As we enter into the season of Advent & begin a new Church year we are invited & encouraged to pay attention for the new ways that God comes among us. As we draw closer to our celebration of Christmas when we celebrate the historical coming of Jesus into our world, we start the Advent season by focusing on Jesus’ coming at the end of time.

In one of my columns last month, I talked about some of  the insights that I had gleaned at our Priests’ Convocation that we had at the beginning of the month.  Over time I hope to share with you some of those insights with you.  This week I want to share some insights that I gained about splitting my time each week between both parish offices.

In just a few weeks we will begin the season of Advent, entering into a new liturgical year. The season of Advent invites us to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus into our lives. One of the ways that we can do that, one of the ways that we can prepare ourselves to recognize the ways that Christ comes among us is by taking time in silence & prayer.

The beginning of October found me gathering with 200+ brother Priests of the Diocese out in Huron at Sawmill Creek Resort for our biannual Priests’ Convocation. I remember when I was in the seminary that the week of the Priests’ Convocation was somewhat a week of vacation with all of our Priest professors being away.

One of the great forms of prayer in our Church is intercessory prayer. So many of us have people & causes that we pray for on a regular, sometimes even daily basis. We pray for people who are sick, people who have died, we pray for peace, we pray for the unemployed, just to name a few. There are many ways and forms that we could ask our Lord’s intercession, one of those ways that we are very familiar with is through the offering of Masses.

As we enter into the month of October, I wanted to look at some upcoming events you might be interested in marking on your calendar.

Over the next few weeks we will be rolling out a new opportunity for you to be able to do everything from share your thoughts & suggestions, to getting information about various ministries & ways to be involved around the parish, (for when someone new visits us) to begin the process of joining our parish family. These boxes will be found, starting with the first weekend of October, October 1st & 2nd, at the doors of the Church.

This weekend, I’d like to extend an invitation to each and every member of our parish family. That invitation is this, to consider how we might be able to help us continue the mission of the Kingdom of God here at St. Vincent de Paul.

St. Theresa of Calcutta once said, “There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.”

When we engage in prayers of praise we are praising God for who & what He is. The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph #2639 says that praise, "lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because HE IS. It shares in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in faith before seeing him in glory.”

Prayers of petition are very similar to the prayers of intercession that we looked at last week, with one difference, their focus. While in prayers of intercession we are interceding for the needs of others, when we pray prayers of petition, we are bringing, not the needs of others, but our own needs before God. We intercede for others, we petition for ourselves, I guess that you could say. 

This weekend, we continue our look at the different forms of prayer by looking at prayers of intercession. My guess that this is one of the most familiar prayers that many of us pray. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that, “Intercession is a prayer of petition which leads us to pray as Jesus did,” (2634). Praying for the living and the dead is also a spiritual work of mercy. We offer prayers of intercession every day and every week at Mass.

This week I wanted to start with adoration, simply because it comes first in alphabetical order. In prayers of adoration, we adore the greatness of God and our dependence upon Him for everything. Prayers of adoration also remind us of our own hu- mility. When we take time to focus on how great our God is and all that He is and all that He’s done for us we come to realize just how great our need for God is..

All-too-often we are confronted in our country, but also in our world, with terrible acts of hatred and violence. In recent weeks that list has grown to include places like Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. When tragedy and violence strike, one of our natural reactions is to offer our thoughts and prayers to those whose lives have been impacted. Certainly, as people of faith, that is what we’re called to do, bringing before our God the needs of people throughout our world. We must keep praying!

St. Medardus is a Saint who is popular in the northern regions of France, so chances are pretty good that here in the northern regions of Ohio, we’ve never heard of him. Medardus was born into a noble French family around the year 456 and from his youngest years, he displayed a deep care for the poor.

Our country and society seem to be becoming more divided and more hostile by the day, if not by the hour. As we see all this taking place, we certainly want to stand form in the truths of our faith and what God has revealed to us, but how do we do that in the face of a society that in so many ways doesn’t want to hear what we have to say? How do we enter into these dialogues and conversations?

This weekend, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension, marking the time when the risen Christ ascended to be with His Father in heaven. But, did you know that while we celebrate the Ascension this weekend, if you had been in a few other parts of the country...Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Omaha, and Philadelphia...you would have celebrated the Ascension on Thursday and today you would have heard the readings and prayers for the 7th Sunday of Easter? Yes, it sounds confusing. Why do some parts of the country celebrate this Solemnity on Thursday while so many other parts celebrate it today?

Sometimes we all find someone or something in life that causes us stress and anxiety. Sometimes there are things that other people do or say that drive us crazy or that leave us shaking our heads, wondering what’s going on. Sometimes there are things that other people do or say that we look at and wonder why. And, if we’re honest, sometimes there are times where others wonder or say those things about us.

Hi there, everyone! It’s Fr. John’s “Boss” Angel again! My dad told me that many people enjoyed when I helped him with his column for Palm Sunday, so he asked me if I would be willing to help him by writing a column once a month. I told him that for a few extra treats a day, I’d be willing. My dad agreed, so here we are with the second installment of Angel’s Angle’s (I came up with the name all by myself, don’t let my dad tell you any different and take any of the credit).

This weekend, allow me to wish all of our mothers and grandmothers a Happy & Blessed Mother’s Day! There are not enough words to describe all that a mother does and no amount of pay would be enough for what she truly deserves. This weekend we offer special prayers for all of our mothers living and deceased.