Dear Friends in Christ,
Thank you for your love and encouragement, for your gracious words, thank you gifts and cards, your presence at farewells, and all the rest as I conclude my assignment. Here is my farewell for now!
Being assigned to our Pastorate of the Visitation has been the Father’s gift to me (cf. John 17). I have LOVED being your associate pastor. Thank you for becoming a home and family to me. For any of the ways that I have been a help in bringing you closer to the Lord your God who created you, who rescues and heals you, and whose love for you is beyond compare—thanks be to God. For the times when I was a hindrance, as well as for the times when I did not make a full and sincere gift of myself in service to you, please forgive me.
It has been an inestimable gift to serve here… to bring babies and adults into the family of God through the waters of Baptism and other sacraments of initiation, to enter Heaven with you worshipping the Lamb of God in the Mass, to reconcile you to the Father of mercies in Confession, to celebrate marriages, to share in your sorrows, to find hope during times of grief, sickness, and loss, to adore Jesus in the Eucharist together, to gather in fellowship, to celebrate and sing and so much more. All is gift (St. Therese).
“Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him,” Pope Benedict XVI once said. It is my prayer that every parishioner and every family has the joy every day of discovering what Benedict is talking about.
This joy will be yours by praying daily individually and together as families and friends; by sharing Christ with others through your words, actions, gestures, and intentionality; by drawing near to Jesus through Holy Mass weekly (daily if you can) and through adoring Christ in the Eucharist outside of Mass; by reading daily the words of life in Sacred Scripture; by cultivating friendships in faith and cultivating and sharing your gifts TOGETHER!
Each of us is part of the great commission: to be a witness to Christ and to make disciples. We all share the sacred purpose: to inspire disciples, build community, and serve Christ. Don’t over complicate it. With all of your personalities, talents, words, gestures, and desires anointed by Christ—be the saint God made you to be and you will set the world ablaze (Catherine of Siena).
As Mary teaches us at the Visitation (Luke 1:39-56), let us always be filled with Jesus and go in haste to declare, “the Lord has done great things for me and holy is Name!” Please pray for me that I go in this same haste, filled with Christ to my ministry at Mount St. Joseph High School. Thanks be to God!
See you in the Eucharist!
Fr. John Bilenki
