Thank you to everyone who attended, volunteered, organized, or sponsored our Carnival at Notre Dame de Lourdes. Good food, good times, and weather that thankfully was not as wet as forecasted. Thank you again for your support. The funnel cake was well worth the wait.
Reminder of our Parish Breakfast at the Our Lady of Peace School building on Sunday, 15 October. Thank you to McCausland Garrity Marchesani Funeral Home for sponsoring the event.
Also, a reminder of our Parish Forty Hours devotion that begins today after the 11:30 a.m. Mass at Our Lady of Peace Church. Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament will occur each day of the devotion until 7:00 p.m. Closing Benediction will be on Tuesday evening at 7:00 p.m. followed by a social in the OLP Gym.
Wednesday, 11 October is the 61st anniversary of the Opening of the Second Vatican Council. Pope John XXIII, in January of 1959, declared his intention to convene an Ecumenical Council. Pope John believed that the Church was entering into a new age that was no longer Euro-centric but global. He believed that the Church had a responsibility to dialogue with the fast-paced world of technology, science, economics, and social activism. Pope John envisioned the council to be unlike any other in the history of Catholicism – proactive to the times rather than being reactive to a crisis, schism, or heresy. It was to be a council of mercy, and hope where people could experience the joy of the Gospel. Pope John wanted “to throw open the windows of the Church so that the Church can see out and the people can see in.”
In the spirit of the anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the Universal Phase of the 16th Synod began at the Vatican on Wednesday, 4 October. The Universal Phase is the fourth stage of a process that began in 2021 with local, national, and continental conferences to prepare for this three-week gathering at the Vatican of more than three hundred individuals.
The Synod’s aim, per the website, is to provide an opportunity for the entire people of God to discern together how to move forward. The purpose of the Synod is not to produce documents but to plant dreams, draw forth prophecies and visions, allow hope to flourish, inspire trust, bind up wounds, weave together relationships, awaken a dawn of hope, learn from one another and create a bright resourcefulness that will enlighten minds, warm hearts, give strength to our hands. The Theme of the Synod is Communion, Participation, and Mission.
Communion: The communion we share finds its deepest roots in the love and unity of the Holy Trinity. Together, we are inspired by listening to the Word of God, through the living Tradition of the Church and grounded in the sense of faith that we share. We all have a role to play in discerning and living out God’s call for his people.
Participation: Participation is based on the fact that all the faithful are qualified and are called to serve one another through the gifts they have each received from the Holy Spirit in baptism. In a synodal Church the whole community is called together to pray, listen, analyze, dialogue, discern, and offer advice on making pastoral decisions which correspond as closely as possible to God’s will.
Mission: Our mission is to witness to the love of God in the midst of the whole human family. This Synodal Process has a deeply missionary dimension to it. It is intended to enable the Church to better witness to the Gospel, especially with those who live on the spiritual, social, economic, political, geographical, and existential peripheries of our world.
The Adsumus Sancte Spiritus – We Stand before you, Holy Spirit – is the prayer that began every session of the Second Vatican Council. This prayer has also been historically used at Councils, Synods, and other Church gatherings.
We stand before you, Holy Spirit, as we gather together in your name. With you alone to guide us, make yourself at home in our hearts; teach us the way we must go and how we are to pursue it. We are weak and sinful; do not let us promote disorder. Do not let ignorance lead us down the wrong path nor partiality influence our actions. Let us find in you our unity so that we may journey together to eternal life and not stray from the way of truth and what is right. All this we ask of you, who are at work in every place and time, in the communion of the Father and the Son, forever and ever. Amen.