Feast of St. John Paul II
My Dear Parishioners,
Again, from the bottom of my heart, I wish to thank all who helped to make our Forty Hours a prayerful and beautiful celebration. You know who you are, and you know that Jesus knows what good you have done for Him and for our parish.
I do hope that many answered my call to make our Forty Hours into a mini, in-house, retreat.
Time spent before the Blessed Sacrament is never time wasted but is, in fact, the most productive of time. As we Adore the Sacred Host, Jesus looks deep into our hearts and our souls. He then purifies our deepest longings and sanctifies our deepest intentions. We become more and more like the One we Adore.
Thankfully, we have Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament every Monday. Monday Adoration begins at the end of morning Mass and concludes at 7:30 with the Most Holy Rosary. So, we have that special opportunity each and every week to spend some quality time with the Lord of Lords and King of Kings in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
On Tuesday, we celebrate the Feast of someone near and dear to many of us, St. John Paul II.
One of those moments we all remember is where we were when we heard the news that St. John Paul II was shot. I was in 8th Grade at St. Philip Neri Grade School in East Greenville, PA on Wednesday, May 13, 1981. We were in Mrs. Gerard’s English class when the principal came to the door and motioned to Mrs. Gerard to come out for a moment. She came back visibly shaken and told us the news that the Pope had been shot. She then immediately led us in prayer that he would be alright and that he would recover quickly. What was assuring to us is that Mrs. Gerard never seemed to doubt that our prayers would be answered. Thankfully they were. St. John Paul II would go on to be the Pope for most of my younger years.
His joyful demeanor and obvious love for Jesus, for the Blessed Mother, for the Most Holy Eucharist, for our Catholic Faith, for life, and for us, was truly inspiring and worthy of imitation.
His firm teaching on the Catholic Faith, on right and wrong, on good and evil, and on the serious moral issues of our time gave us clarity and good guidance in very confusing times.
He now intercedes for us before the throne of God.
I am happy to announce that we have a new image of St. John Paul II to continue to help inspire us. The image was donated to our parish by a very good priest friend of mind, Reverend Monsignor Francis Beach. Monsignor Beach is now retired and wanted to share the image and to make sure that it has a good home.
The image will be in the hallway next to the image of Divine Mercy.
I have included an excerpt of St. John Paul II’s message to America which links Freedom and Truth. He reminds us that True Freedom relies on the Truth that only comes from God.
So, please, take a moment before the image, and ask St. John Paul II to reward Monsignor Beach for his generosity to our parish, and to continue to watch over and guide our parish, our nation, our world, and our Church to ever greater holiness.
St. Joseph, Patron of the Church, and our Patron, pray for us!
Fr. Michael J Pawelko, Pastor
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND CANADA MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA MR. RONALD REAGAN ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II*
Vizcaya Museum, Miami, Thursday, 10 September 1987 Mr. President,
I am grateful for the great courtesy that you extend to me by coming personally to meet me in this city of Miami. Thank you for this gesture of kindness and respect.
On my part I cordially greet you as the elected Chief Executive of the United States of America. In addressing you I express my own deep respect for the constitutional structure of this democracy, which you are called to “preserve, protect and defend”. In addressing you, Mr. President, I greet once again all the American people with their history, their achievements and their great possibilities of serving humanity.
I willingly pay honor to the United States for what she has accomplished for her own people, for all those whom she has embraced in a cultural creativity and welcomed into an indivisible national unity, according to her own motto: E pluribus unum. I thank America and all Americans – those of past generations and those of the present – for their generosity to millions of their fellow human beings in need throughout the world. Also today, I wish to extol the blessing and gifts that America has received from God and cultivated, and which have become the true values of the whole American experiment in the past two centuries.
For all of you this is a special hour in your history: the celebration of the Bicentennial of your Constitution. It is a time to recognize the meaning of that document and to reflect on important aspects of the constitutionalism that produced it. It is a time to recall the original American political faith with its appeal to the sovereignty of God. To celebrate the origin of the United States is to stress those moral and spiritual principles, those ethical concerns that influenced your Founding Fathers and have been incorporated into the experience of America.
Eleven years ago, when your country was celebrating another great document, the Declaration of Independence, my predecessor Paul VI spoke to American Congressmen in Rome. His statement is still pertinent today: “At every turn” he said, “your Bicentennial speaks to you of moral principles, religious convictions, inalienable rights given by the Creator”. And he added: “We earnestly hope that… this commemoration of your Bicentennial will constitute a rededication to those sound moral principles formulated by your Founding Fathers and enshrined forever in your history” (St. Paul VI).
Among the many admirable values of this nation there is one that stands out in particular. It is freedom. The concept of freedom is part of the very fabric of this nation as a political community of free people. Freedom is a great gift, a great blessing of God.
From the beginning of America, freedom was directed to forming a well-ordered society and to promoting its peaceful life. Freedom was channeled to the fullness of human life, to the preservation of human dignity and to the safeguarding of all human rights. An experience in ordered freedom is truly a cherished part of the history of this land.
This is the freedom that America is called to live and guard and to transmit. She is called to exercise it in such a way that it will also benefit the cause of freedom in other nations and among other peoples. The only true freedom, the only freedom that can truly satisfy, is the freedom to do what we ought as human beings created by God according to his plan. It is the freedom to live the truth of what we are and who we are before God, the truth of our identity as children of God, as brothers and sisters in common humanity. That is why Jesus Christ linked truth and freedom together, stating solemnly: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8, 32). All people are called to recognize the liberating truth of the sovereignty of God over them both as individuals and as nations.
The effort to guard and perfect the gift of freedom must also include the relentless pursuit of truth. In speaking to Americans on another occasion about the relationship between freedom and truth, I said that as a people you have a shared responsibility for preserving freedom and for purifying it. Like so many other things of great value, freedom is fragile. Saint Peter recognized this when he told the Christians never to use their freedom ‘as a pretext for evil’ (I Peter 2, 16). Any distortion of truth or dissemination of non-truth is an offense against freedom; any manipulation of public opinion, any abuse of authority or power, or, on the other hand, just the omission of vigilance, endangers the heritage of a free people. But even more important, every contribution to promoting truth in charity consolidates freedom and builds up peace. When shared responsibility for freedom is truly accepted by all, a great new force is set at work for the service of humanity. Linked to service, freedom is indeed a great gift of God to this nation. America needs freedom to be herself and to fulfill her mission in the world. At a difficult moment in the history of this country, a great American, Abraham Lincoln, spoke of a special need at that time: “that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom”. A new birth of freedom is repeatedly necessary: freedom to exercise responsibility and generosity, freedom to meet the challenge of serving humanity, the freedom necessary to fulfill human destiny, the freedom to live by truth, to defend it against whatever distorts and manipulates it, the freedom to observe God’s law–which is the supreme standard of all human liberty – the freedom to live as children of God, secure and happy: the freedom to be America in that constitutional democracy which was conceived to be “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.