By the time this is posted, Fr. Ignatius will have already started to announce my August 1 transfer to Lake City where I will help Fr. Trujillo as the parochial vicar. While I am looking forward to working with Fr. Trujillo and the people of Epiphany parish there, I will miss tremendously the people of Saint Catherine’s. This is a wonderful parish with so many great people.
Throughout my time here, my focus has been on helping all of you become saints. On helping you to answer your foundational vocation to holiness. This is something that I do because of my sincere great love for all of you. I have tried to illuminate this path by emphasizing the need for a personal prayer life, by encouraging you to take advantage of the mercy of the Sacrament of Reconciliation (not just when urgently needed, but as a regular practice), and especially by promoting a great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.
Today’s Gospel helps us on this journey toward holiness. I want to highlight one sentence in this passage:
“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”
Our orientation in life should be toward Christ. We are Christians who strive to cooperate with the grace of the Holy Spirit in uniting ourselves to Christ who brings us to the Father. We know the Father through Jesus Christ. He is our mediator with the Father.
At Mass too, we have this same orientation. We come together as a community, yes. But it does not stop there. We come together as members of the Body of Christ, uniting ourselves to Jesus Christ the head…for whom the priest acts “in persona Christi capitis” (in the person of Christ of head). We join our prayers to those of Christ, and they are offered to the Father through the Holy Spirit. We are not focused on one another. We are focused on God in our communal worship of God.
And, as part of this worship, we offer our humble gifts of bread and wine. These are then given back to us as something so much more. We receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The amazing gift of the Eucharist. How wonderful it is!
I will be here for another month. But I will continue to pray for you forever. I will pray that you continue to pursue this universal call to holiness by cooperating with the grace of God. I will pray that you all become saints. And I will pray that I will see you again, both soon here in this life and later in the life to come.