July 26 2022 - Sts Joachim and Anne - "They shall bear fruit even in old age"

To coincide this year with the Feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus, Holy Father Pope Francis issued a message about grandparents.

And he began the message reflecting on a short, but poignant line from Psalm 92. The Psalm, speaking of the just ones, the righteous ones who walk in the ways of the Lord, who are planted in the house of the Lord, says “ They shall bear fruit even in old age, they will stay fresh and green”

The Holy Father says, “these words of the Psalmist are glad tidings, a true “gospel”…They run counter to what the world thinks about this stage of life, but also to the attitude of grim resignation shown by some of us elderly people, who harbor few expectations for the future.”

I encourage you to read the rest of the Holy Father’s message—I’ve printed out a few copies and also linked the message on my personal Facebook page.

It is good news—glad tidings—that God promises that even in old age his people will bear fruit. Old age might mean slowing down physically, however, spiritually in can be a time of tremendous spiritual fruitfulness for the Church—potentially greater fruitfulness than in youth—when we are focused on our own agendas and pursuits. 

The grandparents of Jesus, Joachim and Anne, no doubt had a tremendous love for the Lord, and that love for Jesus was a blessing for the entire Holy Family. So too, the faith of grandparents is a tremendous source of faith for the whole family. 

I’ve shared before how for many years on Sunday, when my parents worked late the night before, my grandparents would drive miles out of their way to pick me up for Sunday Mass. I doubt I would have discovered my priestly vocation without my grandparents. They taught me to pray before meals, the importance of Sunday mass, participating and singing at mass, supporting our home parish—not to mention so many other important virtues like patriotism, hard work, prudent stewardship, and tenderness.  

So much fruitfulness in my own life can be traced back to my grandparents’ godliness—their Catholic faith. 

Grandparents, if you see the faith is not being practiced in your families, don’t be afraid to remind your families of the importance of faith and prayer. If you sense that your children are becoming too materialistic, tell them.  If they are not bringing their own children to Sunday Mass, gently correct them. And if they still don’t relent, offer to bring them to mass with the promise of pancakes afterwards. When the grandkids come over for a visit, pray a rosary with them, make sure that prayers are said before meals, explain to them the meanings of the holy pictures and statues in your homes, teach the traditions, help them, like Joachim and Anne to instill faith.

On this feast of the grandparents, we’re reminded of grandparent’s special role and responsibility in forming the generations to come.  Through the prayers of Saints Joachim and Anne may we all consider and respond well to the vocation each of us has in spreading the Faith for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

 

In gratitude for the example of faith and the role of grandparents in the Church. And for the good health of the elderly and their continued spiritual fruitfulness. 

That our young people on summer vacation may be protected from all physical and spiritual harm, shielded from the errors and perversions of the world, and kept in closeness to God through prayer and virtue.

For all the needs of the sick and the suffering, for all those recovering from or undergoing surgery today, and for the consolation of the dying.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, for our dear departed grandparents, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord

 

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 - Lust and Pride in the Inferno and Purgatorio

 
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that for my spiritual reading this summer, I’m making my way through Dante Alighieri’s 800 year old epic poem, the Divine Comedy. In the three books of the Divine Comedy, Dante chronicles a pilgrimage he makes through hell, purgatory, and heaven.   He describes the horrific sights and sounds of the punishment of the damned in hell. He then makes his way up the mountain of purgatory, where he meets those who still need to be purified of the effects of their sins before entering heaven where amidst glorious celestial light he meets the blessed saints enjoying the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity.

And throughout his journey, Dante often stops to speak to the souls he meets in the afterlife. In hell, Dante meets Popes and political leaders who misused or neglected their responsibilities; heretics who spread their errors and led others away from the Gospel of Christ, he meets those who betrayed their nation and families; and in the very lowest and iciest depths of hell, there is Judas Iscariot who betrayed our Lord.

Well, near the entrance of the Inferno, Dante meets a pair of souls, Paolo and Francesca, a married woman and her brother-in-law who are in hell because of their joint sin of lust.

The conversation Dante has with this lustful pair is interesting because like most of the souls in hell Paolo and Francesca refuse to admit they did anything wrong. They explain how they were simply spending time in a room together, reading a rather lurid romance novel, when their own passions were kindled. 

For allowing themselves to be carried away by their passions, Dante describes Paolo and Francesca with all of the other lustful souls as being blown about hell in a sort of whirlwind for all eternity. Their sin was allowing their passions to lead them to sin. They failed to exercise their intellect—and refused to admit that an unmarried couple shouldn’t have been in room together, alone, reading erotic literature—failing to reasonably protect their chastity. We call that the near occasion of sin, don’t we, when we knowingly put ourselves in a situation where, given our fallen human nature, we are likely to fall into sin.

The Catechism explains that our passions—our powerful emotions are an essential part of our human nature—hunger, thirst, desire for physical intimacy—are part of human nature, but it is our responsibility as rational beings that these passions be put under the direction of right reason.

Our passions are like horses, and they need to be directed by the bridle and bit of truth and reason and self-control. And if our passions are allowed to run-away on their own without proper direction, we will not reach the destination God wants for us—and in a very real sense our actions become little different from the animals. To allow our passions to rule is to abdicate our responsibility as human beings.

In our first reading, we hear of the grave evils running rampant in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The book of Genesis describes God Himself taking note of the grave sins taking place in these cities. Like Paolo and Francesco in the inferno, the Sodomites and citizens of Gomorrah were engaging in sins of lust. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had become so corrupt, Abraham, as we heard in our first reading from Genesis chapter 18 is really struggling to find 50 or 40 or 30 or 20 or even 10 innocent people.

Sodom and Gomorrah are spared for a time, but In the following chapter of Genesis, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by God with fire and brimstone, which is certainly a foreshadowing of the eternal punishments of the cities inhabitants who allow their passions to become corrupted by sin and fail to repent.

After traversing through hell, Dante eventually makes his way to the mountain of purgatory. And on Mount Purgatory, Dante encounters the holy souls who, repentant of their sins, now undergo purification in order to prepare for heavenly glory.

In purgatory Dante meets souls guilty of the same sorts of sins as those he encountered in hell: sins of gluttony, and lust, and wrath, and avarice and theft. But the big difference between those in purgatory and those in hell, are that the souls in purgatory acknowledged in their earthly life that their sins were offensive to God. And so they repented and began to hand their lives over to God.

The first group of repentant sinners Dante meets in Purgatory are the souls being purified of the sin of Pride—and this is a big group—a very big group. For Dante, and St. Thomas Aquinas, every sin, really can be traced back to pride. For Pride is when we turn away from God, when we claim to know better than God, when we act as if we were the center of the universe.  Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their pride and traced their inability and unwillingness to recognize him as the Son of God back to sinful pride.  

As part of their Purgatorial purification from pride, Dante describes the souls pushing heavy stones up the inclined mountain, the heaviness of the stones proportional to the measure of their pride while on earth. Additionally, the souls being purified of pride are found praying; they are praying over and over and over again, the prayer we find in our Gospel today, the Lord’s prayer.

The Lord’s prayer is the antidote to pride. For in the Lord’s prayer, we humbly surrender to God’s will, over our own. The sin of Pride weighs us down from living in the freedom of the children of God, so Our Lord teaches us the Lord’s Prayer to combat our earthly pride—to be devoted to doing the will of the Father, and relying on the providence of the Father, as Our Lord himself. The Catechism states praying the our Father should develop in us the desire to become like Christ, to behave like Christ, to be holy like Christ—free from all selfishness like Christ.

A good priest once suggested to me that our holiness as a Christian can be measured by our ability to pray the Our Father from the heart.    In Dante’s purgatory, the Our Father is prayed over and over until they really learn to pray it from the heart. Do you pray the Our Father from your heart? Being one of the first prayers we learn, praying it daily, and every week at Mass, it becomes easy just to rattle off the Our Father without praying from our hearts.

The Catechism devotes its last 100 paragraphs explaining the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I recommend reading through those 100 paragraphs over the next week, you won’t regret it. But also, I invite you, each day this week, set aside some time to pray the Our Father from the heart. Pray it slowly, reflectively, pondering each word, each phrase, each petition. Allow the Lord’s Prayer to help you overcome the pride, the willfulness, the arrogance, the disordered passions that keep you from living in the freedom and peace God wants for you.

My God’s Will truly be done on earth as it is in heaven, in our lives, the lives of our families, and nation, and parish, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

16th Week of Ordinary Time 2022 - Tuesday - "My brother, and sister, and mother"

 

During the course of his ministry, the Gospels relate how the Lord Jesus met some resistance from his family members. John’s Gospel tells us how the Lord’s close relatives, his brethren, did not believe in him, even after stories of his miracles began to circulate. 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us that in the course of his public mission, the Lord’s relatives send word for him, presumably for him to return home. And when he doesn’t, they venture out to retrieve him, likely thinking he was mentally unsound. He seemed to them to be busily engaged in throwing his life away in a kind of insanity.

Like their Lord, It has often been the case that, when men and women embarked on the way of Christ, their nearest and dearest could not understand them, and were even hostile to them. The Lord even taught that his followers should expect such resistance: a household will be divided he said, “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter.” When he said, “you will be hated by all because of me” that certainly included the possibility of one’s family.

Now thanks be to God when the members of our biological family are also Christians, and understand us, they understand that God is put first. Not family, not country, not the material things of the world, but God. Thanks be to God when our families are places where the Gospel is cherished and practiced. But that’s not always the case.

And, to be Christian is to put God before all others allegiances: “Whoever loves father or mother or son or daughter more than me” is not worthy of me. Even family, that most precious relationship, is to be secondary to fulfilling one’s duties as a Christian.

One early martyr purportedly said, “A Christian’s only relatives are the saints.”

“For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Those who do the will of the heavenly Father, in imitation and in union with the Lord Jesus, become members of a new family, a family which transcends space and time and biology and nationality. “A mother may forsake her child” scripture says, but the members of this new family are never forsaken by God. Not even death will sever them from the life and love of God, in fact, death becomes for Christians, a new beginning of intimacy and joy that eye has not seen nor ear has heard in this earthly life.

Today, may we live out that first allegiance to God, by seeking and doing the Father’s will in all things, shown to us and manifested so perfectly in the life of the Son for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the families of our parish may cherish and practice the Gospel in all dimensions of their lives—practicing the forgiveness, generosity, patience, and faithfulness of Christ.

That our young people on summer vacation may be kept safe from the poisonous errors of our culture, and for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and consecrated religious life.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering. 

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. 

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

July 18 2022 - St. Camillus de Lellis - The unlikely conversion

 

St. Camillus whom we honor today had what we would call a “troubled childhood”.  He got into fights with neighborhood boys, he skipped school, he learned, but wouldn’t say his prayers, he was so quick to unleash his violent temper that his mother was actually afraid of him. At the age of 12, his mother died, and he was left to fend for himself. 

Tall for his age, at the age thirteen he began to accompany his father, a mercenary soldier, from one military camp to another. And at 16, St. Camillus, joined his father in the Venetian army and fought in a war against the Turks.

Among the soldiers, Camillus picked up a lot of the vices of the military camp—swearing, drinking, visiting prostitutes.  He and his father, Giovanni, even teamed up as a father and son con artists, swindling their fellow soldiers.  They went from war to war when Camillus’ father fell seriously ill.  Giovanni sent his son to fetch a priest, and after Giovanni made a good confession, repenting from all his sins and crimes, he received Holy Communion for the last time and died.

After the death of his father, Camillus was discharged from military service, due to his violent habits and found himself destitute.  He picked up odd jobs here and there until a wealthy gentleman gave him a job doing menial construction work in the Italian village of Manfredonia.  They were employed to construct a new Franciscan monastery, and while working Camillus began to acquire two virtues he had never tried to cultivate before: self-discipline and responsibility.  His faith was kindled when one of the Friars at the monastery began to share the faith with him.  

When his construction job was done he set out for Rome to work at the famous Hospital of San Giacomo where he fell in love with caring for the sick.   

There too, he put himself under the spiritual direction of St. Philip Neri who encouraged Camillus to study for the priesthood. So at the age of 32, Camillus entered seminary. After his ordination he founded a religious order called the “Servants of the Sick” who were devoted for caring for the destitute sick. 

What a beautiful conversion. God’s grace has the power to convert even the most hardened sinners. And look how God worked through the generosity of an employer, the simple faith sharing of a humble Friar, and the counsel of a holy spiritual director.  

St. Camillus is a saint because Catholics saw beyond the violent, philandering con man, and showed him dignity by providing an opportunities for Camillus to practice virtue.  

At many points in his life, it seemed unlikely that Camillus would come to such great holiness.  So we must be patient with the people in our lives who are struggling to find the right path, and become God’s instruments to help them come to grace.

God is at work in the life of every human soul. As corrupt or lost they may seem, God is at work to bring about what we might deem as the most unlikely of converts. And instead of having knee-jerk reactions, turning away from people who aren’t living righteous lives by our standards, we do well to consider what we might do to help them, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the Holy Spirit may animate the lives of all Christians, deepening in them conviction for the conversion of sinners. 

That our young people on summer vacation may be kept safe from the poisonous errors of our culture, and that their families may be places where the faith is practiced and cherished.

That the love of Christ, the divine physician, may bring healing to the sick and comfort to all the suffering. 

For the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, and all the poor souls in purgatory, for deceased priests and religious, and for those who have fought and died for our freedom. We pray.

O God, who know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.

[EF Readings]

A reading from the first Epistle of St. John

Dearly beloved, Do not be amazed, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love remains in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him. The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.

A continuation of the holy Gospel according to St. John

At that time, Jesus said to his disciples, This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends,* because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 - The hospitality of Abraham and Sarah, Martha and Mary

 I have shared before that out in Madison, Ohio, where I grew up, my family ran a business—a banquet facility, party center and catering business. My mother ran the business, hired and fired employees, managed the finances, planned events with clients—business parties and weddings and quinceañeras, while my father managed the kitchen staff and was the head cook, making sure that the prime rib and the manicotti and pork tenderloin and red skinned potatoes, green beans, and cheesy vegetables were all delicious and ready to be served at the precise moment. 

A lot of lessons from growing up in the family business, lessons from my parents about management and hospitality and service play out in my priesthood. Like my mother managing the business—being a pastor requires the ability to coordinate various moving pieces, plan events, and meet people where they are about their ideas. Like my father in that hot kitchen preparing high-quality meals for a variety of palettes for 30 years, being a pastor requires attention to detail, enduring very long hours at times. Both my father and mother had to remain very patient in the face of the occasional belligerent or irrational criticism, not that a pastor ever has to deal with that…but in the end, family business for us was about helping people celebrate—as is the priesthood, celebrating our faith, celebrating the eucharist.

And I was thinking about my family, involved for decades in the hospitality business—feeding all those hundreds of thousands of people over the years, in light of our first reading, where we read of Abraham and Sarah receiving and feeding guests—the hospitality they showed to these strangers.

Now, hospitality in the ancient world was much more than gathering with your family for big events. Travelers often had to rely upon the hospitality of strangers to aid them in their journeys. 

The Mosaic law is explicit about the necessity of hospitality. Strangers, like the poor, widows, and orphans, should be shown special generosity allowed to glean the produce of ones fields. The prophets also reiterate this teaching. Isaiah says, “Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.” And for those who do not, proverbs offers this warning: “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered” 

Now of course, hospitality is not always convenient or easy. Abraham and his household, in the first reading, were on a pilgrim journey of their own when those three guests arrived unexpectantly. Hospitality often costs us something, but it fulfills the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.

In receiving the stranger, feeding him, clothing him, being generous with him, we care for the Lord himself. The Lord himself teaches this, incorporating a teaching on hospitality into his description of who will inherit heaven: “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me . . .Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of these my brethren, you did it to me”

Hospitality has been long esteemed as a Christian virtue. Written in the 6th century, the rule of St. Benedict outlines how the monks were to treat their guests with hospitality:  “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say, “I came as a guest, and you received Me.” The Benedictines became known for their generous hospitality to travelers and pilgrims. St. Benedict writes, “As soon as a guest is announced, therefore, let the Superior or the brethren meet him with all charitable service… In the reception of the poor and of pilgrims. the greatest care and solicitude should be shown, because it is especially in them that Christ is received”

In the Gospel today, in the Lord’s visit to the home of Martha and Mary we see another dimension of hospitality. Martha was very busy in the duties of hospitality ensuring that the Lord was received well. She showed respect and love by the hospitality she offered.

Mary shows us another aspect of hospitality: Mary is praised by the Lord himself for sitting down and listening to him. The Lord has much wisdom to share with us when we listen to him speaking through strangers. To break bread with a stranger you learn how the Lord has been working in their lives, you open their heart to their plights and challenges, and also what keeps them going.

Also, think of how often in the Gospels the Lord is found ministering in the context of hospitality: all those dinners eating with sinners, teaching, correcting, allowed him to meet them where they were with the truth of the Gospel. He shows us that we need to get to know people in order to share truth with them.

When we talk about evangelization, that doesn’t necessarily mean going to door with pamphlets about Catholicism, though we probably need to start doing a bit more of that. Evangelization is also accomplished around table, or at least opening our homes and hearts to others. St. John Paul II writes, “Welcoming our brothers and sisters with care and willingness must not be limited to extraordinary occasions but must become for all believers a habit of service in their daily lives”

As community, as society seem to be crumbling around us, Christians needs to preserve the practice of inviting people around their table—showing them the kindness we would show to Christ. 

Look for an occasion this week to create an opportunity for fellowship, to show hospitality, to invite, to listen to strangers, maybe even invite your pastor over to the house with some fellow parishioners and a fallen away Catholic member or two. Consider how we as a parish are being called to exert extra effort to invite and welcome guests to the table of the Lord.

For Abraham and Sarah, their generosity in showing hospitality became an conduit for miraculous grace to work in their lives—Sarah in her 80s became pregnant. So too Martha and Mary in their hospitality, their service of the Lord, their listening to the Lord, became a conduit to deep intimacy with Him.

So too, when we open our homes, open our lives, open our hearts to the stranger, to the guest—God blesses us, and brings peace and wisdom to our homes, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

First Friday Holy Hour - July 2022 - The Eucharistic Physician

 

In the Gospel for today (friday of the 13th week in Ordinary Time), the tax collector Matthew leaves behind an old way of life to follow the Lord., and immediately upon beginning this new life, Matthew welcomes Jesus into his home for a meal. 

There is something healing about a good meal. This is especially true when two people, who are enemies, who are estranged from each other in any way, sit down and share food, and conversation, and intimacy together. If you are willing to sit down and have a meal with someone, the healing has already begun.

This is why, at the meal in the house of Matthew, the Lord Jesus identifies himself as a physician, a healer. “I eat with tax collectors and sinners because the sick require a physician.” Jesus dines with sinners for the same reason a physician goes to the sick—to heal—to heal our estrangement from God, and from one another.

I think of that beautiful scene in the story of Babette’s Feast. At the death of their pastor, this small Christian community had become estranged from one another, division and bickering had entered into their daily lives. And so the french chef, Babette, provides a meal, and through good food, some of the divisions within this community begin to melt away; they begin to laugh together again, and share memories of happier times. The meal became an occasion for God's mercy and healing to work.

At the sacred meal of the Eucharist, the Lord Jesus is encountered as the Divine Physician, who heals those parts of us that are estranged from God, and within our community. 

In the section regarding the Eucharist, the Catechism quotes St. Ambrose, who speaks of the Eucharist as a remedy for sin and concludes, “Because I always sin, I should always have a remedy.” Sinners, like us, need that constant medicine which the Lord gives us. 

One of the reasons we do well to spend time in Eucharistic adoration, in addition to receiving the sacred medicine of the Eucharist at Mass, is that sometimes we take the Eucharist for granted, and adoration helps to open us up to the power of the Eucharist again. 

Sometimes during the celebration of Mass be can become distracted from the healing power of the Eucharist: crying babies, off-key cantors, tangential preaching, not to mention the busyness of Sunday morning, which hinders us from coming to mass with proper recollection of our sins—with the proper interior silence.

But the blessed moments of silence during Eucharistic adoration can help us identify those parts of our lives, our psyches, our egos, our souls, that the Lord wishes to heal, the burdens of daily life, the fractured relationships.

Before our Eucharistic Physician tonight,  we express our desire for the healing the Lord wants for, to strengthen us in holiness, and to strengthen the bonds of charity among us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

July 1 2022 - St. Junipero Serra - Abandoning Comfort for Service

 

Earlier this week, our Gospel reading contained the strange warning of our Lord to the scribe who was considering discipleship: "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head." In other words, Jesus is saying, “I’m homeless. Will you follow me, even if that means giving up your home? Will you follow me even if it means never being able to go home again?”

In today’s Gospel, the Lord calls the tax collector Matthew, to follow him. For Matthew, this would mean leaving his livelihood, and also a real change of lifestyle. No doubt, as a tax collector, he lived a very comfortable life. He was well-connected, well-paid, especially, if he was anything like the typical tax collector, extorting his fellow Jews on top of gathering taxes for his Roman overlords.

“There’s no way I can change,” Matthew must have considered. But he trusted the Lord had something the world could not offer.

Throughout the year we celebrate saints who up and down the centuries who left their homes and comfortable lives to follow the Lord. Today we celebrate St. Junipero Serra who did just that.

Junipero Serra had been a university professor in Spain, but he gave up his position to come to California to teach the Native Americans about the Lord Jesus. So while our founding Fathers were fighting for our nation’s independence on the east coast, Franciscan Priest Father Junipero Serra was traveling up through Mexico to present-day California.  There he devoted himself to building churches and schools for the poor and the native people, catechizing those in his care and raising up dedicated priests to continue the Lord’s work.

St. Junipero Serra, you may remember, is the first saint to be canonized on American soil. He was canonized just in 2015, when Pope Francis visited the U.S.. And during the canonization Pope Francis praised St. Junipero Serra’s willingness to abandon the comforts and privileges of his native Spain to spread the Christian message in the new World. 

What a wonderful example we have in Junipero Serra; for no doubt, the Lord is calling us to leave behind what is comfortable—the comfort of our familiar routines, at least—to preach the Gospel and to witness to the Gospel to the strangers in our midst. May we follow the Lord into the unknown territories, carrying his light and his truth and his love to all those we encounter today. May we find excuses to leave our homes to spread the Gospel today for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That all Christians may be deeply committed to the spread of Christ’s Gospel, and for the success of the Church’s missionary activity.

For our nation, as we celebrate our independence this week, that we may be always grateful for our freedom, but more importantly, may we use that freedom for God’s will, rather than our own.

For all those who suffer from violence, war, famine, extreme poverty, addiction, discouragement, loneliness, and those who are alienated from their families.  May they know God’s mercy and be gathered to the eternal kingdom of peace. 

For all those who suffer illness, and those in hospitals, nursing homes and hospice care, that they may be comforted by the healing light of Christ. 

For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, the deceased members of our families friends and parishes, for those who fought and died for our freedom, and for N. for whom this mass is offered.

Graciously grant our petitions, we beseech thee, O Lord; may your grace sustain us always in your service, through Christ Our Lord.