Pastor's Column for October 6, 2024
Dear Parishioners,
I want to express our sympathy to Mickey Stitt on the passing of her sister, Loretta Gorney. Loretta was Mickey’s only sibling and the two of them have been close friends over the years. Loretta and her husband Richard of 62 years had the same strong faith as Mickey has always had, and the family was comforted in the fact that Loretta had received the anointing and Apostolic Pardon before her death. She and her husband have 6 children. Mickey has been coming back to play at funerals and we are very happy to have her continue to share her passion for music with families who are grieving. May Loretta know eternal peace.
Our congratulations to the Heidenreich family on the baptism of Leo this Sunday. May our parish patron, St. Leo the Great, pray for him as he becomes part of the Mystical Body of Christ, a member of the Catholic Church, and a parishioner of St. Leo’s.
This week I will be away (from Tuesday through Friday) at Sawmill Creek Resort in Huron, Ohio for our every-other-year Clergy Convocation, a gathering of all the priests with the Bishop for a week long series of conferences. We also celebrate Mass each day of course and have the opportunity to share meals and fellowship with each other. We will be discussing items related to our ministry as priests of course and the title of this year’s convocation is, “Jesus: the same Yesterday, Today & Forever” (taken from scripture). I ask that you pray for us throughout the week that we may have the grace to serve you well. I will be celebrating Mass at the parish on Monday & Tuesday but Deacon Pat will have a Communion Service on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I will be back to celebrate the weekend Masses.
Congratulations to Ed and Betty Rospotynsky who are celebrating 65 years of marriage! That’s more years than I’ve been alive and I’m happy to be asking God’s blessing on them during the 4pm Mass this weekend. May God bless them with health and happiness and more years together.
I want to share with you something else I read that really struck me that speaks about listening to God’s Word (through Scripture & the Church) concerning all the realities of our public and political lives. Sometimes we think God is speaking to us only about “religious” things but God is Lord of our entire lives, not just what we may consider to be spiritual or religious:
Catholic Christians know what their Lord says by listening to what their Lord's authorized Church teaches in his name—about everything: immigration, the poor, abortion, marriage, the environment, business, law, education, the arts, the media, everything. If Christ is the Lord, he must be the Lord of everything. If he is not the Lord of everything, he is not the Lord of anything.
This cosmic Christocentrism, this universal Lordship of Christ, is omnipresent in the writings of St. Paul—so much so that we do not even notice it anymore, like the air we breathe. Look at how many times Paul brings everything back to Christ, or, as he says in his conclusion to one of his letters, sums up all things in Christ, all things on earth as well as all things in heaven.
—Peter Kreeft in “Food for the Soul”
Fr. James P. Schmitz
