The first prayer I recall learning was the “Angel of God.” Way before learning how to pray the Breviary (also called the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office) in the seminary, there I was at 4 years old praying to my Guardian Angel with Mom & Dad at bedtime. I’m sure they were praying it for me every night from the day they brought me home from the hospital… and I just sort of “picked it up” over those many nights.

We know from Mass that just after we all pray the Our Father, and before the Sign of Peace, the priest prays:

“Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your apostles: Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will.”

The people then respond, “Amen!”

Can you believe today is the first day of Autumn? Of course, more importantly to our faith it is the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Every week we gather on the Lord’s Day to celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. Our families and ancestors have done so for thousands of years, since the beginnings of the Church, and we will do so until Jesus comes in glory at the end of the ages.

What a joyful weekend we have (and in this case I am not talking about college football…) September 14 the Church celebrates the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and September 15 we celebrate Our Lady of Sorrows. I recognize that it’s strange to say we celebrate the Cross, the means of Our Savior’s death and Mary under the title of the Sorrowful Mother. You’d think these would be somber days of commemoration, like September 11 or December 7. In particular, the priests and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross are under the special patronage of Our Lady of Sorrows, so this is quite a special day for us.

I heard a politician in Chile tell a story about a government official, from the capital city, going to a small town in the mountains to announce the government was going to be installing a new electrical grid there. This particular town was one of the poorest in the country and very little had changed in a hundred years. The crowd greeted the official's announcement with silence. He went on that the new system would be state-of-the-art, low-cost, and would revolutionize jobs in the area.

It’s the end of the summer here in Arizona. (You wouldn’t know it by the temperatures…) Students are back in school, most everyone is back from vacations, the Cardinals are 0-3 in the pre-season. Yes, summer is giving way to autumn…

For the past few weeks we’ve heard special invitations and information about being baptized as an adult or receiving the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation through the OCIA (Order of Christian Initiation as Adults). Please keep reading this bulletin for more information about the open-house. Ask anyone who’s gone through it over the years and you’ll hear remarkable stories of spiritual transformation or renewal and building community - in many cases lifelong friendships.

Those who are “history buffs” of Early Christianity, as I am, may know that the first Christians in Rome and Greece were infamous among their pagan neighbors for rescuing abandoned babies. Infamous because those first Christians would go out at night and listen for abandoned babies crying. Then they brought the little ones into their homes, protected them, and raised them with love.

We just celebrated the great day on which Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven. Although the Church has always and everywhere believed that Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” it was not formally defined as dogma until 1950. Venerable Pope Pius XII wrote in Munificentissimus Deus (say that a couple times fast…) that Mary “by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.”

To impress your friends you might share with them that the Catholic Church reads through the synoptic gospels on a 3-year cycle at our Sunday Masses. For example last year's weekly gospels were from Matthew and next year will be Luke. That of course means this year we are mostly reading Mark. Mostly, because Mark is the shortest gospel and to "cover" three weeks in the middle of Ordinary Time we have been reading from John 6.

Happy St. John Vianney Day to all in our parish! Today is a very special day indeed, in fact a “solemnity” in our parish, granted by our Bishop and the Church to us in honor of our holy patron, the parish priest of Ars, France, Saint Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (which, being quite a mouthful - and in a French accent - we shortened to John Vianney in English…)