Pastor’s Corner — March 27th, 2022
Honoring Catholic Healthcare Workers: March 26 Rose Mass with the Bishop
This Saturday at the 5pm Mass we welcome Bishop Boyea to our parish as he celebrates the 24th annual Rose Mass, which is a special Mass and dinner event put on by the local guild of the Catholic Medical Association to honor Catholics who work in healthcare. In the PLC after Mass, there will be dinner and a panel discussion on the topic of “Conscience Protections” with Louis Brown, JD (Christ Medicus Foundation), Donna Harrison, MD (American Association of Pro-Life OB/GYNs) and Fr. Timothy Nelson, MD (St. Mary’s Jackson, MI). For more information, please see this flyer.
I know we have a good number of parishioners who are physicians, physician assistants, nurses, and who work in other aspects of healthcare. I also know how thankless and stressful these jobs can be at times. Thus, I want all honor all of you for saying yes to serving Jesus in his healing mission. I am thankful to the Lord for you. For those who work in healthcare, perhaps you can look into joining the Catholic Medical Association whose mission is “Forming and supporting current and future physicians to live and promote the principles of the Catholic Faith in the science and practice of medicine.” I know multiple really solid Catholic physicians who are a part of this organization and they find it helpful in caring for patients and living out their discipleship in healthcare.
Record-Breaking School Auction Success!
Last Friday we had our school auction at the Detroit Athletic Club in Detroit. It was a fun sold-out event at which we celebrated and raised money for the school. We even had a sizable online auction to supplement our fundraising efforts. While the numbers aren’t final, our preliminary numbers are showing that we raised a record breaking $179,000! Most of this money will go to school grounds improvement and scholarships. Special thanks go out to our generous sponsors and donors who made all of this possible. Thanks also goes out to parishioners Frank and Karen Law and Eric and Roxanne Hatty and the Auction Committee for pulling off this record-breaking feat. Thanks be to God!
New Vicariate Decision on Bringing the Eucharist to the Homebound
At St. Pat’s one needs to go through periodic training to bring the Eucharist to our parishioners and loved ones who are homebound. At our last Vicariate meeting, all of the local priests decided that effective immediately those who are trained to bring Jesus in the Eucharist to the Homebound can only receive for the Homebound from their own parish. In other words, we have decided not to give out Communion for the Homebound for extraordinary ministers who are non-parishioners. This enables us to know who is giving out Communion to the Homebound and to avoid giving out Communion to non-parishioners whom we don’t know have been properly trained.
Reminders on Mass and Holy Communion
It’s been a while since our Advent preaching series on the Mass. For the most part I’ve seen an increase of reverence and attentiveness at Mass, which ranges from coming on time and not leaving early to sincere piety in listening to the Word of God and receiving the Eucharist reverently.
I want to offer only a few needed reminders that can help us engage with God more intentionally at Mass.
1) When receiving Holy Communion on the tongue, which the Church prefers, please kneel down and stick out your tongue in a relaxed manner to make it easier to receive Jesus.
2) When receiving Holy Communion on the hand, please make sure you use both hands with one hand laying over the other like I showed in my homily. When people try to receive with only one hand or with hands next to each other, it increases the likelihood of Jesus falling to the ground.
3) Those who come forward with a pyx should receive communion in the pyx first and then receive with both hands or on the tongue. This doesn’t need to be rushed either.
4) Remember that because of the unity of both parts of the Mass (Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist), and because hearing the Word of God is inherently ordered to preparing us to renew our covenant with Jesus in the Holy Communion, if you miss more than half of the readings, through your own fault, then you should probably refrain from receiving Holy Communion. Of course, I’m not speaking about when things are outside your control (uncooperative kids, accidents, traffic, etc). Practically speaking, this means if you come after the Psalm response for daily Mass or after the 2nd reading for the Sunday Mass, (through your own fault, remember), you’ve probably come too late to receive. The gentle invitation here is to aim at coming to Mass early so that in the event that anything out of your control happens, you’ll be closer to being on time. (For some reason I accidentally left out this teaching from my 9:30 AM Mass homily in the preaching series, but I said it in all of the other ones)
I know this probably sounds picky, but remember, the goal of all everything we do at Mass is authentic interior worship of our loving God, which involves us attentively receiving from him in Jesus everything he offers to us (including himself) and intentionally offering ourselves completely back to him with Jesus in thankful love for all he’s done for us.
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Mathias