Next week will be our annual St. Liborius feast day. The virus prevented us from having it last year, so I am really looking forward to it’s resumption. Two years ago, I was kind of disappointed in how many people stayed away. I realize it’s the time of year when people are on vacation and attended family reunions and such. But I also suspect that we Catholics have lost our understanding of this very Catholic, sacramental practice. You may have observed that historically Catholics were very active doing things like visiting churches, making a pilgrimage to a holy place, carrying holy cards, using holy water, blessed palms, incense and frequently visiting cemeteries. Many people still do these things, but most don’t understand why. There is Grace received by these practices. They are all a form of prayer and expressions of faith that extend beyond words. You all realize that our future as an open parish is going to be in jeopardy. It’s the condition of our times and we are certainly not the only parish concerned about closing. What we do next Sunday is a very sacramental prayer addressing our specific needs as a parish. If you can at all possibly attend, please do! We will be doing the Eucharistic procession around the parish grounds. We will have transportation for any who have difficulty walking. Come and express your faith in the Lord’s good will for our parish and enjoy meal of fellowship afterwards. Thank you for your prayerful support of our parish. God bless you! Fr. Sid.

I want to address the topic of sacramentals. Sacramentals can be anything that conveys God’s grace to us. As Catholics we have a vast array of sacramental devotional items, pictures, statues, holy cards, rosaries, crucifixes, etc. etc. However, we have allowed ourselves to be drawn away from this recognition to a much narrower view of the flow of God’s grace. With the increase of literacy and the easy access to information, we have unconsciously come to view grace as only available by knowledge, particularly written words. (Here you are reading in this moment.) Reading, information, and knowledge are all good and very important. But remember, Jesus is the Word made flesh, not the flesh made word. Christ is the complete and perfect expression of God’s word, communication, information, and knowledge. The Word became a human being. It is by His humanness that He has conveyed to us the Word. We have in the Gospels the printed Word that he spoke to reveal His message. The message is essential and complete, but God is even more than printed words. All of creation in some manner reflects its Creator. So, when you are tempted to say, “I prayed, read the Bible, went to Mass, sat before the Sacrament or visited a church but did not get anything out of it”, please consider what you were expecting. Perhaps you were expecting some kind of knowledge and God had something better, greater, or mystical for you. Yours in Christ, Fr. Sid.

Today we celebrate our nation’s Independence Day, July 4th. Perhaps this is a good place to address a topic that has been placed before us as defining out national identity, racism. Is there racism? Yes, no doubt. Is it pervasive and horribly tainting every part of our society? I think not. I would first argue that every person has biases. These come from many sources, family, community, past experience, phobias and yes, sometimes ethnicity. When these biases are tagged to a particular group without individual considerations, they result in unfair treatment and judgmental thoughts and attitudes. We need to constantly monitor our own thoughts and behavior and ask ourselves, am I making a fair evaluation based on present, personal words, and behaviors of another. Do I really know what another is thinking or has in mind to do? This is why the Lord admonishes us not to judge others. I would site my personal experience as a priest. As you know I regularly wear clerics that readily identify me as a priest. I encounter people in all walks and places. I sometimes receive warm greetings and sometimes obvious rudeness. Is it because I am a Catholic priest? Probably sometimes. But it would be very wrong to assume the rudeness is because I represent Catholicism even though that may be the case. Some people are having a bad day, may be in pain physically or mentally, perhaps they have poor people skills, or they just might be that way everyday with everyone. Our nation is not perfect. No one is asserting that. There are always things to be fixed. But on a world scale we have the best that has come along so far. The best evidence is right in front of our national eyes. Hundreds of thousands are streaming across our southern border. Why? This is still the land of freedom, opportunity, equality, and justice for all. They want what you and I some carelessly take for granted. As part of your celebration of the 4th, please pray for our nation. May God heal, protect, and bless our nation! Fr. Sid.

It’s good to be back after a very busy weekend away. We attended high school class reunions, celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary, a photo shoot with all our children and grandchildren present and baptized our newest granddaughter, Monica. Very busy but very good! Carol and I would like to thank you for your many cards and well wishes on our anniversary. Please have our Totus Tuus program in your daily prayers. It starts this Sunday evening and runs through Friday afternoon. It is a great program that features leadership from college age Catholics who are zealous in their witness. The kids really connect with them and come to understand the Faith is not just an “old person” activity. To give you some idea of Totus Tuus effects, our first team leader here at St. Libory is now a priest and the pastor for most of my grandkids in Nebraska City. They love him. His talents were groomed by his work in the program. In addition to prayer, there is another way to support the program by attending the daily Masses that will take place at 11:30 am, Monday through Friday. It’s always important for the kids to see adults present at Mass. On Wednesday evening there will be a parish potluck dinner, (see bulletin for details). Please attend. It is one more way to support our youth. The Lord bless you and keep you! Fr. Sid.

This is a very special weekend for Carol and me. 50 years ago, on June 19th, we were united in Holy Matrimony. This weekend we are celebrating with our children and 19 grandchildren. The years have gone by too quickly. We now feel our years of age, body aches and memory glitches. Yes, we have had our trials, but all in all we have been very blessed indeed. Watching our children become us and our grandchildren become them is fascinating and sometimes hilarious. When any of us look back on our lives we wonder about the choices made. What might have happened if we had taken a different road, made a different choice concerning the important events of life. When we made the choice of sending our high school age children to Catholic school it was a major consideration. But at the time becoming Catholic was not part of the deliberations at all. We simply came to the conclusion that it was the best possible choice for our children given our life situation. It was a choice informed by prayer and a simple, rational decision to do what was best for our children. Looking back, we never could have imagined just how “right” the decision became in terms of the results. We became Catholic, our children became Catholic, our son-in-law became Catholic, our sons married Catholics, all of our grandchildren are baptized Catholic. I’m here writing this to you as your parish priest because of that decision. It is true, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard or has it entered the imagination of man what God has prepared…”(1Cor. 2:9) Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid.

As of this Sunday we return to the celebration of Ordinary Time. It should not be thought of as uneventful, usual, or plain, but back to the regular business of the Church which is the ordinary, regular, essential, and unchanging Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Last year was a year of detractions from our most loved summer activities and distractions provided by the political turmoil that accompanied the pandemic. I do get the sense that many had a sort of awakening to what was most important in their lives, faith, and family. This frequently happens in times of crisis whether it’s global, national, community, family or personal. It’s a good thing to properly adjust our priorities. But it is also very “human” to let those slip away when we begin to sense a return of the “ordinary.” Do not let that happen to you. At the end of life no one laments that they spent too much time focused on their faith and family. However, many a soul at the end of their life has been steeped in regret for neglecting faith and family. For us Christians, “ordinary” is having the right priorities, always, good times and bad. Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid.

This Sunday we observe Corpus Christi Sunday or as it is now known as, The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Sunday. Corpus Christi is Latin for “Body of Christ.” Historically this has been a Sunday of great celebration for Catholic parishes, St. Libory’s was no exception. Typically, it is celebrated with a Eucharistic procession. If you have attended our St. Liborius celebration, you know how it proceeds. After last year’s cancelation due to Covid, we will, God willing, celebrate St. Liborius Day with a Eucharistic procession this coming July 25th. The purpose of this Corpus Christi celebration is to inform, remind and emphasize the reality of Christ presence, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity provided for us in the consecrated bread and wine of the Holy Mass. The last several decades have witnessed a growing casualness toward this great gift. We need to frequently remind ourselves of what St. Thomas Aquinas said, “…senses will not tell us Christ is present…only faith will make Him known.” However, our faith and belief do not make Christ present. He is made present by His own Word. But it is only by faith and belief that you and I will gain the benefit of His presence. We all understand that it is rude to ignore someone in our presence. In church, we should always keep before us the awareness that Jesus is physically present in the tabernacle and physically comes to each of us personally when we partake of Holy Communion. When He is presented before our eyes with the announcement of, “The Body of Christ,” we should always respond by saying “Amen!” We should never have gum or anything else in our mouth when we receive Him. As we come and go in church, we should always acknowledge His presence in the tabernacle with an act of reverence, like genuflecting, bowing, or making the sign of the Cross. Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid.

This Sunday we celebrate The Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, three Persons. It’s not easy to wrap our mind around. It’s helpful not to think of a solitary one but rather a unity of one, like the Body of Christ, the Church is one body but many persons. No person is any less the Body of Christ than another but at the same time no one is the Body of Christ by their self. The mystery of the Holy Trinity is only understood via the mystery of love, divine love. God is Love as St. John tells us, total self-gift. The mutual gift of the persons of the Trinity is so complete that this is a total “oneness”. But here’s the kicker. By your baptism you are reborn and invited into the Trinity. That is Heaven, the Beatific Vision. Think for a moment of something very beautiful in creation or made by man. It gives you pause. You just stare and cannot take your eyes off it. That experience is a type of foreshadowing of the Beatific Vision. But this is only the visual aspect of the Trinity. Within the Trinity is only Love, no lack, no tears, no sorrow, no grief, no pain, and no imperfection. And that my friends is why you and I need contrition, repentance, and purgation. There will be no imperfection within the Trinity, in Heaven. Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid.

This Sunday we observe the day of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. This gift to the faithful far exceeds our comprehension. You see, Jesus the second person of the Trinity became human so we could become divine. If that sounds preposterous or blasphemous, hang on. When Jesus became a man, he did not give up any of his Divinity and when he ascended to heaven, he did not give up any of his humanity. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the “first fruit” of, what the saints call, your “divinization”, becoming like God. This means much more that a one-dimensional image, like a mirror. There is a real “oneness” that takes place. Pope Benedict references marriage to help understand. In the marriage covenant the man and women become “one flesh.” Neither of them lose any of the distinct differences and yet they are joined in a shared “oneness” of life. In the marriage covenant they give to each other the totality of their being in union with their relationship to God. In early years this is often visited with conflict, but as they mature in their relationship it is not unusual for the husband and wife to know each other to the extent of sharing thoughts without speaking. Unfortunately, this very real unity is most painfully noticed when separation occurs, such as death. Our “marriage” to God is directly and explicitly observed every time we receive Holy Communion. Right before the reception of Communion in Mass we hear, “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.” This is a quote from Rev. 19:9. There is one word missing. Scripture adds, “Blessed are those called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Every Communion is a renewal of your marriage to God. The Holy Spirit is your first gift toward your divinization, becoming like the Lord! Yours in Christ, Fr. Sid.

Why He Ascended into Heaven In raising Christ Jesus, God has raised us with him and made us to sit in heavenly places with him and crowned us as coheirs. Heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, says Saint Paul. That is our status. The abyss of death has been bridged, so that when we refer to the doctrine of the communion of saints, we are not reaching for a vaporous metaphor by which to bolster our melancholy spirits on this long and arduous pilgrimage here on earth. We really do believe that the abyss of death has been bridged and that we, the Church in pilgrimage, are truly one with those who have gone ahead of us, starting with our Lord himself, Saint Stephen the protomartyr, and our Lady. We are one, undivided, living, interceding fellowship who share in the priesthood of Jesus before the throne of God. The Church encourages us to pray for those who have gone ahead of us—who knows what schooling they must complete before they are able to bear up under the titanic glory of the Beatific Vision—and the Church assures us that they are praying for us. This is what we invoke in the great litany at the Easter Vigil—and, it is to be hoped, in our own prayers during the rest of the year. The Ascension of Jesus Christ has made this an actuality, not a fugitive dream or forlorn hope. And the Ascension quickens our flagging spirits as we tread along during this earthly life. I go to prepare a place for you, he said, that where I am, there you may be also. Better than the Emerald City of Oz, better than Narnia or Rivendell or Lothlorien, better than the Gardens of the Hesperides: eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. No wonder the Scripture and the liturgy are full of injunctions to us to lift up our hearts. Sursum corda. We lift them up to the Lord. He is there, awaiting us, and by his Holy Spirit, he is here accompanying us. Let us hasten, then, to Mount Zion with singing. Thomas Howard