The Rich Fool

Dear Friends of our Pastorate,

This weekend, we celebrate the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. In our Gospel this weekend, we hear the parable of the Rich Fool. This parable is in response to the man who asks Jesus to tell his brother to share the inheritance with him. Both are dealing with Greed, which is one of the seven deadly sins. Greed focuses us too much on a desire for things instead of desiring God. We fall into a state of greed when wealth or power becomes more important than being generous with our time, talent or treasure. The rich fool in today’s parable decides to build additional barns in order to store his abundant harvest instead of sharing his blessings with others. As Jesus instructs us in the Gospel, strive to become rich in what matters to God.

I would like to thank Michaela Stanton and her volunteers who hosted an awesome Vacation Bible School at OLC this past week. Thanks to everyone who has helped transform the Gathering Place into a cabin in the woods of Alaska, where our youth learned that Jesus is the True North who will guide us in our daily lives. Check out OLC’s Facebook page for pictures of the great time had by so many volunteers and participants. Please keep our Pastorate’s youth and volunteers in your prayers as they continue to come to know God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.

Please keep our middle school participants and high school peers in your prayers this week as we offer Summer Mission – Part 2, taking place August 5–6 at St. Jane Frances. We have had an excellent turnout of teens who wish to serve the Lord by serving others in our local community. Special thanks to Carrie Hilmer and Diana Healy for their behind the scenes organizational work to make this event so successful.

Enrollment for Religious Education, Middle School, and High School Youth Ministry has begun. Please go to our websites (stjane.org or olchesapeake.org) to register your kids for our faith formation programs, which begin in September. This year, we will also be offering opportunities for families to participate in our faith formation offerings as we have been asked to do by Archbishop Lori.

Also at Archbishop Lori’s request, we are beginning our three year process of moving the age of Confirmation to age 9. This year, all incoming 8th graders and 9th graders should be enrolling in our standalone Confirmation program (including all students in Catholic Schools.) If you have a child entering 8th or 9th grade this fall, please be sure to enroll them in our Confirmation preparation program in addition to Middle School and High School Youth Ministry programs.

Mark your calendars for the Solemnity of the Assumption, a Holy Day of Obligation (think Opportunity) which is Friday, August 15th. Masses will be offered on Thursday, August 14th at 7:00pm at St. Jane, and Friday, August 15th at 8:30am (St Jane), 12:00pm (OLC), and 7:00pm (OLC).

Thank you for keeping our Pastorate of the Visitation—Our Lady of the Chesapeake and St. Jane Frances—in your daily prayers!

God Bless,
Father Steve

Our Father

Dear Friends of our Pastorate,

This weekend, we celebrate the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. In our Gospel this weekend, we hear of Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray by giving them the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer is, of course, is the most perfect prayer of our faith, for it teaches us how to come to the Father in our times of need. We begin by acknowledging the greatness and holiness of God and our desire to do His will in our lives. Then we ask the Father to nourish us, to forgive us, and to guide us in our earthly journey of faith. Jesus goes on to encourage us to be persistent in our prayers and trust that God will always give us what we need when we ask for His will to be done in our lives. So turn to God in faith and trust. Our Father is ready to lovingly give us what we need, which ultimately is forgiveness of our sins and eternal life in His presence.

I would like to thank Marie Griffiths and her volunteers who hosted an awesome Vacation Bible School at St. Jane Frances during the week of July 14–18. Check out St. Jane’s Facebook page for pictures of the great time had by so many volunteers and participants. This week is OLC’s turn to host VBS. Michaela Stanton and her volunteers have been preparing the Gathering Place to welcome the participants to the True North. Please keep our Pastorate’s youth and volunteers in your prayers as they continue to come to know God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.

Summer Mission – Part 2 will be taking place August 5–6 at St. Jane Frances. This middle school outreach and service program is open to all middle schooler and high school chaperones. Registration is required. Please contact Carrie Hilmer or Tim Janiszewski for more information or to participate.

Enrollment for Religious Education, Middle School, and High School Youth Ministry has begun. Please go to our websites (stjane.org or olchesapeake.org) to register your kids for our programs, which begin in September. This year, we will begin our three year process of moving the age of Confirmation as instructed by Archbishop Lori. All incoming 8th graders and 9th graders should be enrolling in our standalone Confirmation program (including all students in Catholic Schools. Sacramental preparation is done at the parish, not at the schools.) If you have a child entering 8th or 9th grade this fall, please be sure to enroll them in our Confirmation preparation program in addition to Middle School and High School Youth Ministry programs.

Mark your calendars for the Solemnity of the Assumption, a Holy Day of Obligation (think Opportunity) which is Friday, August 15th. Masses will be offered on Thursday, August 14th at 7:00pm at St. Jane, and Friday, August 15th at 8:30am (St Jane), 12:00pm (OLC), and 7:00pm (OLC).

Thank you for keeping our Pastorate of the Visitation—Our Lady of the Chesapeake and St. Jane Frances—in your daily prayers!

God Bless,
Father Steve

Make Time

Dear friends in Christ,

God bless you! I pray you are all having a blessed summer! Whether you’ve had a vacation or staycation or a day or two off, these are ideal times to refresh spiritually. Like Martha in today’s Gospel, we all need to rest our souls and bodies.

“There is need of only one thing,” Jesus says. The one thing is Him. Time with Jesus at Mass, in the chapel, with Scripture, with the Rosary, is never time wasted! Make time to be with our Lord and Friend. If you like worship music, “One Thing” by Housefires is excellent in light of this passage.

Have you ever heard of visio divina? This is when we use sacred art to help us pray. In this prayer, we engage in prayerful/divine/holy “looking.” Why do I bring that up?

The first reading this weekend reminds me of an extraordinary icon by Andrei Rublev called “The Trinity.” Check it out. The icon depicts the three visitors of Genesis 18 seated at table. There is an open seat of sorts right at the center. In your visio divina, consider that as the place prepared for you. Go and take your seat! Look; listen; be loved; be fed.

Sunday’s second reading meditates on the mystery of suffering, which can be challenging for many, if not all of us. “Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful,” the Second Vatican Council said. Christ the Risen One appears to His friends with His wounds still visible; but, what was sorrowful and painful has become glorified. Jesus desires the same for us.

Allow yourself to be a patient in the “field hospital” of the Church. Here, there is always a bed; always brothers and sisters in the beds next to you; and the Doctor, the Divine Physician is always in, offering the medicine of the Eucharist, listening and giving encouragement, and giving healing and glory to our many wounds. “I make all things new,” (Rev 21:5).

Special invitation to ladies of the Pastorate:

Come together as sisters for a special evening of Eucharistic adoration and worship on July 22, this
Tuesday evening at St. Jane. The 22nd is the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. She is known as the “apostle to the apostles” and is a special intercessor for all daughters of the Father. I will lead a brief reflection and song. All ladies are welcome—bring a friend, mother, daughter, baby, grandbaby, etc.

Special invitation to gentlemen of the Pastorate:

Join us on Saturday July 26 at the Rumor Reel for breakfast and a talk by Orioles legend Scott
McGregor. Come enjoy a delicious meal, connect with other men of faith, and be inspired by Scott’s powerful testimony! Tickets are $35; 8:30am–10:30am. See bulletin and Flocknote for more details. All men are welcome—bring a friend!

THANK YOU Marie Griffiths, staff, volunteers, and participants for your enthusiasm, prayerfulness, time and talents in Vacation Bible School at St. Jane this past week! “Jesus is our true north; He is our way home… Let’s trust in Jesus.” We look forward to another round at Our Lady of the Chesapeake in a couple weeks!

Thank you for keeping the Pastorate of the Visitation in your daily prayers!

Fr. John

Do This And You Will Live

Brothers and Sisters,

The scripture readings this week teach us that the key to living a fulfilled life depends on love. First, loving God and also loving our neighbor. Christ makes it clear that all who desire to inherit eternal life passes through love.

In the Gospel (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus’s response to the curious scholar who correctly answered his own question should fill us with hope. Jesus tells him, “Do this and you will live.” You will live a full life, a meaningful life, a fulfilling life. Isn’t that the deepest desire of every human heart? Isn’t that the desire we find at the core of every other desire? All the choices we make, all the decisions and the sacrifices we make in life are made because we think they will help us live life more fully, more satisfactorily, more happily. This core desire of ours is also Christ’s core desire for us. He tells us in John’s Gospel, “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) He created us. He wrote this core desire into the depths of our souls. He wants to satisfy it. In fact, that’s why He came to earth, to give us the light and grace to know and to follow the path to a more abundant and more fulfilling life both here on earth and forever in heaven. All we need to do is follow that path which is Christ’s path. The path to eternal life goes through loving our neighbor, being marked by complete and total love for God. Let us live this love and experience the abundant, fulfilling life that we were created for. Nothing else really matters. How firmly do we believe that? How courageously are we willing to give that direction to our daily life?

God Bless,
Deacon Howard

Pastorate Plan For Evangelization

Dear Friends of our Pastorate,

This weekend, we finally return to the Sundays of Ordinary Time with our celebration of the Fourteenth Sunday. Our readings come from Cycle C which is the year we read through the Gospel of Luke. This weekend’s Gospel is the commissioning and sending forth of the 72 disciples to go out and proclaim the kingdom of God and to cure the sick. Jesus says the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.

We are in a similar place in our day where we have an abundant harvest of people who do not have a relationship or connection to the Lord, but we are always looking for more people to go into the community to proclaim the kingdom of God to them and offer them the gift of spiritual healing. This mission has been entrusted to us by Jesus himself who told us before His ascension to go and make disciples.

Over the past couple of years, I have been meeting with a dedicated group of parishioners from both parishes known as our Pastorate Mission Team. We have been discussing and reviewing the gifts and blessings our parishes have received over the years as well as the challenges and opportunities we are facing as the Catholic Churches of Pasadena. We are now in the final stretch of composing a Pastorate Plan for Evangelization that will guide us in our task of becoming missionary disciples. Our guiding principle is Archbishop Lori’s pastoral place called “A Light Brightly Visible 3.0” which can be found on the Archdiocesan website (archbalt.org). I invite you to review this document as we prepare to launch our pastorate’s pastoral plan in the coming months.

There is still time to make a donation to the Annual Appeal for Catholic Ministries. Your donations support the many charitable works of the Archdiocese, and a portion of your gifts are returned to our parish. Our parish goals (and donated to date) are as follows:

St. Jane - $57,782 ($44,837) and OLC - $60,379 ($38,690). To make a donation, go to www.archbalt.org and clink on the Giving link. Thank you for your support of the Annual Appeal for Catholic Ministries.

OLC is sponsoring a Men’s Breakfast on Saturday, July 26th at the Rumor Reel. This ticketed event will run from 8:30am to 10:30am, and our guest speaker will be Orioles legend, Scott McGregor. Scott will be sharing his inspiring story about how God and his faith shaped his life, both during his playing career and after retirement. All men of our pastorate (and your friends) are invited to attend. Tickets are $35 each, limited to 130 seats. Go to OLC’s website and click on Give Central to purchase your tickets or see the bulletin for more details.

Thank you for keeping our Pastorate of the Visitation—Our Lady of the Chesapeake and St. Jane Frances—in your daily prayers!

God Bless,
Father Steve

Working Through Our Faults

Brothers and Sisters,

This week, we celebrate the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. They are the big superstars of Christianity. Not only did they form the foundation and faith of the early Church, but they also gave us a model to follow in carrying out Christ’s mission in life. We need to ponder their example and imitate it in our own life circumstances. Like Peter, despite our sinfulness, despite our weak flesh, we’re called to confess Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah and Son of God and to follow him until death. Like Paul, despite our unworthiness or the things we’ve done opposed to the kingdom, we’re called to make up for lost time, to share with others as most important the “Good News” we have received, and to do all we can to fight the good fight, finish the race, and keep the faith. Like both of them, we’re called to become pillars and determined leaders in the Church making it stronger, keeping it more united, through knowing, loving, and sharing the truth, and through knowing and loving and serving our neighbor.

We should never doubt the mission and plan God has called us to. As we look at the personalities of Peter and Paul, we see that God called them to use their personalities and talents to spread the Gospel. Peter to use his impulsive love to look after the flock, and Paul to use his training as a Pharisee and his strength of character to ensure that the non-Jewish people would be welcomed into the Church. It is a reminder to us that our talents and our weaknesses, too, can become God’s means of helping others, if we allow it. We don’t have to be perfect for God to work through us. God can work through us, faults and all, as he did with Peter and Paul, if we are open and willing.

God Bless,
Deacon Howard

Happy Corpus Christi Sunday!

Dear Parishioners,

Happy Corpus Christi Sunday!

Are you living liturgically?? In recent weeks, we have gone from Pentecost Sunday to Trinity Sunday to Corpus Christi Sunday today. Week after week, we have contemplated different mysteries of our Faith so as to get caught-up in God. Live liturgically! It’s fun! And, it grounds us in our spiritual lives in the midst of our business.

Today we meditate on the gift of the true presence of Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Holy Eucharist. Let’s consider the mystery of the Eucharist as friendship.

The gift of self to another—that is, charity or love—is a defining characteristic of true friendship. Friendship is charity, St. Thomas Aquinas taught. Whether it is friendship between spouses or between the best of friends, one desires to give their whole self to the other. Jesus is a true friend who gives us everything; nothing less than Himself. He says as much in John 15: “I have called you my friends… no greater love has one than this than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Having called us His friends and explained what the greatest love is, we come to realize just what He meant when we look at the cross. His love is revealed not just there, but in the Eucharist. He said that this greatest love is what the Eucharist is. Taking bread and wine, He said, “This is my Body which will be given up for you; this is my Blood which will be poured out for you and for many.”

This greatest Love is Who and what the Eucharist is. This Friend and His greatest act of friendship is Who and what the Eucharist is. We are so loved by our Eucharistic Friend and Lord.

May His love continue to heal and inspire us at each Holy Communion. May His friendship present in the Eucharist inspire our love for everyone God puts in our path. If you are not in the habit, I encourage you to make a weekly visit to Jesus in the tabernacle, whether at our churches or a church near your place of work. Friendship grows through quality time!

We are thankful to God for giving us five new priests yesterday, June 21, for service in our Archdiocese of Baltimore! Please pray for them!

We hope that all those who attended the bus trip to see the Noah production enjoyed their time. God’s promises are deeper than rising waters!

Over the next month, Father Steve and I both have time away. First, we will attend a retreat this week with the priests of Baltimore, and then we will each have time away for vacation. Please pray for us to have good prayer and good rest! We are grateful for the gift of serving you.

God bless you and thank you for keeping the Pastorate of the Visitation in your daily prayers!

Father John