Blog - October 2022 RSS Feed

Last week, I closed my overview series on the core Gospel message. Bishop Donald Hying of Madison once summarized this message as: God created everything, our sin messed everything up, Christ brings salvation, and we must make a personal response.

On Thursday, October 13th, the 57th annual Mission Dinner was held in Pittsburgh to honor the life-giving, life-sustaining and life-affirming ministry of our Catholic medical missionaries in Chimbote, Peru.

Parishioners were invited to attend an anointing Mass held at Saint Teresa of Avila Church and sponsored by the Ladies of Charity. Father John and Father Jack took part. A variety of photos can be viewed at https://mountcarmelpgh.org/photoalbums/anointing-mass-october-22-2022.

When I started on the theme of the basic Gospel message back on August, it was obvious to me that the central theme of that message was and is love. We experience God’s gratuitous love in the act of Creation and His Sacrificial love in the Incarnation and death of Jesus.

In this edition, we will see how a seminarian spends his summer and holiday breaks, key components of formation. ​​​​​​​During a man’s time at Saint Paul Seminary, he may either spend his summer(s) in a parish (his home parish or another parish in the diocese) or work a summer job.

We have examined the seminary process in great detail. Hopefully, you have learned something about the journey a man takes toward ordination! In this edition, we will see how a seminarian spends his summer and holiday breaks, key components of formation. CLICK TITLE FOR MORE.

We experience God’s gratuitous love in the act of Creation and His Sacrificial love in the Incarnation and death of Jesus. We see how that love triumphs over sin and death through the resurrection and comes to dwell in us through the Holy Spirit. We struggle to accept that love in our lives and seek healing, grace, and mercy in the sacraments. We learn to enact that love in our own lives through prayer, and service, and sacrificial self-giving to others. Finally we will come to experience God’s love in its indescribable fullness, as we enter completely into His presence. CLICK TITLE FOR MORE.

When we think of the end of the world, we don’t tend to think of a loving God. Rather we think wrath, and destruction, and whatever else might have been in those Left Behind books that were popular a couple decades ago.

As we discussed last time, we need to surrender to God to grow in holiness. We need to trust in God. We need to live with God. And this sounds easy enough, since God is a perfect divine being who desires our good more than we even desire it for ourselves.

Over the last couple weeks, we’ve seen how the Holy Spirit and the Sacraments have the power to change our lives. But we have also confronted the reality that sometimes our lives don’t seem to change all that much.