Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

In our Gospel this Sunday, our Lord asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  After following our Lord, seeing him work miracles, healing the sick, and getting to know him on a deep, personal level, Peter can declare, on behalf of the Apostles (and thus the Church), “You are the Christ.”  We too are called to have the same deep, personal relationship with our Lord- to grow in holiness!  We too are called to go out to our community, our work, our school, all those we meet, and declare that Jesus is the Christ, the way to the Father.  One way we can grow in holiness, to grow closer to our Lord, is through our suffering.  Christ tells us that if we wish to be his disciples, then we must take up our cross and follow him.   If Christ suffered, then we also are called to do the same.  Where Christ has gone, we hope to follow, if we are faithful to him. 

Our Lord’s journey back to the Father in heaven took him first to the Cross.  We should not be surprised then, that our journey to heaven will take us down a similar path.  Our path can take several different twists and turns, and we don’t always know where we are going, but as long as we take that walk with the Lord and trust in his providential care for us and stay close to the Church and the Sacraments, we know it will lead us to our true home, which is heaven!

I also wanted to take the opportunity to formally introduce myself to you and tell you who I am.  My name is Father William Vagenas and I am the new resident priest here at Our Lady of Mercy.  I (along with my dog, Hope) moved into the rectory about a month ago.  I continue to be overwhelmed with the warm and gracious welcome I have received in that time.  In particular, I want to thank Father Michael and Father Frank.  They have been very accommodating and helpful during this transition. 

A little about me…I grew up in Hinsdale at St. Isaac Jogues where I attended second through eighth grade.  After graduating high school I entered St. John Vianney College Seminary and then continued studies at Mundelein Seminary.  I was ordained in 2012 and served at St. Michael in Wheaton.  After several years away from ministry in the diocese, I was asked to move here to assist with Masses and Confessions during the week and to assist with Masses on Sundays at St. Anne in Oswego.  While I maintain responsibilities outside the parish, I look forward to being with you all for the coming months as, together, we journey closer to God. 

I look forward to meeting so many of you in the coming weeks.  Know of my prayers for all of you.  Please continue to keep me in your prayers. 

May our Lady of Mercy intercede for us all!

Fr. Vagenas

As a third grader I took part in a weekly Bible Camp at a local church. One of the workbook activities asked, “Who first told you about Jesus?” In my case, it was my grandparents who had told me about the faith. As a child, I enjoyed looking at the many images of Jesus and Mary in their house, and my grandma explained to me who they were. As simple as it sounds, this encounter helped prepare for me for my further encounters with Jesus. It helped prepare me as a seven-year-old not only to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, but also to begin thinking about the priesthood. And it helped prepare me as a seminarian to receive the powerful reminder that Jesus does speak to us in prayer. But it all went back to that initial encounter.

Today’s Gospel of the healing of the deaf and mute man is commemorated during the sacrament of Baptism through the Ephphatha Rite. In this Rite, the minister touches the ears and the mouth of the infant and says, “May the Lord Jesus, who made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak, grant that you may soon receive his word with your ears and profess the faith with your lips, to the glory and praise of God the Father.” Jesus’ physical healing of the man in today’s Gospel points to a deeper spiritual meaning, that Jesus opens our ears to receive His Word, and our lips to proclaim it.

In order to proclaim the faith, we first have to receive it with our ears. This is where it can be helpful to return to that moment when the faith was first proclaimed to us. This reminds us how God has been drawing us closer to Himself throughout our lives, but it also can reveal to us places where we need to grow. Even if we have already had a lifechanging encounter with Jesus, that encounter is only the beginning. We still need to ask Him to keep the ears of our hearts open to hear when He is speaking to us.

When we do this, we are allowing the Holy Spirit to equip us to proclaim that same Gospel to others. But the key word to remember here is the word of Jesus: “Ephphatha,” which means “be opened.” We need to be open to the action of the Holy Spirit, so that He can help us to know when it is the right time to share the Gospel with others, but also to realize that even though we are the ones proclaiming the Gospel, it is the Holy Spirit Who moves their hearts to encounter Him.

As we return to that moment when our ears and hearts were first opened to the love of Christ, we also ask Jesus to help us to continue to be open to Him. This openness to Christ can then allow us to be the one who first introduced another person to Jesus.

Father Frank

I’ve encountered people, even in my own family, who would like to be spiritual, but not religious.  If I had to name the reason for that statement, it would probably have to do with their disapproval of rules and statutes that are involved with being religious. At the foundation of who we are as humans is the realization that we were meant for communion and relationship. And what is religion, but people coming together in communion to practice rules and statutes? Hence, we were actually meant to be religious people, not separate from religion and only spiritual.

Our first reading reveals God calling on the Israelite people to observe His statutes and decrees, forming them as a people in the faith. In our second reading, St. James confirms that the people of God are called to be “doers of the word”, and not only listen on the sidelines.  Yet in our Gospel, it might seem that the Lord is telling us not to follow religious practices… So what are we to do?

Have you ever noticed a time when rules can actually be a good thing?  I remember being trained in manners for a formal dinner. Knowing which fork to use, which glass is yours, etc… actually gives you the freedom to enter into conversation with the others at the table.  If you are too worried about which bread plate is yours, you can’t be free to enjoy the evening! In this case, rules give us freedom and open us to relationship. Our faith is likewise; if we live out the statutes of our faith, we actually enter into deeper relationships with God and neighbor.

What about rules in the confines of a sport? From baseball, football, lacrosse, and soccer to hockey, each sport has its own rules. Those who master the game, master their knowledge of all the rules involved in order to compete well. If the rules constantly change, the sport becomes irrelevant.  Our faith is likewise. If we want to enter into the depth of our faith well, we will need to understand and live by the statutes that the Lord lays before us.

So what is Christ getting at in the Gospel? The rules and statutes that Jesus rebukes are those that removed the focus from God and others, and instead focused on the individual pride and ego. The Pharisees and scribes had been separating themselves from the people they were called to serve.  They were giving the impression that they were following the rules God commanded, but their hearts were far from God. They kept piling up expectations upon the Jewish people, while ignoring the pride, evil, and greed growing within their hearts. This is a reminder to us that we must never forget to keep our focus on God, and how to grow closer to him as we dive deeper into the rules and statutes of our faith. We must always remember the “why” behind them.

Our faith does have rules, but they are ultimately there so we can enter deeply into our relationship with God and others, and have life to the full!

Father Michael

At the first wedding I celebrated, I said to the couple, “Since this is my first time celebrating a wedding, I will probably make some mistakes, but since this is also your first time getting married, hopefully, you won’t be able to tell the difference. But while I hope that I will witness many other marriages after this one, I hope this is your only wedding.”

Over the last couple weeks, we have been working our way through Jesus’ teaching on the Bread of Life, the Eucharist, and this weekend, we have reached the end of the chapter. In conjunction with the Second Reading, we discover a profound connection between the Eucharist and marriage.

In the Second Reading, in speaking of marriage, St. Paul writes, “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.” That word—mystery—was translated into Latin as sacramentum, from which we get our word “sacrament.” The word sacramentum referred to an oath taken by a soldier. This captures an important aspect of the sacraments, that they are our oath of faithfulness to God’s covenant.

A bride and groom seal their vows to each other by saying “I do,” promising to be faithful “in good times and in bad.” When we come forward to receive the Holy Eucharist, we respond “Amen.” Amen means “I believe,” but it also has that sense of sealing the covenant with God.

When Jesus tells the crowd to eat His flesh and drink His blood, many of the disciples return to their old way of life. As a result, Jesus turns to His apostles and says, “Do you also want to leave?” But when Jesus asks this, it is in a time of distress, and that’s what makes Peter’s response so much more impressive: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Whenever we encounter a moment of difficulty, when we feel God is far away, Jesus addresses that same question to us: “Do you also want to leave?” And we are called to that same fidelity to Christ in the moments of dryness as when we feel close to Him. In fact, our faith has the potential to grow even stronger in those moments because we are making the choice to love God for Himself rather than for the good feelings He gives us.

I’ve been a witness to many more weddings since then, and one thing I always like to remind the couple is that the wedding is just one day while a marriage is for life. The same is true of our faith. While we have those times of closeness to Jesus where it is easy to say “amen” to God, it is in the difficult moments that we truly live out our faithfulness. As we come forward to receive the Body of Christ at Mass, may we say “amen” to our relationship with Jesus, in that moment, but also in all the moments of our lives.

Father Frank

Understanding our Catholic faith and beliefs are important.  In a world where there are countless beliefs, many that are contrary to our faith, it is important to study and learn our own faith. However, with the globalization of many cultures, some people will try to avoid conflict and take a universal approach by accepting all beliefs as “equal but different.”  Or, in order to avoid conflict all together without rejecting their own beliefs, they will say, “I agree to disagree.”  

I, however, would like challenge us with a simple fact: belief leads to action. This means that right beliefs leads to right action, and wrong belief leads to wrong action.  Therefore, it is important to practice right beliefs. For example, if I don’t believe there is anything wrong with my weight or health when I’m overweight and out of shape, I won’t change my habits to correct it. 

That’s why I’m grateful for not only these last few years of our Eucharistic revival in the Catholic Church in the U.S., but these last few weeks at Mass as we proclaimed the 6^th chapter of the Gospel of John, also known as “The Bread of Life Discourse.”  The Lord confirms what we truly believe as he states, “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven, whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Even as the Jews seem to quarrel, Jesus doubles down “Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”

This belief should draw us to right action! It should stir up in us the desire to receive our Lord, to be with our Lord, and to encounter the depth of his love in the Eucharist. Recently, I was approached and asked the following question, “I am away from the Lord, but how can I grow in my relationship with Jesus?”  My response was to seek out the Sacraments. We truly believe that God acts in them and that through them He encounters us. Seek out the Sacrament of Confession, the Anointing of the Sick, and never, I repeat never, separate yourself from the Eucharist!  Do these simple things and you will never be far from the Lord.  Even Jesus makes it clear, “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” May we always be grateful to have received the great gift of the Catholic Faith, and these incredible truths that Jesus himself shares with us.

Father Michael