During the month of November, the Church ponders The Last Things, that is, the end of our earthly lives and our life after death. We begin by celebrating All Saints’ Day on November 1st, a Holy Day of Obligation. On this day, we rejoice with all the Saints, known and unknown, who, through the mercy and grace of God and aligning their will with His, have attained entry to our Lord’s Heavenly Kingdom. The next day, November 2nd, is All Souls’ Day, where we pray for all those souls, remembered and forgotten, who have passed on from this world and are in Purgatory awaiting entry to Heaven.

Dear Friends,

“By itself, faith accomplishes nothing. For even the devils believe and shudder. No, faith must be joined to an active love of God which is expressed in good works.”
—St. Maximus the Confessor

These words from Saint Maximus may remind us of the reading from the letter of Saint James we heard a few Sundays ago when he said, “Faith apart from works is dead.” Saint Maximus even goes so far as to say that even the devils have a technical faith as they know who God is and believe in his power. We see this in the various episodes of exorcism in the gospels, where Jesus casts out evil spirits.

You may have noticed the altar servers are wearing different colors now from what you may be used to. This is one of the most outwardly visible signs of the reforms happening with our Altar Server ministry. The ministry is in the process of being transformed into a full-fledged formative program with the vision of planting and cultivating seeds to inspire and raise up the next generation of vocations to Religious Life and the Priesthood.

Dear Friends,

I would like to express my profound gratitude for your active participation in a number of activities our parish has been involved in the last couple of months. Among others, we began by doing a census, which was followed by a survey to determine the size and needs of our parish. Even though the participation was not as we had hoped, it gave us some idea of the direction our parish desires to go.

Dear Friends,

This month of October is usually known as Respect Life Month in our Catholic Church. And so, in this article, I am going to ask all of you to do everything in your power to respect life. One way I am asking you to do this is by voting NO to Proposition 139, as the Bishops are asking us to do. This is because, as you know by now, this proposition opens the door to enshrining a constitutional right to abortion in Arizona, including even removing safeguards for girls and women currently in place at abortion clinics.

Concluding our series on the sacrifice all of creation offers in worship to God the Almighty Father, we now look at how all of creation is united together through our work, our own sacrifice that we offer in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The sacrifices of creation can only be offered to God through our cultivation and work of the items to render them in service of worship. We form and carve the beeswax into candles; we make bread for the Eucharist from the wheat of the earth, and the wine from crushing grapes. We press olives to extract their oil for Chrism and melt and cast gold into chalices to contain our Lord’s blood. Through these actions, we fulfill one of the primordial commands God gave to us in Genesis, to “Fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28). We participate in the work of God by creating new things from what He has given us, and we in turn offer it back to Him.

Dear Friends,

For the last five weekends of September, our reflections centered on stewardship, covering its three pillars of time, talent, and treasure. This weekend, as members of our parish community, it is our time to commit. As a community, we want to reaffirm our resolve and commitment to faithful stewardship to the support of our parish. As we do so, let us keep in mind that this is a sacred moment for us to reflect on our relationship with God and our role as stewards of His resources.

All of God’s created world offers a part of themselves for the offering of the Holy Mass. So far, we have seen how animals and plants give their fruits and even their very selves to worship God. Let us now see how the earth and all the non-living but purposefully created bodies and objects within our universe make an offering to God.