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Fr. Don's Weekly Letter ~ 28 July 2024
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
I sense that we are right on the cusp of great growth as People of God who will finally have a space to do great things. I feel like we have been sitting on our hands for so long, even before the pandemic, because you can dream a vision of what a parish might look like, but if you don’t have anywhere for that to take place it is just frustrating talk.
We should know soon the schedule for our new building, and it is time to really pray and consider where our parish is going.
I hope it is not just me, but I also sense that we have taken great strides in rediscovering how to be a community. Someone was telling last night that it seems like the “good old days” have returned, when you see so many people not running for their cars at the end of Mass but staying and really connecting with each other. The power of a donut. The Holy Spirit can use donuts to accomplish his work!
Twice we tried to start a parish council after I got here. Both times the frustration, I believe, took over because our hands were tied by the lack of space. I remember myself wondering, “Where is this going?” In this part of the world you need to provide compelling reasons why busy people should give up an hour or an hour-and-a-half each month rather than do the dozen other things that are demanding their time. I couldn’t provide it.
But a parish needs a parish council.
We tried a third time to start up just weeks before the pandemic lockdown happened. Then, during the pandemic, I formed a Vision Group, which kindly came together to talk about what a new building might look like (thanks to all of you). These things must be done together.
So, I want to give you a reflection and a brief outline of where, I think, we can finally go. Maybe we can get together and really talk about vision, now that we might be able to realize it.
It starts with this premise: in baptism, we have all received a personal call to holiness. We believe that the Holy Spirit has already given everything the Church needs to fulfill our call to the Gospel. This finds expression in several buckets of commitment which might be:
- celebration of Mass and the sacraments
- welcoming each other in Christ’s name
- Faith formation of children and adults
- service to the poor
- promotion of peace and justice
- stewardship and fiscal accountability
- stewardship of the earth, our common home
- engagement with the larger community
We place a lot of emphasis on the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but the Eucharist wasn’t a gift meant to be for itself. It is bread and wine which are intended to be consumed, so that we can become that presence of Jesus to each other and to the world.
Therefore, we must commit ourselves to supporting our faith community, walk humbly with each other, and follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It is a synodal model: listening to each other, and caring for all --those in need, our youth, our elderly, and especially those who have been marginalized, despised, or excluded. We must be intentional about being forgiving, merciful, and welcoming because these are the ways we give witness to having been conformed to Christ, something not commonly found in human beings who themselves have not been forgiven, shown mercy, and welcomed.
The Lord be with you,
Streaming Masses and Announcements for the week of 28 July, 2024
Worship Aid for 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Registration for the 2024-2025 Religious Education Program year ends this week on on July 31! Registration is online only on the parish website.
This is the last weekend to donate diapers and other baby essentials to help those in need at Catholic Charities Mother of Mercy Free Clinic. You can drop items in the church vestibule until the end of July.
If you read this early enough, tickets are still on sale for our Summer Theater Program’s “Oklahoma!” production at the Bishop Ireton High School Theater box office. The last performances will be held on Friday & Saturday, July 26 & 27, at 7 pm, and an additional matinee performance on Saturday, the 27th, at 1 pm. Don’t miss our youth in this brilliant performance!
Next weekend, August 3-4, our second collection will support the annual Mission Cooperative Plan Appeal for our diocese. Our parish mission organization is the Society of African Missions. This appeal helps our brothers and sisters who do not have access to basic pastoral services that support and grow their faith, like Mass, the sacraments, and religious education, as well as basic needs – like food, shelter, and healthcare. You can support these organizations through the second collection next weekend. If donating by check, please make your check payable to our parish and put “MCP” in the memo line. If donating online, please visit https://arlingtonmissions.org/mission/society-of-african-missions-sma/ to learn more about their ministry. If you want to donate to their efforts, click the link at the bottom of the page. Your gifts and prayers will bless families benefitting from this loving outreach in mission countries! See page 9 for information about their mission work.
Streaming Masses and Announcements for the week of 21 July, 2024
Worship Aid for 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Registration for the 2024-2025 Religious Education Program year is now open! Registration is online only on the parish website and will close on July 31.3
High Schoolers, join us at King's Dominion on Friday, July 26th! The cost is only $39. Contact Grace Rihl, Dricetor of Youth Ministry, for more information grihl@stbernpar.org.
Tickets are now on sale for our Summer Theater Program production of “Oklahoma!” July 25th-27th at Bishop Ireton High School. Please come and see what our youth have been doing this summer. Buy your ticket after Mass!
Donate diapers and other baby essentials to help those in need through Catholic Charities Mother of Mercy Free Clinic. You can drop items in the church vestibule until the end of July. Please see the bulletin for more information.
Fr. Don's Weekly Letter ~ 21 July 2024
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
1
Next weekend, our parish Summer Theater Program will present “Oklahoma!” at Bishop Ireton High School’s theater. Maybe you were here last week after Mass as the cast gave a preview of the upcoming show, as they have done for 27 years!
For me, it has been a great experience being with our youth at their rehearsals and remembering what it was like to play the part of Curly in our high school production in 1979. It is amazing how the songs and lines are still there after all these years.
But what we didn’t have in Louisburg, Kansas, is the amazing talent that is here rehearsing every night at Saint Bernadette! I am always amazed at the level of performance with our youth and can say with certainty that you will thoroughly enjoy their performance next weekend. Be sure to turn out for our young people and maybe catch sight of a rising star as they share their gifts.
2
A few weeks ago I featured our Religious Education staff, Lynn Jones and Victor Mendez and our many volunteers, for their dedication and hard work on behalf of the children and youth of the parish. This week I want to publicly thank our Director of Youth Ministry, Grace Rihl, for her caring leadership of our youth.
It is a difficult ministry because, like religious education, it requires a lot of adults -- hopefully, parents who want to be a part of their daughters’ and sons’ formation being active in the Church. One great example where this happens is with WorkCamp, a week-long intensive service retreat, that young people say really changes them. Building on Confirmation preparation, they discover the important role they have in the life of their parish and the wider community. It is only made possible by our adult shareholders and volunteers who make it happen.
Grace also directs our Confirmation Teams program, where 6th and 7th graders, preparing for Confirmation in the fall of their 8th grade year, gather as small groups under the leadership of a caring parent mentor, to do exercises to become stronger as members of the Church by doing corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It is a way of learning about who the Church is by doing what she does. Thanks, Grace, for your commitment and care.
3
As you probably know, I am a founding board member of a non-profit, Holy Land Christians Society, which works to promote the dwindling presence of Christians in Israel-Palestine, now under 1%. At the time of the formation of the state of Israel, Christians were 1/3 of the population. Our work is primarily in the area of Bethlehem supporting schools, small businesses, and different institutions to improve and sustain the livelihoods of many, but we have also awarded grants to hospitals in Gaza and Beirut after the explosion.
Anyway, the stories coming out of Bethlehem are truly heartbreaking. We see pictures of Gaza that are hard to see. However, the lockdown of Palestinian communities has caused hunger and great need throughout the region as well. The checkpoints are closed, which means those who have jobs outside of Bethlehem can’t get out, and the economy, which is primarily tourist-based, is completely gone.
I have a proposal to the Board now that would establish a network of sister parishes, twinning them with parishes in the Bethlehem area. I have proposed it to several pastors here but they want to see how it works, I think, before they will get on board. For that reason, I would like for us to try here.
We have a staff person on the ground in Beit Sahour, a suburb of Bethlehem, and the means by which we can safely transfer funds for aid with the guarantee that our charity will not fall into the wrong hands. Watch for more information about this soon. I am requesting information about a parish most in need, and we will see what we can do. The need is so great, but I think it is important that we do what we are able to do. Call me if you would like to help.
The Lord be with you,
Fr. Don's Weekly Letter ~ 14 July 2024
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
Two weeks ago, I reflected briefly on how humans developed science precisely to learn more about God and his creation—a motive that was soon replaced by the quest for science for its own sake. Science was no longer a means; it became the end.
This week we take a moment to reflect on freedom. Like science, it can become the prize rather than the process by which we fully become who God made us to be. It is inherent to our identity as beings who have a free will and are intended to exercise it for the good. But when God is removed from the process, what is good becomes whatever one desires, and our perspectives without God can become very skewed.
Especially with the rise of autocratic governments in the world today, freedom is a fragile reality.
A month ago in his monthly audience Pope Francis said that the Holy Spirit gives us the freedom to do good and to serve others, not exploit them.
“A free person, a free Christian, is the one who has the Spirit of the Lord,” Francis explained. “This is a very special freedom, quite different from what is commonly understood. It is not freedom to do what one wants but the freedom to freely do what God wants. Not freedom to do good or evil, but freedom to do good and do it freely that is, by attraction, not compulsion.”
“In other words,” he continued, it is “the freedom of children, not slaves.”
“To Nicodemus, who visits him at night, Jesus solemnly says: ‘The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit’ (Jn 3:8).”
A characteristic of the wind is that it cannot be bottled up or put in a box, he said. “It is free.”
“The Spirit creates and animates institutions, but he himself cannot be ‘institutionalized,’ ‘objectified.’ The wind blows ‘where it wills,’ so the Spirit distributes its gifts ‘as it wills,’ he said, quoting from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
Our founding fathers had this in mind in forming a nation. Benjamin Franklin said “Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”
Thomas Paine: “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan narrates to Alyosha his imagined poem that describes an encounter between a leader from the Spanish Inquisition, who denounces freedom, and Jesus. Jesus returns to earth, works miracles and gives hope to people. He is arrested and examined by the Inquisitor. He accuses Jesus of having inflicted on humankind the “burden” of free will. He mocks the freedom that Jesus has given to humanity and tells him he has misjudged his creation.
He argues that people don’t want to be free and cannot be trusted with freedom, and simply want (and need) overlords and rulers. He argues that freedom is too dangerous, unreliable and uncertain. He believes that people should be controlled by fear and led by harsh rulers. The Inquisitor shows that he understands the turbulence of freedom but does not personally know God’s grace and our capacity for moral and spiritual greatness.
The Christian faith and the American experiment assert that freedom is our inheritance as the children of God. Ronald Reagan in his “Tear down this wall” speech concludes, “The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront.”
We celebrate that fragile freedom with which our culture in the United States is blessed, not a thing to be taken for granted. It is not something we have made, but we must protect the context and the environment where we can flourish as free persons.
The Lord be with you,
Streaming Masses and Announcements for the week of 14 July, 2024
Worship Aid for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Registration for the 2024-2025 Religious Education Program year is now open! Registration is online only on the parish website and will close on July 31.3
High Schoolers, join us at King's Dominion on Friday, July 26th! The cost is only $39. Contact Grace Rihl, Dricetor of Youth Ministry, for more information grihl@stbernpar.org.
Join us for Taizé Prayer on Monday, July 15, at 8 pm. This is a special opportunity to come together and pray for unity in our community and the world.
Tickets are now on sale for our Summer Theater Program production of “Oklahoma!” July 25th-27th at Bishop Ireton High School. Please come and see what our youth have been doing this summer. Buy your ticket after Mass this weekend!
Donate diapers and other baby essentials to help those in need through Catholic Charities Mother of Mercy Free Clinic. You can drop items in the church vestibule until the end of July. Please see the bulletin for more information.
Streaming Masses and Announcements for the week of 7 July, 2024
Worship Aid for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Registration for the 2024-2025 Religious Education Program year is now open! Registration is online only on the parish website and will close on July 31.3
Our Parish Offices will be closed Thursday and Friday, July 4th and 5th in observance of the Fourth of July Holiday. Please note only the 9am one Mass will be celebrated on the 4th.
Several Employment opportunities in our parish school are advertised in this weekend's bulletin.
All rising 9th-12th graders are invited to join us for a St. Bernadette Escape Room THIS Tuesday, July 9th, from 7-8:30 pm in the Youth Room.
High Schoolers, join us at King's Dominion on Friday, July 26th! The cost is only $39. See the bulletin for details on how to register.
Rising 6th-8th graders come to our Middle School Summer Drop-ins! We’ll have games, ice cream, and fun in the gym beginning this Wednesday, July 10th, from 6:45-8 pm. Check the bulletin for other youth events.
Join us for Taizé Prayer on Monday, July 15, at 8 pm. This is a special opportunity to come together and pray for unity in our community and the world.
Next week, tickets go on sale for our Summer Theater Program production of “Oklahoma!” July 25th-27th at Bishop Ireton High School. Please come and see what our youth have been doing this summer.
Fr. Don's Weekly Letter ~ 7 July 2024
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
I’m using summer break to catch up on some articles that I think are worth bringing back to the present day and not forgetting. In the face of so much division in the world and in our Church as well, I offer this for your consideration. Pope Francis has urged Christians to “speak the truth and to do so with charity” amid polarization and divisions within the Church:
In his message for the World Day of Social Communications on Jan. 24, Pope Francis said that everyone has the responsibility to “communicate truth with charity” in a time “marked by polarizations and contrasts—to which, unfortunately, not even the Church community is immune.”
“We should not be afraid of proclaiming the truth, even if at times it might be uncomfortable, but of doing so without charity, without heart,” he said.
“Because ‘the Christian’s program’ — as Benedict XVI wrote — ‘is “a heart which sees,”’” he added, quoting Benedict’s first encyclical Deus caritas est.
Pope Francis underlined that this call to speak the truth from the heart “radically challenges the times in which we are living,” in which the truth can be exploited with disinformation. He said that “it is necessary to purify one’s heart” to see clearly and bear good fruit in communication.
“Christians, in particular, are continually urged to keep our tongue from evil (cf. Ps 34:13), because as Scripture teaches us, with the same tongue, we can bless the Lord and curse men and women who were made in the likeness of God (cf. Jas 3:9),” he wrote.
“No evil word should come from our mouths, but rather ‘only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear’ (Eph 4:29).”
The pope’s message was released on the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers and journalists.
“A brilliant intellectual, fruitful writer, and profound theologian, Francis de Sales was bishop of Geneva at the beginning of the 17th century during difficult years marked by heated disputes with Calvinists,” he said. “His meek attitude, humanity, and willingness to dialogue patiently with everyone, especially with those who disagreed with him, made him an extraordinary witness of God’s merciful love.”
Pope Francis recalled that 2023 would mark the centenary of Pope Pius XI’s proclamation of St. Francis de Sales as the patron of Catholic journalists in the encyclical Rerum omnium perturbation.
He noted how the saint’s words “heart speaks to heart” have inspired many generations of Christians, including St. John Henry Newman, who chose it as his motto, “Cor ad cor loquitur.”
St. Francis de Sales understood communication as “a reflection of the soul” rather than as “a marketing strategy,” the pope said.
“One of his convictions was, ‘In order to speak well, it is enough to love well,’” he said. “For St. Francis de Sales, precisely ‘in the heart and through the heart, there comes about a subtle, intense and unifying process in which we come to know God.’”
Pope Francis said he dreams of “an ecclesial communication that knows how to let itself be guided by the Holy Spirit … that knows how to find new ways and means for the wonderful proclamation it is called to deliver in the third millennium.”
Speaking of the Church’s ongoing “synodal process,” the pope said that there is a pressing need in the Church for “listening without prejudice” and for communication that is “balm on wounds and that shines light on the journey of our brothers and sisters.”
The pope added that with the war in Ukraine it is urgent to reject hostile forms of communication in favor of “paths that allow for dialogue and reconciliation in places where hatred and enmity rage”.
The Lord be with you,
Streaming Masses and Announcements for the week of 30 June, 2024
Worship Aid for 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Girl Scout Troop 645 is collecting donations to assemble first aid kits, which will be distributed to ECHO for those in need. Items may be given in the vestibule of the church after Mass June 22-23 and 29-30: Band-aids of various sizes, antiseptic wipes/towelettes, small hand sanitizer bottles, gloves, ace bandages, scissors, medical tape, gauze pads, tweezers, ice pack/hot pack, small travel tissues, freezer bags. The following items may be dropped off at the office: Neosporin/broad spectrum antibiotic cream, hydrocortisone cream, and Benadryl.
Registration for the 2024-2025 Religious Education Program year is now open! Registration is online only on the parish website and will close on July 31.3
Our Parish Offices will be closed Thursday and Friday, July 4th and 5th in observance of the Fourth of July Holiday. Please note only the 9am one Mass will be celebrated on the 4th.
Several Employment opportunities in our parish school are advertised in this weekend's bulletin. Details on page 9.
Fr. Don's Weekly Letter ~ 30 June 2024
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
This week an article came out in Zenit News/Vatican City that caught my attention, “Pope Francis talks about big-bang and black holes: here’s what he says.” As the Pope met with comedians the week before, this week apparently he met with scientists who were attending a conference at Castel Gandolfo titled “Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Space-Time Singularities.”
He spoke about Monsignor George Lemaître, the Belgian priest and cosmologist who first proposed the idea of the big bang, as well as co-author of the well-known Hubble-Lemaître law, the observation that galaxies are moving away from Earth at speeds proportional to their distance from Earth. The farther away they are, the faster they go. The universe is expanding by about 7% every billion years.
The Pope explains: “The Church seeks to follow and encourage these discussions, because they stimulate the interest and thinking of men and women in today’s world. The origin of the universe, its ultimate evolution and the deep structure of space and time, raise a number of serious questions about the meaning of life. They also open before our eyes an immense scenario in which it is easy to lose our bearings.
Lemaître’s journey of faith led him to the awareness that “creation” and “the big bang” are two different realities, and that the God in whom he believed can never be reduced to an object neatly catalogued by human reason. Rather, he is always a Deus absconditus, a “hidden God”, shrouded in mystery and never fully transparent to human reason.”
Today’s world mainly considers faith and science to be an either/or proposition. If science can’t explain God or spirituality, it must not be real. Children learn this from the world from a very early age and it is the most common reason they give for rejecting the Church at the average age of 12. “I believe in science” is one of the most ludicrous things a person can say, and betrays the ignorance that prevails today. You can’t believe in a thing, only a person. A thing either is or isn’t. It doesn’t require faith to be acknowledged. You and I can’t define each other by science any more than we can communicate the reality of God. He is too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words. And God knows us better than we know ourselves.
As a teacher and friend of mine always said in the seminary, you might be able to convince me that the complexity of my brain started back somewhere with the chance meeting of two single-celled organisms in a primordial ooze, but how are you going to explain Beethoven?
God gave us the mysteries of creation to explore, and we created science as a method to understand it -- originally as a way to try to better understand God. Now that God is out of the picture, all we have is science which was never intended to explain the spiritual realm. But just because it can’t doesn’t mean that the spiritual realm isn’t quite real. This is a foundational teaching of Christianity that has been largely overlooked or simply forgotten today. All of this has been given to us by God for the benefit of his human creation, not its destruction. He didn’t give us minds to build a structure of science for its own sake.
Beginning on page 8 in the bulletin today are two definitive texts from encyclicals of two popes, Pope Pius IX and Saint Pope John Paul II. The first, in 1869, warns us of the potential that rationalism and science have in overturning the natural order of God’s creation as first intended to seek him and not itself; the second is an explanation of exactly how that has happened. I have taken the original texts which I have found awkward and hard to read (probably because they were not first written in English) and rephrased them in a manner that they are easier to digest.
Perhaps you had a chance to attend my Forty Hours talks this past Lent. (If not, they are available on our website: on the dropdown “welcome” menu, click on “homilies” and find February 25-27.)
If you know someone who has felt they had to make the choice between faith and science, invite them to think again. Many people (including my brother, Fr. John) came to faith because of the mysteries of creation when, discovered more deeply, can no longer be explained by science. God is the only explanation.
The Lord be with you,
