A Message from Fr. David, 6/19/2022

WEEKLY HOLY HOUR WITH EUCHARISTIC ADORATION

We are so excited to announce that beginning Wednesday, June 22nd, St. James will offer a weekly Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration every Wednesday evening from 7pm to 8pm in the church.

Holy hours are the Roman Catholic devotional tradition of spending an hour in Eucharistic Adoration in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. The restlessness and stress of daily life too often keep us from experiencing the peace that the Lord offers us. This peace can be found through an intimate relationship with Jesus in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.

We are fortunate to have this opportunity here at St. James in the church where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed every Wednesday (beginning June 22nd) from 7pm to 8pm, and the second Saturday of the month from 3pm to 4pm.

REFLECTION ON THE READINGS

Have you ever had the experience of getting either to work or getting home and not remembering the drive? I’m sure that this has happened to you. You stroll over to your car, start the engine, and then you realize you’ve made it to your destination without any memory of the commute.

We can easily experience this when we consider our lives as a whole as well… except instead of a 60-minute commute, it’s a sixty-year lifetime! We get so used to the drive, being on the same street and seeing the same things that we can easily miss what is happening around us.

There is a story involving Yogi Berra, the well-known catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron, who at that time was the chief power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. The teams were playing in the World Series, and as usual Yogi was keeping up his ceaseless chatter, intended to distract the Milwaukee batters. As Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying, “Henry, you’re holding the bat upside-down. You’re supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark.” Aaron didn’t say anything, but when the next pitch came, he hit it into the left-field bleachers – a home run! After rounding the bases, Aaron looked at Yogi Berra and said, “I didn’t come up here to read.”

Unlike Hank Aaron, I think too often we are easily distracted by life, even by the ordinary humdrum of the day-to-day. We lose focus of God and so we become less attentive to His presence in our lives. The re- result of this is that it’s easy for us to be dismissive and to discount the small miracles in our lives. And what do we do when we encounter a potential miracle or God-moment?… We shrug it off as mere coincidence with smug skepticism. But there is a part of us that knows that somehow God has worked.

Friends, our participation at Mass and reception of the Eucharist every Sunday is no different. Our relationship with others and with God, the Mass, our spiritual life – all these things can easily become like a car ride that we go on, where, after a while, we no longer notice where we are or what we are doing and where we are going.

But you see, God has given us the ability to see Him working in our lives. We have been given this power. We can choose to gaze at the shadow of God and spot His presence or we can turn a blind eye and excuse what we see and what we experience away. We can choose to see the intricate and beautiful marks of creation – His simple yet mysterious presence in the Bread and Wine – and identify them as God’s fingerprints—or not.

Quote of the Week