Today’s Feast of Pentecost brings the Easter Season to a close. The high points of our Easter celebration were the Baptism, Confirmation, and First Eucharist of our four neophytes and four candidates for Full Communion with the Church at the Easter Vigil. Equally included were the celebrations of First Eucharist with our Second Graders on April 28 and May 5, as well as the many infant baptisms we celebrated throughout the season. We are reminded that we are an initiating community, always, through the work of the Holy Spirit, giving birth to new members.
Our “neophytes“ (“newly baptized” members), Remi, Ermalinda, Solange, and Joe, have been wearing their white baptismal garments to Mass throughout the season. At 9:30 Mass today we celebrated a special ritual during which they removed that garment as a sign that the final phase of the RCIA process, known as mystagogia, has come to an end. We thank RCIA Coordinator John Kovacik, and our RCIA team of Beth Beebe, Ann DeRey, Bernadette Kovacik, Tim Palmer, and Bill Hicks for their outstanding ministry.
A belated “congratulations” to the twenty-seven high school and college graduates who joined us for our annual Graduation Mass last Sunday, June 2. We are blessed with an outstanding group of young people who are providing us great leadership through their Spirit-filled faith and passion for lives of service. We thank them for sharing this important moment in their life with their faith community.
The end of the Easter Season is an appropriate time to acknowledge and thank those of our parish community who serve our parishioners at the funeral celebration, or Mass of the Resurrection, upon the death of a loved one. This includes our Resurrection Choir, our Funeral Mass Servers, the leaders of the Prayer Vigil at the Funeral Home, and our Funeral Luncheon teams.
This adds up to over one hundred of our parishioners who give generously of their time in performing both the corporal act of mercy “bury the dead,” and the spiritual act of mercy “console the grieving.” It is also a time when we offer hospitality and witness to our faith to those who are unchurched, or have wandered away from their faith community. In other words, this is a powerful tool of evangelization.
The Strawberry Festival is just two weeks away. Please check out ways to support the Festival found elsewhere in this bulletin and on our parish app and website, and invite family and friends to join us that weekend to enjoy our St. Isidore hospitality. We are reminded that the Festival is integral to our parish pillar to BUILD community!
Blessings,
Fr. Ron