In this Easter season, seven young people of our parish are celebrating the reception of their First Holy Communion this weekend. As a result, all of our liturgies will be live-streamed.
Charlotte Ann Carlson
Lucy Victoria Clem
Vivian Marie Heimovitz
Graham Patrick McGlone
Sloan Rae Poropat
Anika Therese Rowe
Izadora Giovannini Sellers
Thank you to all who helped them to prepare, and to those who will celebrate with them. May they feel a closeness to Christ today and always. May we who have long received, be reminded of the gift poured out to us at every celebration of the Eucharist. As we prayed last weekend: “...that all may grasp and rightly understand in what font they have been washed, by whose Spirit they have been reborn, by whose Blood they have been redeemed” (Collect, Second Sunday of Easter).
In an excerpt from the 2023 book, “Thirty-three Days to Eucharistic Glory,” one story is recalled:
“One prayer after Communion changed my life. I was thirteen years old and Pope John Paul II was visiting Australia. My father took me to an enormous outdoor Mass. It wasn’t my prayer that changed my life, it was John Paul II’s prayer. His witness. His example.
“Did you ever see Pope John Paul II pray? When this man knelt down to pray after Communion, he would close his eyes and go to a place deep within himself. Once he was there, nothing and no one could distract him from communing with God. What does it mean to commune with God? To share your intimate thoughts and feelings. Pope John Paul II would go to that place deep within himself, and from that place he brought forth the fruit of his life: wisdom, compassion, generosity, understanding, patience, courage, insight, forgiveness, humility, inspiration, and a love so apparent you could almost touch it.
“In those moments after Communion, he allowed nothing to distract him from his prayer. He let nothing draw his attention away from his Divine Visitor in those precious moments after receiving the Blessed Sacrament.
“The amazing thing is this, if you put the same man in a football stadium with a hundred thousand people and a million more distractions, he would still kneel down after Communion, close his eyes, and go to that place deep within him where he connected with God. And he lived his life from that place.
“Find that place within you. Find that place deep, deep within yourself, the place where you can connect with God and your truest self. If you do nothing else with your life, find that place, spend more and more time in that place, and begin to live your life from the deep place” (54).
“We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song!”
- Pope St. John Paul II