"Practice Makes Permanent"

Happy Easter! We are continuing to celebrate the Easter Season! This weekend is a big one for some of the second graders of our parish. They are receiving Holy Communion for the first time! This year we again are breaking them up into smaller groups, so we are having three First Communion Masses, since we have over 60 kids that will be receiving this great Sacrament for the first time this year.

For a while, they have been preparing themselves to receive Jesus into their bodies in a very special way, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. This is what we receive each and every time that we receive Holy Communion. As we are reminded of how special this day is, we can also remind ourselves to ask the question, how do we think of it when we are receiving it? So, how do we honor this, do we grab-and-go, do we snatch Jesus, or do we receive Him with the dignity and respect He deserves? Are we reminded how special of a thing it is to be able to receive Christ and let His body and His blood feed us, both bodily and spiritually?

Yes, this is an important day in the children’s lives as well as their families. We sometimes get caught up in the children dressing so nice, the boys with their nice clothes and ties, the girls in their pretty white dresses. It is a special day. It is a very special and holy event. It should be an incredible experience for them because of who they are receiving. But, as important as the first reception of the Eucharist is, the 2nd, the 10th, the 323rd, etc. is not less special or important for any of us. We sometimes forget how special it is to receive the Blessed Sacrament on a regular basis, as the old saying goes, “what we do daily, sometimes we do dully” or another phrase that I like better, “practice makes permanent”. I invite every one of you to remember your own First Communion (I received mine from Fr. Pat Bacon). Remember how special that day was and what it meant to you. Is receiving Jesus today, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity less special today since it is not the first time?

 The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the source and the summit of our faith. It is an incredible gift that Jesus gave to us to continue to draw us closer and closer to Him! A few years ago it was a stark reminder to me, when we were not able to celebrate Easter together, should have reminded us of what we were missing. Still even now, there are many people that still cannot come together to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and thus are not able to receive Him in the Eucharist. We should take time again and again to remind ourselves how special it is and to receive Him each and every time we come to Mass. The first time is special, but so are all the rest!

God bless,
Fr. Ken

The Sacrament of Confirmation

This weekend we are kicking off our Sacrament season with Confirmation. On Sunday afternoon at 3:00 and during our 6:00 Masses, we welcome Bishop Joensen to celebrate the sacrament of Confirmation for our 10th graders. Over the next few weeks, we will celebrate our First Communion Masses for our second graders, and that is another wonderful time, but we first have this sacrament to celebrate.

Confirmation is a beautiful sacrament because these young adults confirm their faith in Jesus Christ and His Church. Sometimes Confirmation is referred to becoming an adult in the Church, and in some ways that is true, but in other ways it is not. It is being an adult because they will be taking the responsibility of their faith upon themselves but it is not because Confirmation is simply the confirming of their Baptismal promises. One of the wonderful things is that we see the next step in the faith journey for these young people. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states “By the sacrament of Confirmation, [the baptized] are more perfectly bound to the Church and are enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence, they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed.” This weekend we pray that these young people will accept the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are being called upon them.

It is interesting the timing of the Sacrament, because it was not the way that we celebrated them in the early Church. We would receive the Sacrament of Baptism first, like always, but then we would celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation shortly before we would receive First Holy Communion. There are many theories to why we changed the order, but that is the way we are celebrating them now, and it does give the students a bit more maturity to be able to take on the responsibility to accept the faith in a more adult way.

One of the great things that we can do is to pray for these students as they prepare their hearts and minds to receive this gift of the Holy Spirit. We pray that God will continue to guide them and that we ourselves will continue to allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit, so we can spread and defend the faith by our words and deeds. The prayer that will be said to them kind of sums up what they are to receive. “All-powerful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by water and the Holy Spirit you freed your sons and daughters from sin and gave them new life. Send your Holy Spirit upon them to be their helper and guide. Give them the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence. Fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe in your presence.” I ask that each one of us will pray for these families as they receive the sacrament of Confirmation.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Happy Easter!

We are continuing the Easter Season, and will for a while. During this season, we are reminded of the Resurrection accounts in our readings, and this weekend we have the road to Emmaus account. We can only imagine the scene that is going on here. The disciples were sad and confused in the beginning of this account, but then they were led to being excited and overjoyed, even while still being a bit confused. They were on a journey, and they had an encounter with Christ on it, and were left with the excitement of seeing him again, an excitement that led them to run back the seven miles as it was getting dark. Just like these disciples, we all have the journey of our lives, and we encounter Jesus on it, and also like the disciples sometimes do not recognize him, but we always need to be looking out for him and be ready to respond to that encounter when it does happen. Our journeys sometimes are straight, but they are also filled with distractions, twists, and turns. They are sometimes fast and seem to last a short time, but in other times, they can seem very slow and are taking forever.

Here in the parish and school journey, we are in a lull time this weekend. We have finished the Passion of Jesus in the Triduum, we have celebrated his Resurrection during the Octave of Easter, and we have celebrated his forgiveness and grace in Divine Mercy Sunday. But next weekend, things pick back up again here with Confirmations that will be at 3:00 and during the 6:00 pm Mass, so just a warning the 6:00 Mass on the 30th will be very busy! Following that, we begin our celebration of First Holy Communion for a good size group of children. The next month or so is going to be pretty busy around here as well. Even though things are “busy” they are very good and wonderful things, especially for those children who will be receiving these sacraments and their families. I have a priest friend that warns me all the time that “busy” can be a four-letter word, and it can because we can use it as an excuse to not do something important. We can easily get caught up in the busyness of our lives, with sports, school stuff, dance, travel, etc., that we do not make time for our faith lives. It is sometimes easier to stay “busy” instead of spending the time in prayer. Many times in my priesthood, I have talked to people and they have told me that they wish that they spent more time with their children teaching them their faith and practicing it. Never once, have I ever heard someone say that they wish that they would have taken their children to more sporting events or extra-curricular activities, or spent more time at work. So, as we continue this path of the Easter season, we should all be reminded that our journey always should include our Lord and Savior who gave us the gift of new life at the end of our personal journey.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Divine Mercy Sunday

This weekend we finish what is called the Octave of Easter, the first week of the Easter Season. Our celebration of Easter, along with Christmas, is so important that the Church continues to celebrate it not just one day, but for an entire week. This whole week is a continual celebration of the greatest events of human history. Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God has risen from the grave and conquered even death itself for our sake.

This wonderful week concludes with another celebration, that of Divine Mercy Sunday. This is a relatively new feast day that was instituted by St John Paul II and focuses on the incredible mercy that God offers us. In Holy Scripture, Jesus is the one that talks about the judgement of God more than anyone, but he is also the one who talks about the mercy of God more than anyone, and they are tied together. This feast day is based on the writing of St Faustina Kowalska and her vision of Jesus who came to her. This is what she wrote in her diary: "In the evening, when I was in my cell, I became aware of the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment. One hand was raised in blessing, the other was touching the garment at the breast. From the opening of the garment at the breast there came forth two large rays, one red and the other pale. In silence I gazed intently at the Lord; my soul was overwhelmed with fear, but also with great joy. After a while Jesus said to me, 'paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the inscription: Jesus, I trust in You.'" The image that came to St Faustina is one that she painted and is now known all over the world with the red and the white representing the blood and the water that came from His side.

This Sunday at St. Luke the Evangelist Church we are celebrating the Divine Mercy of God with Adoration and Fr. Ryan, Fr. Ken, and Fr. Ross Parker will be available for Confessions starting at 2:00 PM and lasting until just before 3:00 in which we will pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy followed by Benediction and Reposition of the Blessed Sacrament. This is a wonderful time to just sit and reflect in front of the Blessed Sacrament and give the greatest sacrifice that we can offer to God, and that is our time with Him. His mercy is far greater than anything that we can imagine and Jesus wants us to leave our sins with Him, and reminds us the same things that he tells the woman caught in adultery, “I do not condemn you of your sins, but go and sin no more.” I would invite everyone to spend some time this Sunday, with our Lord and Savior reflecting on His Divine Mercy.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Rejoice, Christ is Risen! Alleluia, Alleluia

We have again made it to the most wonderous season of Easter. I always marvel at the fact, that on Ash Wednesday I think how far Easter is away, and when I get to Easter, I think, how fast the Lenten season goes. It is a busy time around the parish and school. We have lots of extra Confession times during Lent, and usually we have other events going on as well. So, how did the Lenten fasting go? Hopefully it went well and helped us to refocus ourselves.

For the last six weeks during the Lenten season, we have also fasted from using the word Alleluia. It is a word of rejoicing and praise and it is one of the few words that we do not translate. If it were translated it would roughly mean, “All hail to him who is.” Easter is the season of rejoicing; we have come from a season of fasting and penance to the season of joy. It is joyful because Jesus Christ who once was dead, is now alive, He has Risen. In fact, that was one of the greetings that ancient Christians gave to each other. They would say, “The Lord is risen” and the reply would be “He has risen indeed.” This time of year, we go from the dark violet color in the Church to the red that symbolizes the blood of Christ pouring out onto the ground, to the white of new life in the resurrection. During the spring time we have new life all around us, we have baby livestock being born, we have the grass and trees turning greener, and we have the trees blooming soon. This cycle of life on earth is an important one, but the most important one is that new life of the resurrection. That is what we celebrate in this wonderful Easter Season. In this Easter season, we celebrate not just the beginning of life, we celebrate the end of a life on this earth, and the beginning of a new and eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Yes, Jesus really did die on the cross, but he also raised himself from the tomb, and that is that incredible event that we celebrate today. Easter, like Christmas, is not just a single day that we celebrate, we celebrate for an entire week, called the octave. We celebrate the wonderful gift that God has given us and that is the path that he shows us to eternal life with him.

In this Easter week, take some time to reread the passion, death, and resurrection story of our Lord and savior and then say a prayer in thanksgiving for the wonderful gift that God has given us. He sent His own Son into the world to live our life and to die our death so that we can be shown the path back to the Father.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Looking Forward To A Post-COVID Triduum

Hosanna to the Son of David…

This weekend we celebrate the memory of Christ triumphal entering into the holy city of Jerusalem. The people were praising him and rejoicing that he was coming. They were laying down their cloaks and putting palms over the road for him to ride in on. Just imagine what it was like, the joy and the revelry, the pure excitement at the new King, the Son of David coming into the city…but then it changes. Everything changes within the span of just a few days. Change is nothing new and even having major shifts in our lives like what is happening right now, has happened in the past and is a part of change, some of it we can control, most of it we cannot.

Palm Sunday begins this very holy week, which is the most sacred week of the entire year. It is a week of wildly swinging emotion; it goes from the joy and excitement of Jesus entering into the city of Jerusalem like a king, mounted on a donkey, to an extreme low of the betrayal by a friend, his arrest, imprisonment, condemnation, Way of the Cross, to his death, then back to the joy of the Resurrection. It is such a beautiful and solemn week. It is a week that we witness how far Jesus was willing to go for the redemption of our sins. I was thinking that three years ago, it was just a few of us in the church celebrating this Holy Week, and how hard that was. This year we have everything open and even room to flow over into the gym.

So…how are we planning on celebrating this greatest week of the year? In the early Church, we did not celebrate Christmas, we only celebrated Easter, because it was the day that Christ rose from the dead. This week, we will again celebrate that incredible sacrifice that Christ gave to us, his own life among us, his death, and resurrection. Are we planning on it being just another week of the year, or are we planning on doing something special? I would recommend being a part of the extra liturgies that we have this week with Holy Thursday and Good Friday being wonderful reminders of the sacrifice that Christ did for us.

Next Saturday evening at the Easter Vigil, we will be welcoming in our new members into the Church. As we prepare for our celebration of the passion, death, and resurrection of our Savior, let us be mindful of that great gift He has given us and celebrate it with the wonder, awe, and joy that it is. Our Lenten journey is quickly coming to a close, and next week we will rejoice that the Son of God has returned from death to overcome the power of death to lead us into the eternal joys of heaven. So have a blessed Triduum and Easter, and know that all of you are in my prayers, as we pray and hope for our own resurrection into the kingdom of heaven as we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Why are the Catholic and Protestant versions of the Lord’s Prayer different?

Can you believe that there are only two more weeks of Lent? How is the prayer, fasting, and almsgiving going? The good thing is that we still have some time. We can easily get back into prayer and one of the greatest prayers we have is the Lord’s Prayer.

So why are the Catholic and the Protestant versions of the Lord’s Prayer different? For most of us who have prayed the Lord’s Prayer or Pater Noster with someone from a Protestant background and are sometimes surprised that when we stopped at “deliver us from evil”, the Protestant went on “for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.” We sometimes do not know what to do when they do this, is it okay to continue with them, of course, is it ok to say Amen and stop, of course.

We know the words because they are familiar. We say a version of it every time we go to Mass, it is called a doxology, which is a short phrase or song that gives glory to God. Within the Mass and after we pray the Our Father, the priest says “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant us peace in our days that by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress as we wait the blessed hope of the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” We respond with that doxology “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever.” This section was not in the Tridentan rite Mass, which is the liturgy that was used from before the Council of Trent in 1569, or previous liturgies. The doxology was added to the liturgy post-Vatican II. This liturgy was established in 1970 and then updated a few years ago with some fixes in the translations. It is the liturgy that we are currently using.

There are two places where Jesus gives us the “Our Father,” it is in Matthew 6:9-13 and in Luke 11:2-4. Both the Catholics and the Protestants take the prayer from the Matthean version, because the Lucan version is a shorter one. The reason for this could be that Jesus taught the prayer at different times for a different audience. In some of the oldest texts of the bible the doxology is not used, there are different theories how it got added to the biblical texts from different other sources including in a non-biblical text called the Didiche, which is a catechism or teaching document that was attributed to the Apostles themselves. Another of the main reasons is very simple; some people believed that the prayer should not end in evil, or the evil one, as it does. So, the doxology that we say at the Mass was included in the prayer itself. Since the original prayer was written in Greek, there is also another translation thing that happens, changing the word trespasses to debt, this is more of a translation difference. No matter what, the Lord’s Prayer is still the prayer that Jesus himself taught us and one that should be prayed daily, if not multiple times a day.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

WARNING, THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR CHILDREN!

Warning, this article is not for children.

This weekend many of the parishes in the diocese are participating in the Safe Haven project. This deals with a very delicate and uncomfortable topic and that is pornography. Because of the number of smaller children that we have in the parish, I have chosen not to put out materials related to it, but since many of the children do not read the bulletin article, I am going to share some information this way.

Currently the statistics are very bleak, the average age for the first encounter with hard core pornography is down to nine years old and some studies state that almost half of high-schoolers regularly view or are addicted to pornography. That statistic includes both girls and boys. One of the sad realities is that young people are increasingly exposed to more and more adult materials and at younger and younger ages. This means that they are often seeing these materials as normal adult behaviors and normal sexual encounters. Many of these sites promote older with younger partners, as well as violent, abusive, and controlling encounters. This is what they are experiencing as the way that sex is supposed to be. We, of course, know that this is not the case, the act is intended for the marital embrace between a man and a woman in the sacrament of marriage. With the ease and availability of pornographic material the rates of addiction are soaring and the fastest growing rate is girls. In my younger years, someone would need to go to a store and purchase or rent the material in person, now, one is able to simply pull out their phone or turn on their computer and within seconds anonymously are able to see just about anything that they want. We can do this from pretty much anywhere that we want.

There is some hope though. There are resources that we can use to help us. There is software available that we can install on any device that will filter unwanted material. While we are not able to see what our children are looking at online, we can make some modifications to help protect them. This also goes for us as adults, many people suffer from this addiction and studies show that pornography is as addictive as cocaine, however many think that pornography is not harmful. In my previous career, I saw people fired from their job or end up divorced for this very addiction. There is help, if you are struggling with it, or a family member is struggling with it. On the dmdiocese.org website, under the marriage and family life tab, there are resources listed. You are also welcome to talk to Fr. Ryan, myself, or someone else that you trust about it. There is also counseling services and support groups around the area that can help, the diocese is also working on putting together some support groups and are looking at offering them here in Ankeny. I would encourage every adult to be mindful of this growing problem in our society, and work on ways to curtail it. Keep praying!

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Ready For A Pop Quiz?

As we continue the school year and are ready for Spring Break, I am reminded that the words “Pop Quiz” can bring panic in some students, and they maybe even bring a flash back to some of us who have been out of school for a while. When I was in my last year of seminary, one of the professors took joy in walking past a fourth-year theology student and ask them to “recite the prayer of absolution.” His rational was it is a prayer that every priest must know immediately and always because you never know when someone will ask for a confession.

I myself have heard confessions in a car, in a park, a hospital, and in an airport. The reasoning behind the pop quiz is because there are some things that we just need to be prepared for at any time and any place. Many times, when I am running errands, while wearing my priest collar, I have had people come up to me and tell me that they haven’t been to church in a while, or that seeing me reminds them that they need to go to confession.

The police and military train for a lot of different situations that may or may not ever happen, why, because there is a possibility that they might and they want to be ready for them. The same should be true for our faith life, what if the pop quiz we run into is the end of our life? What if the pop quiz is to answer for the things we have done or not done in our lives? Would we be ready for the judgment of God today if something bad happens? This is something that we do not often want to think about, but so many times Jesus reminds us that we must be ready because at an unknown hour the Lord will come.

To make sure that we are ready for a pop quiz in school, we study and make sure that we know the information. To make sure that we are ready for a pop quiz in our work life, we learn our job and make sure that we are ready for the situations that we may run into at work. The big question is what are we doing to make sure that we are ready for the hour that we may not know about when the master of the house returns as Jesus tells us. The good thing is that we can be ready for that pop quiz that will come to us at the end of our lives and there are many different ways to make sure that we are. Some of these ways are to do a good daily examination of conscience in which we pray about the good and bad things we have done each and every day, to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation often, to pray each and every day, to be a part of the celebration of the Sunday Mass, and to be that follower of Christ that He calls us to be.

If the Lord comes for us today, will we be ready?

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Godparents

One of the wonderful things that I get to do here at St. Luke’s more often is to celebrate the sacrament of Baptism of children, since we have a few of them running around here. I really enjoy getting to celebrate this wonderful sacrament. It is a blessed and awesome thing to be able to welcome children into the home of the Church and into their second family, the family of faith.

Often times when discussing with couples that are preparing to have their children baptized, I get a question about godparents. This is always a delicate matter for me because the teaching of the Church says that the godparents can be one person or a male and a female, it also states that only active Catholics can be godparents. It does that for a very good reason, the godparents make a promise to help to raise the child in the practice of the faith. If the godparents do not know the Catholic faith or practice it, how can they fulfill the promise to help to raise them in that faith?

I know that most of the time, godparents are chosen because they are siblings or good friends. In the past, the choice of godparents could really affect the life of the children, because they were the ones who would raise the child if something happened to the parents. While that is no longer the case, the godparents should still be a good example of the Christian life for the child. In Hispanic cultures, the role of the godparents (padrinos) is still very important, especially for young girls. They are the ones who will help with the girls Quinceañera (15th birthday celebration) they are the ones that will also help out when the child is going to be married. It is a very special role.

Ideally, the role of a godparent should be who can and will be a good role model for the practice of the faith for the child. I know that we could all have more of those good examples of faith in our lives so that they can help us to live out our own baptismal promises of being that blessed child of God. As an adult, I would encourage each of us to pray for our godparents, and if we are a godparent to make sure that we pray for our godchildren and for ourselves as well to be a wonderful example of faith for them. I have someone that I know that is the godparent of a lot of people now, he keeps in touch with all of them as much as possible and even sends them some little faith notes every-once-in-a-while, just to remind them of the faith. Being a godparent is a wonderful thing, but we do make a promise when we do it to help the parent raise the child in the practice of the faith.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Fasting for Lent?

Can you believe that Lent has started? One of the things that I really like about Lent is that it gives us an opportunity to look at our lives and see what we need to work on. During Lent, one of the most common questions we hear is what are you giving up? This is often the main focus of what we do during this season in which we prepare ourselves for the coming passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The giving up of something is the fasting aspect of our Lenten celebrations, and when we give something up for Lent, we are sometimes tempted to “cheat” in what we are giving up. Remember it is not a sin to eat or do what we have promised to give up, it is an act of self-denial and self-sacrifice. I remind people of this every year, that the thing we give up is a penance and sacrifice for us and not for those other people around us! We should not sacrifice something if we are going to be cranky and complain about it all of the time. Our sacrifice should not be a sacrifice for others, but for ourselves.

We live in a self-indulgent and disposable society that wants things right now and not later. We are being conditioned by advertisers to consume, to buy more even if you cannot afford it, just go into debt for it, that is what credit is for, right!?! But, when it does not make you happy any more, or it gets old, throw it away and get the newest and the best available. We are often told through advertising that we NEED the newest and greatest thing out there, but the newest and greatest thing changes right after you purchase it. Just look at the cell phone industry, here is the greatest phone ever made, you need it and if you don’t have it, you are not cool anymore.

The whole idea behind fasting from something for Lent is so that whenever we reach for, or are tempted by the thing that we have given up, we should be reminded that we do have some self-control and that we should use it, not only in the fasting, but also to have the self-control to not sin. During this Lenten season, take some time to not only fast from something, but also to try and do something good to replace it. For example, if you decide to give up going out to fast food restaurants, take the money that you would have spent on it and give it to a charity. Take the time during this Lenten season to really focus on giving up something that can help us draw closer to God each and every day. I pray that you will have a good Lenten season to prepare for the rising of Jesus.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Forgiveness

Ever experience the difficulty of forgiving a family member? Ever experience the difficulty of forgiving someone you don’t like all that much? Ever experience the difficulty of forgiving AN ENEMY?

My guess is that most of us have experienced the first two scenarios. In the first two examples, it takes God’s grace to be able to forgive a family member or someone we just don’t get along with well.

But to genuinely forgive one’s enemy, that takes a spiritual miracle of God.

Today’s Gospel reminds me of the story of Immaculée Ilibagiza and her real life story (her book “Left to Tell” gives the details) of living through and eventually forgiving those people who murdered most of her family in the Rwandan Genocide of the early 1990’s.

At times, I have refused forgiveness of people, but it only caused resentment, bitterness, and the inability to be at peace with myself, the person I would not forgive, those around me who weren’t even part of the conflict, and most especially, Jesus.

One of the important truths that I forgot during these times I refused forgiveness was the times that I sinned against others and hurt them (which always involves a corresponding sin against God who made that/those people in his image and likeness) and yet asked Jesus himself for forgiveness of my sins during confession. Remembering my own times that I have wronged others by sinning against them helped me to be more humble and forgiving when I perceive I have been wronged.

If you are struggling to forgive someone or to ask someone for forgiveness and mercy, I invite us to spend some time before the upcoming season of Lent meditating in prayer in front of a Crucifix. Jesus’ ultimate act of forgiveness, mercy, and love perhaps can help us, with His grace, to begin to desire and act on the need to forgive or ask someone for forgiveness, and this leads to the peace that Jesus wants to give in his love for each of us.

Fr. Ryan

Catholic Church Hierarchy

A while back, I was asked about how the hierarchy of the Church works. We as Catholics sometime hear the terms that are thrown around and we know them, but we don’t always know how it works. For the clergy, we know about deacons, priests, and bishops, but there are different titles that are also used, like pastor, parochial vicar, associate pastor, arch-bishop, etc. For the priest, there are a few terms, while I am a priest, I am also the pastor here at St. Luke’s. This means that, in the end, I am responsible for the parish and the care of the Sacraments here. I also have final say in the decisions that happen here. Yes, I do rely on the committees that we have to help me make those decisions. Fr Ryan is the associate, or parochial vicar, which pretty much mean the same thing. This means that he is a help to me and also assists me in this duty of the parish as well as performing his priestly duties of the care of the Sacraments. Some of the other priests of the diocese have the title of Monsignor. This is an honorary title given to them. It does not hold any other duty, but is given to a priest who has distinguished himself in the service of the Church.

Each diocese has a bishop in charge of it who is also called an “Ordinary.” This comes from the fact that he has ordinary powers, authority, and care of the people within the diocese. Not all bishops are Ordinaries. There are Auxiliary Bishops as well. These are priests who have been ordained a bishop, but are not in charge of a diocese, but help out in a very large diocese. For example, the Archdiocese of Chicago has a Cardinal Arch-Bishop and 6 Auxiliary Bishops. To be ordained a bishop, a priest would be recommended to Rome for ordination, and then the recommendation gets researched and then the Holy Father makes the final decision. The bishop is the one who is the shepherd of all of the people within the diocese and is like the pastor, but the pastor of the entire diocese. Another title you will hear is Arch-bishop, and that is given to a bishop of an Arch-Diocese, which is a diocese of special significance, the Arch-Diocese for Des Moines is Dubuque. The Arch-bishop does not really hold any authority over the other bishops, but is because of the special significance of the diocese. You will also hear the title of Cardinal, and this is given to bishops of diocese of special significance or size, the closest Cardinal is Cardinal Cupich of Chicago. Currently, there are seven active Cardinals in the United States. One of the benefits of being a Cardinal is that, as long as they are under the age of 80, they vote on who will be the next Pope. Now, there are many other titles that we have within the Church, but most of them you will not come across around here.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Ice Packs, Band-Aids, and Reconciliation

One of the great blessings being at a parish with a School is that I get to witness some incredible amounts of energy in just watching the children play either outside on the playground or in the gym. Sometimes it is funny just to stand by and watch them run around and play to see what they will come up with. They will chase each other, climb on the equipment, lay down in the grass, throw a ball, sit on the bench, play a sports game, spin in circles, or whatever else. Sometimes they even have what I call a crash; they fall down or they run into each other, but the thing that is great about kids is that they are pretty durable. When they fall down, they get right back up. Usually, they will just get right back up, brush off their clothes, and be on their way. Other times they need some help- they will go to the nurse and get a Band-Aid or an ice pack. The great thing is that in making those mistakes they have the opportunity to learn from them. When they get hurt on something, they often times are more careful around it… at least for a little while. Then most of the time they are right back into doing the same things again or learn a better way of doing it.

We can sometimes learn from our children, that when we fall down, we should get right back up even though physically this gets harder and harder as we gain in life experience. This same thing goes for our spiritual life as well. We kind of go on our way running around and living our life until we trip over something or we are not paying attention and just fall down and sin by either committing one or omitting something. The key is that we need to get back up again and start over, but also, we need to remind ourselves that somethings that we run into cause us to fall and we need to try and avoid them, just like kids do. Sometimes when we fall in that spiritual life, we need that ice pack or Band-Aid and that is the sacrament of confession that thing that helps us to get rid of the injury. Also, just like kids we cannot let the failures that we have keep us on the sidelines, we need to get back up, put on the Band-Aid and get back to doing what we need to be doing. The running around and playing for kids is a way to get some exercise and also entertainment for them, our prayer life is a way for us to recharge ourselves in our daily life. When we take that time to spend with God, he will lead us to where we need to go and even help us to see the dangers that we can trip over so that we can learn from them.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Catholic Schools Week

This week is Catholic Schools Week. Within the Catholic Church we have had a long tradition of educating children as well as adults. The title often used for Jesus was Rabbi, which means teacher and one of the things that He did was to teach us about the Father. This has been a mission of the Catholic Church for two thousand years with formal Catholic schools for many hundreds of years. Currently there are over 1.9 million students in a Catholic Elementary School in the United States and over 32 million worldwide. To put that number in perspective, that means 17% of all students in the world go to a Catholic school, and in less developed countries, the percentage of Catholic educated children is much higher.

The Catholic Church has had a long history of promoting education, so when I hear the false phrase that the Church is against science I just have to laugh because we have been teaching and encouraging science for many years. Copernicus was a cleric of the Church, which means he received minor orders. Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian Friar, was a pioneer of modern genetics; Msgr. Georges Lemaitre was the one who proposed the basics for the Lemaitre/Hubble Constant (the big bang theory) and a few years ago was renamed to the Hubble-Lemaitre law. The Catholic Church has been doing formal education of students from the second century, so a very long tradition of education of students. Even in our own nation, The Catholic Church has been in the teaching business for a long time. The first Catholic school in the United States was opened in 1606 by Franciscan missionaries. Education has been the mission of the Church ever since Jesus walked the earth. Remember he commands us to go out to all the nations and preach the Gospel. While a school is not the primary mission of the Catholic Church, it helps us with our primary goal and that is to bring all people to Christ and thus to heaven.

I often hear that it is too expensive for families to send their children to Catholic school, but there are many resources available for help. One of the great programs is Catholic Tuition Organization which gives scholarships based on need. We at St. Luke’s also have an angel fund that assists parents. Parents sacrifice financially to send their children to the school with their tuition payments, and other help of time, talent, and treasure. Teachers, faculty, and administration give because their salary could be higher by working for the public schools. Parishioners and other family and friends help by donating funds, supporting fundraisers, and the many other events that go on in the school.

Here at St. Luke’s, we have been growing at a pretty rapid pace, which facilitated the need for Phase II and will likely need to begin Phase III in a few years. We have grown from 156 students 4 years ago to 308 this year and we expect to break the 325-mark next year. Catholic schools have been a wonderful part of our tradition and it has been such a blessing to be a part of all of the schools that I have been blessed to serve.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Prayers and Intentions

At the beginning of the Mass on the weekend, the cantor announces that there is an intention for the Mass, so what does that mean? For every Mass that a priest celebrates, he has someone or something that they pray the Mass for. Usually, the intention is for someone that has passed away and we are praying for their soul to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

One of the interesting things is also for one of the Masses for the weekend, the intention is for the “people of the parish.” This is something that is required by Canon Law or the rules of the Church. It may seem strange that it is such a general intention, but it is an important one. That particular Mass is said for all of the people of St. Luke’s. 

The celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. It is the primary way that we encounter Christ in our world today, and it is where we have that opportunity to receive our Lord and Savior, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. So having the priest remember a loved one who has passed away, or someone who is ill, or celebrating a special event is a wonderful thing. A vast majority of times, the intention of the Mass is for someone who has passed away and we are asking for God to bring them from purgatory into Heaven, but a Mass can be said for a couple that is celebrating a significant anniversary as well.

There is a book written for children out there called the “Weight of the Mass.”  In the book, there is a baker that does not want to go to Mass, nor does he care about someone who is going. When he is confronted by a poor woman who tells him that she would pray for him at the Mass if he would give her a little bit of bread, he mocks her by writing “one Mass” on a small slip of paper and puts it on the scale to see how much it is worth. (Nothing in the shop would move the scale.) In the end, he is of course converted to the faith by this simple gesture of the prayer of the Mass. I would recommend picking up the book for your children, as it is a great read on the importance of the Eucharistic celebration. 

One of the things that we can also remember is that each one of us can offer prayers for someone while we are at the Mass. When the priest says “Let us Pray” we should pray for someone or something during the Mass. Another wonderful time in the Mass that we can offer a prayer for someone is when the gifts are brought forth. We can imagine our prayers being brought up with the offering, the bread, and the wine so that they can be set at the foot of the Altar of Sacrifice. The Mass is a beautiful and powerful time, so what better time do we have to offer those prayers to God.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Ordinary?

We have entered into “Ordinary Time” in the Church. Ordinary Time is broken into two parts with the seasons of Lent and Easter in the middle of it. When we think of ordinary, we think of something that is just plain or regular, but what it means in the Church is that it is not one of the “Special” seasons like Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. It is a season of growth and of work. The readings of Ordinary Time focus on the mission and work of Jesus in the world. What his actions were and why they are important to us. In the past few weeks, we have prepared for his coming in Advent and received him in the Christmas season. In a few more weeks, we will prepare for his Passion and burial in the season of Lent and then we will celebrate his Resurrection in the Easter season.

So, in Ordinary Time we focus on the three years of his ministry and his works. We are reminded of how the Apostles and the disciples of Jesus witnessed the incredible things that he did and how they grew in faith. This is the reason that the color for the season is green; it is to remind us of how we are to continue to grow in our faith so that we can grow towards Christ. Each season of the Church has a purpose, preparation, celebration, or growth, and in Ordinary time, we get down to the work of living our lives as Christians and so grow in our own faith.

So, what are some of the ways that we can grow in our faith? The first way is to practice our faith by the coming together in the community at the Mass even in these challenging times. In the Mass, we receive the Eucharist, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ and that is the food that will allow us to grow. Another way that we can be fed and grow in faith is prayer and Scripture. What better way to get to know Christ than to get to know the works that he did in the lifetime that he spent walking on this earth with us. He truly wants to show us the path, so that we can follow it to the same end he did and that is in the Resurrection! Something else that we can do to grow is to get to know the Saints and how they lived in their growth of the faith. A vast majority of the saints did not live their lives in a perfect way. They made mistakes. Some were not very good people at some points in their lives. Remember, even one of the great Scripture writers, St. Paul, was someone who persecuted the disciples of Jesus and even agreed to the execution of St. Steven.

There are so many ways that we can get to know God better each and every day. If we allow ourselves to keep being fed in our faith, we will continue to grow as followers of Christ, and with God’s grace, to enter into that Kingdom of Heaven that he prepares for us.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

The Magi

Merry Christmas! This weekend we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany. This is the day in which we honor the Magi who took a chance and followed a star in order to find something new and special. They knew that they were looking for a king, a new king who would reign forever. They found this new king, Christ Jesus himself. They came to honor him and to bring him the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh because they knew that there was something special about his kingship. The gifts that they brought are ones that we all know by heart, but we may not know that there is a good reason behind each of them. Gold is the gift for the king, frankincense is the gift for a priest, and myrrh is the gift for the prophet but also it was used for burial, in essence preparing him for his death as well. One of the interesting things is that we have a tradition that it was three Magi or wise men, but Holy Scripture says nothing about the number of Magi who came, it simply states “behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is the newborn king of the Jews.’” The number of them is inferred by the three gifts that were given.

These men took a chance to travel a great distance to find something that they knew was going to be great, they were looking for the newborn King of the Jews and they found him. To find the Christ child, they would have needed to travel through the desert and the infamous road to Jericho - the same one in which Jesus tells the story of the man who was robbed and left for dead. Traveling was dangerous and difficult in those days and most people never went more than a few miles from their homes in their lifetimes. These men took a chance in order to see Jesus. Sometimes it is not easy, but when we do have that experience with Christ it is a wonderful thing.

The Magi wanted to see him and they wanted to praise him, but not all who heard about this new king were happy. Harrod was afraid that this new king would someday grow up and take his power away from him, so he wanted to destroy him and to do this he was willing to kill many others, which he did. Even though the Magi received the message not to go back to Harrod in a dream, there is a great message that we can get out of the account that they returned home a different direction. The Magi came not out of fear, but out of a wish to be a witness, but once they had the experience with Christ, they were changed and went a different direction. Jesus calls us to witness the miracles that he is trying to do in each of our lives and then wants us to go a different direction, which is always toward him. I pray as this Christmas Season continues, that you will all have a great and blessed year.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

New Year, New Me

Merry Christmas! Last week, we began the Christmas season in the Church and we will celebrate it until January 9th which is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We also celebrate this weekend the Feast of Mary the Mother of God on January 1st or New Year’s Day. It is a day in which we remember Mary’s role in the life of her Son, Jesus Christ. We often celebrate secular New Year’s Day with promises or resolutions like, “New Year, New Me.” But often the new year’s resolutions only last a few weeks, the gyms are full for the first few weeks of the year, but then attendance drops off pretty quickly.

With the phrase “new year, new me,” how about asking God what that new me will look like? The best way to do this is to draw close to him in prayer, but there is a challenge with this and that is that when you ask God where he wants you to be is that he will answer it and we may not always like the answer. This is because we sometimes have one idea of what we should be doing, but God has another, but if we actually follow where God is leading us, it will always lead us to joy, even if it can be a lot of work or go through some suffering. The Apostles and many saints did not have an easy life, but they did enjoy eternal life with God.

The whole idea of “new year, new me” is that there is something in our life that we need to change or work on, the struggle is that most of us focus on the physical or material, like losing weight or working on being financially better, or reading more, but if we start off with our spiritual life, the rest of it will be better as well, this is primarily because if we draw closer to God who is love and the source of love, it will change our attitudes.

Studies show that it takes about six weeks to build or break a habit, good or bad. If we make the effort for six weeks straight to do something good in our lives or stop doing something bad, we have a better hope of making it stick. In this upcoming new year, we should take some extra time to pray and ask God where He wants us to be so that we can become the person that Jesus Christ wants us to be. We continue to celebrate the Christmas season in which God himself came to live the life that we lead and to preach, teach, and give us an example of how we are to live our lives in the way of Christ. Find some good Christian resources, especially during these cold months, so that we can build the life of prayer in our lives.

God bless,
Fr. Ken

Merry Christmas! Jesus has come again!

This Weekend we celebrate Christmas! It is the beginning of the true Christmas season which goes until (depending on the calendar you follow) the feast of the Baptism of the Lord on January 9th. This is a wonderful season, a season of joy and peace, and while the time with family and friends, the food and drinks, and the gift giving and receiving is wonderful, remember why we are celebrating in this time.

It is so easy to get caught up in the commercial Christmas season, but we also need to be reminded that it is a joyous and wonderful and faith filled season. During this Christmas season let us be mindful of the greatest gifts that we have been and ever will be given, Christ Jesus our Savior who wanted to live our life with us. Take some time to reflect on the Gospel account of how the coming of our Lord and Savior came about. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

This is a story we have all heard many different times, and I would recommend talking to our children about it during Christmas. The line that I like to reflect on is the one that the angels say about the good news of great joy. This really is a season of joy and peace, even though we are running around to see family and friends, it is a season of peace that only Christ can offer us. So don’t get tired of this beautiful season of Christmas.

God bless,
Fr. Ken