Hello All,
Updates:
1. Today Mass was celebrated for all of you, the parishioners, and for the spiritual and emotional healing of those who abuse others in any way (by Rosemary Brown)
2. Just a reminder that online giving is available at the parish website: https://ourladyvt.
3. Here is the Sign-Up sheet for this coming week. Again, if you were at Mass this current week, please do not sign up for the coming week.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ckd9YptMsyOxglrGqkTWRnzPZTuL-cDbPqoE7pm04_4/edit?usp=sharing
4. Confessions slots available for Friday.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17sKRHtb1YkY454lTp5SGhsTeBpuyjUMyYbbsM9qSsuU/edit?usp=sharing
5. Pentecost Novena!
For the novena for Pentecost, I'm thinking more or less the following: gather on facebook, have a brief teaching segment, highlighting a passage from Scripture on the Holy Spirit, or one or two of the 7 gifts, or some of the fruits, or something like that, and then proceed to the novena prayer (that I'll send out) so we can all pray that together. For timing, I'm thinking 7:30 each night, starting Friday until the following Saturday.
Reflection (Leading up to Ascension)
(http://www.usccb.org/bible/
Tomorrow is the feast of the Ascension. I thought it would be fitting to glean from the teaching of Pope St. Leo the Great on the period leading up to tomorrow's feast. St. Leo casts a glance on the many and varied graces that Jesus bestowed after his resurrection. He recalls Our Lord's appearance in the upper room and breathing on the Apostles, his ratification of St. Peter as the head of the Apostles, his meeting the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and notes that as "their eyes were opened in the breaking of bread, opened far more happily to the sight of their own glorified humanity than were the eyes of our first parents to the shame of their sin." St. Leo, so many years ago, saw that Jesus' resurrection was a recreation. Adam and Eve eyes were opened to a marred creation; the eyes of the disciples on the road to Emmaus opened to a new creation. In all, St. Leo says that Jesus confirmed "great sacramental mysteries" and revealed "great truths." He removed the fear of death and revealed the immortality of body and soul.
Jesus had one aim through the period after the resurrection, according to St. Leo. It was "to instill this one lesson into the hearts of the disciples, to set this one truth before their eyes, that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was truly born, truly suffered and truly died, should be recognized as truly risen from the dead." We can be entirely confident of this truth. Jesus Christ, our Lord, altogether man and altogether God, died and has risen. The past forty days have been all about shining the light of that truth on the Apostles, and on us.
Then St. Leo comes to the exultation of tomorrow's feast: "Indeed that blessed company had a great and inexpressible cause for joy when it saw man’s nature rising above the dignity of the whole heavenly creation, above the ranks of angels, above the exalted status of archangels. Nor would there be any limit to its upward course until humanity was admitted to a seat at the right hand of the eternal Father, to be enthroned at last in the glory of him to whose nature it was wedded in the person of the Son." The idea is that the humanity of Jesus, a real instance of our humanity, has gone into heaven. If a real man can go to heaven, then we can follow. If a real man can reign in heaven, then we can rejoice. If a real man can see God, then we too can hope for the beatific vision.
The early saints (especially St Athanasius!) had a favorite line about salvation. They said, "what is not assumed, is not redeemed." That is, what is "assumed" upwards and united to God, is not redeemed and saved. Humanity needs to be brought up into unity with God. And so humanity is saved by there being a real human, Jesus, who is united to God, because he is God. That is the point of St. Leo. In the ascension of Jesus, we see the path being blazed for ourselves, too. We see a real human going were we can now go. We see salvation being played out for the first time.
May God bless us all with that same salvation!
Peace,
Fr. Rensch