Today's Live-Streamed Mass

Worship Aid for the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi Sunday)

 Mark your calendars: we will celebrate and thank Father Rich for serving our parish as he prepares to start his new assignment at the University of Mary Washington. The parish will host a Farewell Celebration for Father on Sunday, June 11, from 2-4 pm in the Gym.

 Thank you to everyone who has made a gift to the capital campaign. Please consider a contribution or pledge to our “Behold, I Make All Things New” campaign.

 Registration for 2023-2024 Religious Education classes is now open. Click here to sign up today.  Registration will close on August 18, and the first classes of the new year will be on Sunday, August 27, and Monday, August 28. Contact the Religious Education Office if you have questions about registering your children.

 Mass cards for the Father’s Day Novena of Masses are available in the vestibule or parish office. Our Fathers will be remembered at all Masses for nine days starting Sunday, June 18. Please return your envelopes by Friday, June 16.

 Sunday is the Feast of Corpus Christi. Please join us for a procession and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament following the 5 pm Mass.

 Next week’s second collection is for Diocesan retired priests.

 All are warmly invited to Taizé Prayer on Monday, June 19, at 8 pm. Come pray for Christian unity in our community and the world.

 Our parish office will be closed Monday, June 19th, for the federal holiday.

 Next week’s second collection is for Parish & facilities maintenance.

Today's Live-Streamed Mass

Worship Aid for the Most Holy Trinity Sunday

 Mark your calendars: we will celebrate and thank Father Rich for his service to our parish as he prepares to start his new assignment at the University of Mary Washington. The parish will host a Farewell Celebration for Father on Sunday, June 11, from 2-4 pm in the Gym.

 Thank you to everyone who has made a gift to the capital campaign. Please consider a contribution or pledge to our “Behold, I Make All Things New” campaign.

 Registration for 2023-2024 Religious Education classes is now open. Click here to sign up today.  Registration will close on August 18, and the first classes of the new year will be on Sunday, August 27, and Monday, August 28. Contact the Religious Education Office if you have questions about registering your children.

 Mass cards for the Father’s Day Novena of Masses are available in the vestibule or parish office. Our Fathers will be remembered at all Masses for nine days starting Sunday, June 18. Please return your envelopes by Friday, June 16.

 Next weekend we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. Please join us for a procession and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament following the 5 pm Mass on Sunday, June 11th.

 Next week’s second collection is for Diocesan retired priests.

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Saint Paul writes about the fruit of the Holy Spirit in his letter to the Galatians, chapter 5. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

Notice – as I have only recently – that the singular word “fruit” is used for these nine symptoms. Unlike the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which work together to bring us fully into the life of the Holy Trinity, once received, the Holy Spirit’s effects are one unity manifested in us. It would seem that you can’t have one without the others. They are nine attributes of a godly life, a life led by the Spirit, contrasted by Paul in the same chapter as “acts of the flesh.” When a person accepts Christ as Savior, they receive the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome the effects of original sin on human nature and develop the character of Christ. And the character of Christ is marked by the fruit of his Spirit.

In Catholic theology, we believe that a sacramental character, an indelible spiritual mark, is imprinted by the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. This doctrine was expressed by Saint Augustine of Hippo in his Religious Controversies (c. 400), and was dogmatically defined at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. By these, we are conformed literally to the person of Jesus Christ and brought into full communion as members of his Body in the eucharist.

Being members of Christ is sometimes misunderstood as something like being a member of a country club, an elite group of those who are chosen. Rather, it expresses that each of us are actually members: hands, feet, organs, liver? Without each, the body cannot fully function. Everything we are depends on each other and our relative health. It is the Holy Spirit that animates the Body, as a soul, because he is the Spirit of Jesus who has received everything he has from the Father.

You see where I am going with this. In the character received in sacraments, we are not individually recipients of this fruit, as if some kind of reward. We are brought together into a unity of many persons in one Christ, in the same way the Holy Trinity must be three in one. We are transformed in the person of Christ, the Son of God, as I have preached so often this season, from those who are made by God into those who are begotten by God. We are essentially changed in such a way that only God can accomplish it. And it happens through the sacraments.

Are there other ways in which God can accomplish this work of our redemption? Of course. God cannot be limited from pouring out his love, his Spirit, over all creation. And there are other ways hearts can respond to his love. We have been given the infallible path of the sacraments to follow our Shepherd, where he leads us, into the arms of the Father, with his gentle, nailed hands.

Today on Trinity Sunday, we are not here for a theology lesson, however. This is the celebration of the life to which we have been called, a life already begun, that looks forward to that day of perfect love and beauty.

The Lord be with you,

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

On this Pentecost Sunday, consider the Holy Spirit as love shared itself in the life of the Trinity with the Father and Son. We are made in God’s image, and love shared becomes the rule of our life, even in the way we approach an encounter with each other. Imagine how different the world would be if we did not stop first to decide whether the other is worthy of our love, but if we led with love. I was reminded of the Rule of Saint Benedict (53) and found this amazing Benedictine commentary from the Christ in the Desert Monastery website as our guide to letting the Holy Spirit be the creator of our bonds of friendship and love with each other:

53. All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Mt 25:35). Proper honor must be shown to all, especially to those who share our faith (Gal 6:10) and to pilgrims. Once a guest has been announced, the superior and the brothers are to meet him with all the courtesy of love... All humility should be shown in addressing a guest on arrival or departure. By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration of the body, Christ is to be adored because he is indeed welcomed in them.

Everyone—everyone—is received as Christ. Everyone receives a warm answer—on the phone, at the door, in the office. Sarcasm has no room here. Put-downs have no room here. One-upmanship has no room here. Classism has no room here. The Benedictine heart is to be a place without boundaries, a place where the truth of the oneness of all things shatters all barriers, a point where all the differences of the world meet and melt, where Jew and Gentile, slave and free, woman and man all come together as equals.

But whatever happens to the heart is the beginning of a revolution. When I let strange people and strange ideas into my heart, I am beginning to shape a new world. Hospitality of the heart could change domestic policies. Hospitality of the heart could change foreign policy. The hospitality of the heart could make my world a world of potential friends rather than a world of probable enemies.

Yet, Benedictine hospitality is more than simply thinking new thoughts or feeling new feelings about people we either thought harshly of before or, more likely, failed to think about at all. Benedictine hospitality demands that we open our lives to others as well... the extra effort, the extra time, and the extra care that stretches beyond and above the order of the day. Real hospitality for our time requires that we consider how to take the concerns of the poor, the hungry, the lonely, and the dying into our own lives.

It is not enough simply to change our minds about things or to come to feel compassion for something that had never touched us before or even to change our own way of life to let in the concerns of others. Real hospitality lies in bending some efforts to change things, to make a haven for the helpless, and to be a voice for the voiceless. Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and minds and our hearts and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step toward dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.

The Lord be with you,