have the days of their births and deaths celebrated universally: The Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist. The Church wants us to remember that their births and earthly lives were essential to God’s plan to redeem us through the Incarnation of His Divine Son Jesus.

The following Tuesday, June 29, we celebrate the Solemnity of SS. Peter and Paul, the first Pope and the Church’s greatest missionary and the co-founders of the Church of Rome. During our just-concluded Easter Season, we have come to know better these two great saints and hopefully, we have come to appreciate even more the Apostolic faith which we have inherited. May we know, understand and live this faith with their spirit of love and devotion!

Since the summer season also begins in June, please do not forget that even though schedules may change and vacations may be taken, your obligation to worship God faithfully every Sunday remains the same. As Saint Teresa of Calcutta said so beautifully: “God does not expect us to be successful, He expects us to be faithful.”