Happy Mother’s Day

My Dear Parishioners,

As I am writing this, I am sitting next to a picture of my own mother. Mom passed away in the summer of 2006. While we never completely get over the passing of a loved one, we do move on with life. Yet, even as we move on in life, we do hold fast to the memories of a loved one, and we honor their memory by copying their virtues and keeping them in prayer.

My mother, by the way, was Italian and of the “second generation” to be born here in America of the Capirose and Caranci families. She was one of four and grew up in Mater Dolorosa Parish in Philadelphia. Her family would later move to the Bensalem area and then to Bristol. She was baptized Carmela but preferred to be called “Kitty.” She was a private person with very strong opinions. Mom was a stay-at-home mom in her younger years and then worked as a nurse’s aide in her later years before retiring.

Mom loved TV, especially her cop shows. Her other loves were Sinatra, house cleaning, doing laundry, black coffee, burnt toast, hot dogs grilled to a crisp, and she especially loved her cigarettes. She hated cooking, and it showed. She loved the Blessed Mother, the Rosary, and the Miraculous Medal, and she of course loved her family. Sadly, her love of cigarettes did cut short her life. She was only 75 when she passed away. If she was still alive, Mom would have been 95 on March 2.

As we remember our biological mothers, we also have the opportunity to remember our “spiritual mothers.” St. John Paul II teaches that all women are called to be spiritual mothers:

Here’s a wonderful attribute of your feminine genius: All women are called to spiritual motherhood. By virtue of being created feminine, the genius behind God’s design of you, body and soul, inherently equips you for motherhood. All women have the gift of maternity, and it is lived in two ways: physical motherhood and spiritual motherhood. Physical mothers come to mind most obviously. They birth and raise their own biological children, or raise children as adoptive mothers, stepmothers, or foster mothers. Spiritual motherhood means nurturing the spiritual, moral, emotional, and cultural life in others. Not all women give birth to children, yet all women are called to exercise a spiritual maternity in the world — giving care and nurture to others through their own maternal gift. (And, of course, spiritual mothering should be part of every physical mother’s care!)… St. John Paul II describes the universal vocation of all women, not just women who bear children. God entrusts all women, by reason of their femininity — their design — to care for humanity. Maternal care, in a spiritual way, is not limited to childcare, but should be active in all phases of a woman’s life. Spiritual mothering doesn’t smother or infantilize teens or adults but loves and serves them according to the needs of the person one is caring for. It brings a motherly touch to our human relationships, and to our work —especially the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. (Pat Gohen, Catholic Digest, Spiritual Mothers—Like You, September 21, 2013)

At the altar this weekend, I will be remembering all of our mothers, living and deceased, as well I will be remembering both our biological mothers and our spiritual mothers, as I remember my own mother. May God continue to richly reward all mothers for their sacrifices on our behalf. And we wish all of our mothers, a very Happy Mothers’ Day.

This weekend we see the Blessed Apostles, Saints Peter and John, administering the Sacrament of Confirmation. Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

The sacredtextsguide.com website explains the significance of this event: What does Acts 8:14–17 mean? Acts 8:14–17 describes Peter and John traveling to Samaria to pray for and lay hands on newly baptized believers so they could receive the Holy Spirit. The passage establishes that while baptism is genuine and necessary, the fullness of the Spirit’s indwelling comes through apostolic laying on of hands as a distinct sacramental act completing Christian initiation. Key Insight: Confirmation is not the end of religious education—it is apostolic commissioning, the moment the Church breathes the Spirit into you for mission.

Acts 8:15 — Prayer Preceding the Gift On arriving, Peter and John do not immediately impose hands. They first pray. This order

— prayer, then sacramental gesture — is theologically significant. It signals that the Holy Spirit is not commanded by human will but implored from the Father, consistent with Jesus’s promise that “the Father in heaven [will] give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:13). The prayer is not private but liturgical and communal, performed in the presence of the assembled Samaritan believers. The object of the prayer is explicitly stated: hina labōsin Pneuma Hagion — “that they might receive the Holy Spirit.” This phrase presupposes that the Spirit is a distinct, identifiable gift, a person who “comes upon” believers in a perceptible and transformative way.

Acts 8:16 — The Distinction Between Baptism and the Spirit’s Conferral This verse is exegetically pivotal: “for as yet he had fallen on none of them. They had only been baptized in the name of Christ Jesus.” Luke’s explanatory gar (for) introduces a careful distinction. These believers were genuinely, validly baptized — Luke does not question the baptisms Philip performed. Yet something specific remained outstanding: the Spirit had not yet “fallen” (epipeptōkos) upon them. The verb epipiptō is the same Luke uses at Pentecost (Acts 11:15) and in the household of Cornelius (Acts 10:44), carrying the sense of a dramatic, decisive descending. This verse definitively rules out collapsing Confirmation into Baptism as if the two were identical in every respect. Baptism regenerates; the laying on of hands in confirmation bestows the fullness of the Spirit for witness and mission — a pneumatological “completion” of initiation. The phrase “in the name of Christ Jesus” recalls the Petrine formula of Acts 2:38, affirming that the Samaritan baptisms were doctrinally orthodox — the deficiency is not in their baptism’s validity but in their initiation’s completeness.

Acts 8:17 — The Laying on of Hands and the Reception of the Spirit “Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.” The Greek epetithoun is an imperfect, suggesting the gesture was performed individually, person by person — a personal, deliberate act. The result is immediate and real: elambanon Pneuma Hagion — they received the Holy Spirit. This is not metaphor. Simon Magus, witnessing it from outside, could observe something taking place (v. 18), implying a perceptible manifestation, likely similar to what had occurred at Pentecost and in Cornelius’s house. The laying on of hands (cheirotonia in its broader sense, epithesis tōn cheirōn here) is one of the most ancient gestures of blessing and commissioning in Scripture, rooted in the Hebrew semikah — the transfer of authority, blessing, or identity by physical touch (cf. Num 27:18–23; Deut 34:9). Here it becomes the specific sacramental instrument through which apostolic authority mediates the gift of the Spirit.

I hope that you enjoyed this explanation, and we thank the scholars at “sacredtextsguide” for their work and their insights.

Thursday, May 14 is Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord. As we come together on this Holy Day of Obligation, we recall the historical fact that forty days after the Resurrection, Our Blessed Savior Ascended into Heaven. As the Preface prayer for this Liturgy teaches us: He ascended, not to distance Himself from our lowly state, but that we, His members, might be confident of following where He, our Head and Founders, has gone before. Thus, the Feast of the Ascension is really a celebration of the gift of our Catholic Faith that alone keeps us in the Communion of Saints and on the path of Heaven.

This year, all Masses will be on the Feast Day itself at 8:00 AM, 10:00 AM, and 7:00 PM.

As we lift up our mothers in prayer, let us continue to thank God, through His Son, Our Redeemer Jesus Christ, for all of the good gifts He continues to bestow on us, especially the gift of Confirmation and the gift of His Holy Spirit.

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us! St. Joseph, Spouse of Mary and our Patron, pray for us!

Fr. Michael J. Pawelko, Pastor