Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity, one of the few doctrinal feasts on the Church calendar. As Chris Kozlowski’s reflection on this week’s Connecting Point makes clear, the concept of the Trinity is a mystery and hard to fully understand. However, one image of the Trinity that was used by some of the early Church fathers is that of a circle dance. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are pictured as holding hands, dancing in a circle! This points our belief that God is a COMMUNITY of persons. What is happening in heaven is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are becoming one. They are forming community.
Belief in community is at the heart of our Catholic faith. We believe that Christ and the Spirit come to us through and in community. The reason we expect all Catholics to come together every week in celebrating the Eucharist is so we can grow and be strengthened as a community. We can’t build a community with people we don’t see or get to know. The Trinity is the model of what we as a parish and a Catholic worshiping community want to become!
Sharing the Eucharist and public worship are the best ways to build community. However, for many years the annual Strawberry Festival has been a great community builder for us at St. Isidore. I am convinced that the Festival has played a vital role in forming and strengthening our parish family. By over seven hundred of us working together to put on the Festival, and so many of us coming together to experience the countless means of enjoyment at the Festival, we get to know each other better, form lasting friendships, and build a stronger community. BUILD COMMUNITY is one of the three pillars of our parish. With this in mind, I strongly encourage you to join us for the Festival next week and bring family and friends. If you have not had the joy of working on the Festival in the past, and have not as yet signed up to help this year, volunteers are still needed. Please check elsewhere in this bulletin or go the website to sign up.
Also, the annual Run the Plank is a way to build community with our Lutheran brothers and sisters at St. Peter Lutheran and Emmanuel Lutheran churches. While we love our Lutheran friends, there is no way we want them to beat us Catholics in the competition of most participants in the Run. But that is exactly what they have done every year UNTIL NOW. Please consider signing up to participate. The Run is on June 29th. Information is on the website and in the bulletin. Let’s show those Lutherans!!
See you at the Festival,
Fr. Ron
