August 24th, 2025 – Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Strange blessings never in Paradise fall from these beclouded skies.”
(Edwin Muir, One Foot in Eden)
Dear Friends,
We remember and pray for all those affected by the rain these past weeks, and anyone who has struggled with catastrophes, personal, familial, communal, here and throughout the world!
We hear in today’s second reading from the letter to the Hebrews: “Endure your trials as “discipline.” When you are in the midst of any storm or the ensuing messes that remain, it is hard to see any good come out of things. Exhaustion, depression, fear, doubt— the litany of very real human emotions could go on, yet we see Jesus in the gospel inviting us to widen our horizon by narrowing our expectations. The gate to meaning is narrow and sometimes is just a “step-ata-time” and “let’s wait and see where things go” type of reasoning. Christ’s eternal perspective is always there, but we in our limits need to grow into it! Our discipline involves patience.
I always say one of my favorite phrases is: “This too shall pass.” But time and time again, I have experienced that things I thought would defeat me in fact strengthened me to go on to new growth.
Praying we all look at our beclouded skies, and see the proverbial silver lining of Jesus Christ, who in the sacrificial love for us opens up the door to infinite possibilities.
Let’s continue to pray for each other!
Fr. Tim
August 17th, 2025 – Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
What are you passionate about? What stirs up the fire within you?
For some of us, it’s the demands of justice—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, providing drink for those who thirst, freeing those wrongly imprisoned, and making a home for the stranger—that brings forth fire. Others among us are passionate about prayer and the spiritual life. And then, of course, we have those relationships that we protect fiercely. These are good and worthy… and they are also intimately connected, since we can never compartmentalize our relationships, spirituality, and the work for justice.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, we are given a sense of the passion that is burning within the heart of Jesus: the Reign of God. This fiery passion of Jesus might even startle us, as he proclaims his desire that the world— and the hearts of his disciples—might also burn with the same fire that consumed him.
As we continue our journey through Ordinary Time, reflecting on the demands of our discipleship and what it means to truly live the faith we profess, we pray that the fire that burned in the heart of Jesus might also burn within us, as we recall the words of Saint Catherine of Siena: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”
In the Divine Savior,
Fr. Silas, SDS,
August 10th, 2025 – Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
During my theological studies in seminary, I came across the writings of a great theologian, St John Henry Newman, an Anglican priest who was exiled from his birth-country due to his controversial take on the Church of England. Nineteenth century England was marked with a rampant secular culture that threatened the nation’s religious identity. Moreover, the gap of division between the Church of England and Rome expanded due to political tensions. Meanwhile, notable academics from the University of Oxford began the so-called Oxford Movement seeking to restore Anglicanism to its Catholic origins, especially in terms of liturgy and doctrine. After publishing his Tract 90, arguably the most controversial take on the Church of England at the time, Newman was ousted from the church that baptized him and made him a priest.
But a man who thirsts for truth never rests until he finds it. In 1845, Newman officially left the Anglican Church and was welcomed by Rome, quite literally. This transition was not simply a matter of convenience, but rather, an inevitable fate due to Newman’s discovery of the writings of the Church Fathers, which awakened in him a desire to “come home”. Thus, for Newman, Rome was home.
Upon his arrival in the eternal city, Pope Leo XIII welcomed him with open arms and in recognition of his services to the cause of the Roman Catholic Church in England, he made Newman a cardinal on May 12, 1879. From there on, Cardinal Newman spent the rest of his life writing poetry, music and producing pivotal theological material, exploring topics like the development of doctrine, which had not been articulated to the extent that Newman did. In a way, Newman initiated a new revival of the writings of our forefathers. Ironically, it took a former Anglican to help us rediscover the doctrinal origins of our tradition.
John Henry Cardinal Newman was canonized on October 13, 2019 by Pope Francis. On July 31, Pope Leo XIV officially announced the elevation of this saintly man to the rank of a Doctor of the Church. Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Ariel
Heart speaks to Heart
(Images and translation taken from Wikipedia)
August 3rd, 2025 – Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Dear Sisters & Brothers,
On Monday, the Church celebrates the memorial of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. In light of this, I would like to share a daily prayer for priests that I came across when I was in my teens.
O almighty eternal God, look upon the face of your Christ, and for love of Him who is the eternal High-priest, have pity on your priests. Remember, O most compassionate God, that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the bishop’s hands. Keep them close to you, lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation.
O Jesus, I pray to you for your faithful and fervent priests; for your unfaithful and tepid priests; for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for your tempted priests; your lonely and desolate priests; for your young priests; for your aged priests; for your sick priests; for your dying priests; or the souls of your priests in purgatory.
But above all I commend to you the priests dearest to me: the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me your Body and Blood in Holy Communion; the priests who taught and instructed me or helped me and encouraged me; all the priests to whom I am indebted in any way, particularly . . . . . . . . . . . . . O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.
I ask you to please remember all priests in your daily prayers.
