Remember the song that began: The party’s over…?   After the glorious Easter Vigil celebration and the wonderful liturgies on Easter Sunday, you would think we could be singing that same song.  But, when you really think about it, our party as Christians has just begun. All of this triumphant celebrating should be enough to carry us through for the fifty days to Pentecost when we welcome the Holy Spirit in our lives. It is the beginning of a new life certainly for those whom we welcomed in baptism: Jode, Ian and RJ and for those who were received into the fullness of the life of the Church, Louise and Trina, but for the rest of us, as well.  We are given new hope when we see that Christ conquered death.  We are given new life in knowing that we are one with Christ in suffering and death but also in his rising. It should give us hope that we can rise above the things of this earth to be with the Lord in spirit even as we struggle here on earth.

As we hear the readings in the coming weeks from the Acts of the Apostles, may we all live our lives in the model set for us by those first Christians in the early Church. I encourage you to read the Acts of the Apostles in its entirety through this Easter season. I always get the feeling when I read that book that I’m living right then and there with those first members of the Church.  May it remind us to continue to care for each other and show honor and respect for one another. May we continue to be the loving community about whom Jesus would be proud to say: “These are my followers; see how they love each other.”

Peace,

Ambrose

In Sure and Certain Hope

“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.” So says Saint Paul  his first letter to the Corinthians*. Our whole Catholic faith is based on our belief in the resurrection. I was listening to an interview on NPR yesterday. The person being interviewed was talking about the death of her husband. She said that it was hard for her to grapple with his death. He had been her closest friend and constant companion. Full of life and humor and dreams one day and gone without a trace the next. She was lost, grieving and hopeless.

But Easter is about hope. Easter is our sure and certain hope that life does not end in death. Regarding death St. Paul says “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers & sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.” **

The Prayer of Commendation for Catholic funerals summarizes our Easter hope in the face of death in these words:

“Into your hands, father of mercies, we commend our deceased brothers and sisters in the sure and certain hope that they who have died with Christ will rise with him on the last day. Merciful Lord turn toward us and listen to our prayers: open the gates of paradise to your servants and help us who remain to comfort one another with assurances of faith, until we all meet in Christ…”

So today we proclaim;  Christ Is Risen! He Has Risen Indeed!

*1 Corinthians 15:14    **1 Thessalonians 4:13 

Happy Easter! 

Dan

Holy Week is upon us once again. It comes in the midst of our everyday life. We still have to go to work each day, send the kids off to school, make the bed, cook dinner and do all the routine  tasks that make up our lives. Holy Week comes despite the fact that you and your spouse are fighting, or that your mom is slipping deeper into dementia, or that you are worried about losing your job. In other words, Holy Week comes whether it is convenient or not, whether we are prepared for it or not, whether we want it or not.

During Holy Week we remember Christ’s Passion and death. It wasn’t convenient for him either. It is all about God joining us in the midst of our messy and sometimes chaotic lives. It is Jesus joining us in our passion. Holy Week is a microcosm of all the struggles of our life. It is about misunderstanding, anger, pain, abandonment and failure, but it is also about faith, hope and love, especially sacrificial love.

Holy Week is not just a lot of long ritual prayer services, it is the stuff of our lives. Yes it is the story of pain and suffering, but it is also the story of how the Son of God enters into the struggles and pain of our everyday lives and transforms our suffering and death into new life through his sacrificial love, and it shows us how to do the same.

Holy Week may be inconvenient, but it is so necessary. See you in church.

Blessings,

Dan

As we draw closer to the end of Lent and to the start of Holy Week I just want to take an opportunity to encourage you to participate in as many of the services as possible. In past ages Holy Days marked a special time when the normal schedules and tasks were put aside so that people of faith could focus on the sacred mysteries upon which our faith is based.  In decades past the days of Holy Week were given a certain respect by the culture and Catholics were free to focus in on their worship. Today the demands of work for adults and the schedules for children’s sports and other extracurricular activities don’t stop in deference to religious tradition and practices. It makes it very hard for parents especially to make faith a priority in their children’s lives when so many other priorities are making a claim on their time.

I have often heard parents lament that their children seem loosely attached to their faith and want to know what they can possible do to inspire their children to be more faithful. I think it would be a very powerful witness if families would   make attending the Holy Week celebrations THE PRIORITY for that week. It would mean setting other things aside for one week so that as a family you could participate in the commemoration of Jesus’ Last Supper and his death and Resurrection.

This would not be easy (and might even be a bit unpopular) but unless we do something counter cultural, the traditional practices and celebrations will continue to diminish until they simply disappear. All I can ask is that you give it some thought.

Blessings,

Dan

Our Lenten Communal Penance Service is Tuesday, March 20, at 7:00 PM here at St. James. I was asked recently about why we even bother with a “communal” service when penitents still need to go to a priest privately to confess their sins and receive absolution. These services made more sense when the priest was allowed to give General Absolution but why go through all the bother of a communal service when you can just as easily go to private confession on Saturday afternoon?

Well, there are two things that we need to keep in mind;

1 ) Scripture shows us that most of the acts of healing and forgiveness recounted in the Gospel came to a person through a one-on-one encounter with Jesus, but…

2) We also need to keep in mind that human beings live in community and our actions affect others for good or for evil. So sin, even sin committed in private, is not a purely private matter. All of our actions have a communal dimension. That means our reconciliation after sin must somehow involve the community. The Communal Penance service provides that necessary link between the sin by the individual and the reconciliation of the sinner with God and the community of believers.

Most people usually don’t question the communal dimensions of Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Matrimony, Holy Orders, or even Anointing of the Sick? Also many people seem to question the need for an instrument, a human mediator, in the Sacrament of Penance! Why? Because confessing one’s sins to another human being is difficult. It is often embarrassing. But that is part of the power of sacramental reconciliation. It makes one honest and humble before God through a human instrument – little chance for self-deception here!

A Communal Penance service tries to find that balance between the need for us to collectively seek God’s forgiveness as a people of faith and the need for a one-on-one encounter with Jesus in individual confession. I hope you take advantage of this opportunity as part of your preparation for Easter.

Blessings,

Dan

As I continue my series of articles on the RCIA, I would now like to talk about the “Scrutinies”. These very special rites are celebrated on the last three Sundays of Lent, at liturgies where the Elect are present. The Elect are those who are preparing for Baptism, (Ian, Jode and Trina). As part of their journey to the font, they have been received among us at the Rite of Acceptance and they have been enrolled in the Book of the Elect in the Rite of Election.

The Scrutinies are ancient rites and they may, at first, seem strange to us. But they are deeply rooted in our human experience. We need to examine (scrutinize) how we are, the areas of our lives where we are tempted, or seriously sin – in what we do and what we fail to do.

Invitation to Silent Prayer.

One of the most powerful moments of the Scrutinies is how they begin. After the homily, the Elect are invited to come forward with their sponsors and to kneel down. Then, the whole assembly is invited to pray for them in silence. It is a very solemn moment. This community has cared for these elect for some months now on their journey. We have sent them to reflect more and more deeply on the Word of God, and expressed to them our longing for the day on which they would join us at the table of the Lord. Now we pray for them in this sacred silence, deeply asking God to protect them and heal them in the weeks ahead.

We then pray out loud together for the Elect in the “Intercessions for the Elect “. We pray that they might be freed from the power of evil and protected on their journey. Then, in a silent ritual deliberately reminiscent of the rite used for ordination, Fr. Bernie will lay his hands for a brief moment on the head of each of the Elect. It is a solemn act of calling down the Spirit of Jesus to be with them and protect them.

The Elect will then be sent forth to reflect upon the Word and this powerful gesture of love on the part of this community, that cares for them so deeply, with the love of Christ.

Blessings,

Dan

Last Sunday we celebrated the Rite of Sending at the 10:00 a.m. Mass.  With that Rite of Sending we sent our catechumens (Jode Niblack, Ian Jordan, and Trina Jozwiak) to the Cathedral to be formally recognized by the Archbishop at the Rite of Election. If you were at the 10:00 Mass you saw the catechumens called forward and then we asked their sponsors to say a few words about what kind of a person each catechumen was and how the RCIA process has changed them. After that we turned to the congregation and asked if they would support sending them onto the Archbishop with our recommendation. After they received an affirmation by the community, they then signed their names into the Book of The Elect as a pledge of fidelity and were then sent to the Cathedral.

At the Cathedral they were called by name and recognized by the Archbishop who blesses them and encourages them as they enter their final weeks of intense preparation for the reception of the Sacraments of Initiation. Now the catechumens are called “the elect’ . They now begin a Period of Purification and Enlightenment. On the next five Sundays of Lent, three scrutinies (rites for self-searching and repentance) and the presentations of the Creed and Lord’s Prayer take place. This period concludes with the celebration of the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil.

Blessings

Dan

When infants are baptized into faith as Priest Prophet and King we talk about removing the stain of Original Sin,  but there is very little said about “actual sin” or the sins we commit. That is because babies are unable to commit actual sins. They can be cranky, colicky, and inconsolable at times but none of this can be attributed to intent or premeditation.

Although our normal practice is to baptize infants, the theological norm is adult baptism. Why?, because baptism implies a choice on the part of the individual.  A choice to turn away from sin and to become a follower of Jesus.

The symbolism of baptism is not so much one of a ritual bath  but one of a ritual drowning, where the old sinful self drowns in the waters of baptism only to arise out of the waters as a new creation.

Baptism ritualizes “Metanoia” or changing one’s mind. That’s why the baptismal promises begin with a renunciation of sin, where we promise to renounce Satan’s hold on us as we pledge our allegiance to Christ.

The problem with being baptized as infants is that we miss the power of making that choice.  One way we as a church try to compensate for that is by regularly renewing our baptismal promises. Every Easter and every time we baptize an infant we renew the promises which our parents made on our behalf  at our own baptism.

Once gain we find ourselves in the season of  Lent. It is the start of  Forty days of preparation for the catechumens as they prepare to celebrate the Easter Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and First Eucharist. For us it is forty days of prayer and fasting on their behalf and our own preparation to renew our baptismal promises.

Lent is not just supposed to be a forty day period of self discipline which ends with Easter. For example “I give up smoking during Lent only to light up again on Easter, I give up fast food, gambling, drinking, pornography, swearing, just to pick it up again when the forty days are finished.” Lent is about metanoia, it’s about changing our minds, our habits, and our choices to leave our sinfulness behind and to pledge allegiance to Jesus who calls us to a better and holy life. Now is the time to prepare for renewing our baptismal promises at Easter and we have the whole season of Lent to get ready.

Blessings,

Dan

The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is the normal way in which adults become full, active, participating members of the Catholic Church.

Special rites are celebrated during the Sunday liturgies at various times throughout the year. Adults involved in RCIA may be dismissed each week after the homily to go and reflect on the scriptures they have heard.

RCIA involves the whole community – in prayer as the rites are celebrated, in hospitality as new members are welcomed, and in ministries like sponsor, team member, or dismissal leader.

Each person’s journey into the Catholic Church is unique. At some point, the person contacts a Catholic parish or community and begins to meet with other adults who are also inquiring about the Catholic faith. These adults now called “Inquirers” meet with members of the RCIA team, sharing their life stories. The RCIA team helps them to connect their stories with the faith stories found in scripture.
When it becomes clear that the individual has made up their mind to become Catholic they are admitted into the next step through a special ceremony called the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens. In this ritual the assembly goes out to greet them and symbolically claims these men and women for Christ by signing all their “senses” with the cross. They are then escorted into the church building by the assembly.

After this rite, the inquirers are called catechumens. This name indicates that they are learning the teachings of the Church and beginning to accept Catholic tradition and practices.

Blessings,

Dan

Below are links to audio MP3 files of presentations given at mass regarding the New Roman Missal. The files contain the written notes of the presentation, in the “lyric” field of each file.

1. Introduction

2. What is the Roman Missal and the General Instruction on the Roman Missal(GIRM)

3. Overview of the Mass

4. Introductory Rites

5. Liturgy of the Word

6 Liturgy of the Eucharist I

7. Liturgy of the Eucharist II

8. Liturgy of the Eucharist III

9. Concluding Rite

10. Postures of the Mass