5/7/2023

I will be gone taking a little break this weekend through Wednesday. It has been a busy, fruitful, and tiring Easter season, and I am ready to get away for a few days. I should be back in action on Thursday morning. Msgr. Gaalaas will be covering for me, and he really enjoys coming here to help. Please make him feel welcome.
Next weekend we will be the weekend of blessings: 1) Blessing of the Child in the Womb and 2) Blessing of our Graduates (8th and 12th graders, especially). We will also begin offering the Blessed Sacrament under the species of BOTH bread AND wine, not just bread as we have been doing since COVID. So we will do some training at Mass, and next week’s bulletin will contain directions on how to receive communion, especially with the cup. Remember, some in our parish have never received from the cup, and their training can serve as a review of what the rest of us should be doing. We will start with just two cups until we ascertain how many will want to receive from the cup. Please be patient as we find the people and the routines that work best.
Last Summer we closed the office at 3 PM Monday through Thursday, during weekdays, and it gave the employees a break. Parishioners easily adjusted to the summer schedule. So we plan to do the same this summer. Beginning on May 30th (Monday, May 29th is Memorial Day) until August 9th we will have summer hours, then on August 9th we will return to our 8 – 5 hours. So to summarize, from May 30th through August 8th, the office will be open from 8 – 3 M-Th with lunch hour from 12 – 1 PM, with Fridays 8 – 12:30 pm.
I would like to highlight something that is discussed in the second reading: the priesthood of the baptized. What does this mean? Well, originally, when God called the Jews into the desert from Egypt to form a chosen people, all 12 tribes were capable of offering sacrifices. In other words, they were all priests. When they worshipped the golden calf while waiting for Moses to come down from Sinai, God took away that privilege and appointed only one tribe to be priests, the Levites from the tribe of Levi. So God intended that all share in the priesthood, all would offer sacrifices. Because of their misbehavior, it did not work out.
Now in the New Covenant, that privilege has returned to those who are baptized. We who are baptized become “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own.” So each of the “living stones” is capable of offering a pleasing sacrifice to God, to offer their spiritual sacrifices to God. How is this done? At the Eucharist. At the Eucharist, Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary is offered to the Father. It is the ONLY sacrifice pleasing to the Father, and in the Eucharist that sacrifice is made present to us, and we who are baptized participate in it. This is not the same as my ordained priesthood – that is a special calling which makes possible the Eucharist in which all baptized persons participate. But if you are baptized, you have the capacity to unite your spiritual sacrifices with the Perfect Sacrifice of Christ. That is only possible because you are part of the Body of Christ, you are baptized. At Mass you should seek to 1) Offer your spiritual sacrifices to God, to put those mentally on the altar; 2) God Accepts them just as the priest accepts the bread and wine in the name of Christ and puts them on the altar; 3) God transforms your offerings just as He transforms the bread into his Body and the wine into his Blood; and 4) God gives us back our offering, now transformed, at Communion. God will not be outdone in generosity. Those are the four steps of a sacrifice, and in the Eucharist we enter into the Perfect Sacrifice on Calvary. Do you see why the Eucharist is considered the greatest prayer we can say or celebrate? If you understand how Mass is a sacrifice and how to enter into it, and take the time to make your offering to God every Sunday or every day at Mass, you will grow closer to Jesus. Let us allow Christ to unite us into one in His Body and through celebrating the Eucharist.
It is a joy to celebrate Eucharist with you.

Father Albert, O.S.B