Family Occasions, Speaking Heart to Heart

  June 24, 2025 Hello!   How is each and every one? Last Sunday the Church celebrated the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi).   This feast was eventually established as a universal feast by 1264, and soon after the feast was given an “octave”, meaning that the spiritual themes celebrated on Corpus Christi would remain the primary focus of the Church’s liturgy for a total of eight days.   That is where we are today, Tuesday in the Octave of Corpus Christi. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 1374 says:   “The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique.   It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as ‘the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.’ In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.’ ...

June 17, 2025 Live Simple, Stay Happy and Be Healthy Hello! How is each and every one?  As we go through the rest of this month-full of feast days and solemnities in our family, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, let us truly savor and cherish all the blessings being showered over each one of us.  We have been receiving so much love and mercy from our Father God throughout this year, joys and sorrows are so united together like struggle and peace.  I am more and more convinced that they go together and they are doing the good they are allowed to do.  They are occasions or opportunities to respond with thanksgiving and joyful self-giving.  Somebody just responded that she was born to accept, to adjust and to adapt to whatever the good Lord sends her way. She added that she was not born to choose, but to thank God for everything after she realizes everything is good.   Indeed, everything is good because everything that happens is allowed by...

  June 10, 2025 Diocese of Gary Hello!  How is each and every one?   We are on the second week of the month of June, a month-full of feasts and solemnities in the Church.  St. John 20: 19-23 relates:  “In the evening of the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews.  Jesus came and stood among them.  He said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, and showed them his hands and his side.  The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.’ After saying this he breathes on them and said:  ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.’ Sunday of the Ascension of the Lord was followed by Pentecost Sunday, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles. Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11 relates:  When Pente...