Reverence, Commitment, & Patience
Dear Parishioners,
I hope your summer was fun and relaxing! Now we are gearing up for another year at our parishes and schools. Please keep our students and teachers in your prayers!
I am very excited for all the opportunities for you this fall in our Family of Parishes. You can find all kinds of opportunities for adults, children & families, and youth. Please check out the Dine to Donate opportunity at Bacall’s Café to support our Evening for Excellence at St. Clare on August 27. Enjoy the OLODP Family Game Day, which will be hosted at St. Clare on Sunday, August 30. Many thanks to the Family Fellowship Team that is helping to put these fun social events together!
I’m excited for Alpha and St. Joseph Boot Camp. Alpha is a space for people with questions who are seeking answers. If you know people who have questions about God, Alpha is the place to bring them. St. Joseph Boot Camp is for Catholic men who want to strengthen the basics of their faith and lead their families spiritually. If you’re a man who has been Catholic his whole life, but doesn’t really understand why we do what we do, or you want to lead your family better spiritually, maybe a deeper foundation will help and St. Joseph Boot Camp may be for you. Last year, we had a strong contingent of men from our parishes and they enjoyed it.
Our Mass readings this weekend are all about prayer and bringing people to Jesus who don’t yet know Him. The first reading talks about how all nations will become priests to serve God, and God’s house will be a house of prayer for all people. If we put prayer first and serve God with reverence, then we can unite everyone. The Gospel shows Jesus testing the faith of a pagan woman. First, He is silent, then He resists her requests, and then He really tests her. Only then does He answer her prayer… If I’m being honest, this is how prayer feels sometimes! St. John Chrysostom says that Jesus acts the way He does in the Gospel story in order to show the importance of reverence, commitment, and patience when we pray. The Canaanite woman sets a good example for us. Prayer is a relationship with Jesus, and relationships work best when we approach people we love with reverence, patience, and commitment.
Last for this week, our Director of Communications, Danielle Meineke, recently pointed me to the program Peter’s Barque. It’s a great way to teach the faith using music and catchy lyrics! One song, “No Tomb for the Ark” is perfect for this week, when we have celebrated the Assumption. Check it out!
Yours in Christ, with Mary,
Fr. Henry Hoffmann
Mary is the New Ark
All That Has Been Revealed
Revelation Chapter 11 and 12 link the Ark of the Covenant of the “Old” Testament to Mary as the Queen in Heaven. As Catholics, blessed with the fullness of revelation, we know that God assumed Mary’s body and soul into Heaven and made her Queen of Creation. He had already done something similar twice already in the Hebrew Scriptures, with Enoch and Elijah. God has power over the souls and bodies of the dead. When Jesus died, He opened the tombs in Jerusalem, called forth the buried bones of ancient saints, and made them live again.
In His most beautiful move, He brought Mary to Heaven without allowing her, His holy one, to see any kind of corruption.
Mary as the Ark
Just like the Ark contained the stone tablets of the Law, Manna from Heaven, and Aaron’s priestly rod, so Mary contained in her womb the Lawgiver, the Eucharist, and the Heavenly High Priest and King.
The Solemnity of the Assumption reveals the completion of God’s covenant relationship with His people. His promise to Adam and Eve is fulfilled – there is nothing in common between death and the holy woman, the new Eve, Mary.
Mary is assumed into Heaven, body and soul. Corruption and death have no ability to touch her at the end of her earthly life, just as, because of her immaculate conception, they never touched her at the beginning.
Gratitude
As we remember the Assumption, let us thank God for His covenant faithfulness. He was present in the Ark, He was born in Mary, and He remains in our tabernacles. When we receive the Eucharist, the flesh that Mary gave birth to, we commune with her and the angels and saints in Heaven.
Our liturgy enables us to experience and participate in the foretaste of that Heavenly Glory, and to receive ourselves, as Mary did, the Body of God, so that we too can live with Him in Heaven forever.
