From the Vatican:
The Vatican’s dicastery for communications has created a mobile app to enable listeners to hear the pope in their own languages. The app “Vatican Audio” can be downloaded free from the App Store and Google Play. Pope Francis, who generally speaks in Italian, can be heard live in Spanish, English, French, German and Portuguese. When he speaks in his native Spanish, the app also provides the audio in Italian. Read More...
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Please pray for the open position we have for a Coordinator of Evangelization Ministries . This person will responsible for our Youth Ministry program as well as our parish evangelization initiatives. Praised be Jesus Christ! “You see that mountain over there, yea, one of these days I’m going to climb that mountain,” (Alabama, “Mountain Music”). I’m back from my annual trek to the Rocky Mountains and my goal this year was to climb three of them: Mounts Democrat, Lincoln, and Bross. Each standing over 14,000 feet tall, that brings my tally of 14ers to six. A former student of mine who is now a Nashville Dominican Sister has climbed at least that many and because my goal is to beat her I must keep going! As I’ve mentioned in the past, setting a goal of climbing a mountain has been a great motivator for getting me out of the office and out on some glorious walks these past three summers. This summer has been extra challenging because of a plethora of bugs and more heat than I can remember in years. Early in the summer I walked from Marshfield to Spencer and back a number of times to increase my endurance. But once the deer flies take over that route is almost unbearable. Then I switched to the Marshfield-Hewitt loop which varies from downright delightful (especially the Hewitt-Marsh trail) to oppressively hot insofar as you’re usually walking on concrete or asphalt. Just the same, if I’m diligent about my preparation, climbing a mountain, while still incredibly challenging, is manageable. The spiritual life is similar. Saint John of the Cross even wrote a book titled, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and patterned spiritual growth on the efforts necessary for climbing an arduous mountain. Pope John Paul II was an avid mountain climber and skier as a young man and at some point he became friends with an Italian named Lino Zani. Zani wrote a book about their many adventures together – it’s titled The Secret Life of John Paul II and I highly recommend it. It shares stories of the many times John Paul snuck away from the Vatican for a day of skiing in the mountains. At one point Saint John Paul asked Lino why he climbed all those mountains. Before giving Lino a chance to respond, the Pope went on to ask, “What are you looking for when you climb those mountains?” Lino realized the Pope was asking a spiritual question, which is to say a deeply personal and introspective question. Henry David Thoreau once wrote that “We need to witness our own limits transgressed.” In other words, we go to the ocean or climb mountains to find our place in this universe. In a way we want there to be more to life than just us and our seemingly insatiable desires. We want there to be things bigger than us that remind us that we are not the center of the universe, that whatever the meaning of life may be, it’s certainly not reducible to who we are and what we want. The mountains, the ocean, Jesus in the Eucharist – these things tell us that we are very recent arrivals on the scene and long after we’re gone life will go on. While some might conclude that our lives are therefore meaningless, the more profound conclusion is that it’s a miracle that we exist at all. And as if that wasn’t already incredible enough, God gave us an interior life complete with the ability to imagine, dream, contemplate and believe. For time immemorial people have found the great outdoors to be a means for awakening and inspiring this deep interior life. But nature can only awaken such stirrings – God alone can satisfy them. So get outside and enjoy the world God made for us, but please don’t turn it into an idol. Nature is not our mother but our sister – God made her too and He did so to lead us to Him. So why do I climb those mountains, what am I looking for? For a Christian, the answer has everything to do with Who – we climb to meet the One who made the mountains, and even more wondrously, who made us!
May God give us the desire to ascend the mountains of faith, hope and love! Your friend in Christ, Father Martin
From the Pope:
Pope Francis on Thursday released a video message accompanying his prayer intention for August, which this month is "For the treasure of Families". In his prayer intention for the month of August 2018, Pope Francis says: "Together, let us ask Jesus that any far-reaching decisions of economists and politicians may protect the family as one of the treasures of humanity." Read More... Holy Day of Obligation * The Assumption of The Blessed Virgin Mary * Tuesday- August 14 with vigil mass @ 7 p.m. and Wednesday-August 15 with mass @ 8:30 a.m. Ministry participants are needed for these masses. Sign-up sheets have been placed on back table in gathering area of church. Your help is greatly appreciated.
The Sacrament of Confirmation * will take place on Sunday-Sept. 16 @ 5 p.m. @ St. John the Baptist, Mfld. for those youth of our parish who have been taking instruction and preparing to receive this special sacrament. Please pray for them. Confirmation: Confirmation is a true sacrament instituted by Christ and different from baptism. It is administered by laying-on of hands and anointing with chrism accompanied by prayer. The chrism is blessed by the bishop and the bishop administers the sacrament. All baptized persons can and should be confirmed. The effect of the sacrament of confirmation is to give strength in faith and for the confession of faith and to impress an indelible character. Praised be Jesus Christ! Today (I’m writing this on July 2nd) the heads of the U.S. Bishops’ conference are visiting the Mexican border to draw attention to the plight of immigrants. There has been an ocean of ink spilled regarding this topic and our prayers are for some effective and lasting changes that will make this a more reasonable and humane process. Before sharing some basic points for our consideration, the first lesson we can learn is that our best chance for improving this lamentable situation is to actually spend some time thinking, researching, praying, and then discussing with others. Our world makes all of these things difficult and often times people go to their corners and start recklessly slinging mud. Relevant Radio’s Patrick Madrid is one of the guys I like to listen to because he is slow to make judgments and has a rather robust prayer life that begets wisdom. Now on to the points about immigration that are germane to our consideration: 1) the southern border of the U.S. is a mess – laws are outdated and enforcement chaotic, thereby making the current system often inhumane. But this goes back decades.... 2) Inconsistent enforcement of laws has created a human rights crisis, one that sadly results in as many as 80% of migrant women and girls being raped before they even reach the U.S. 3) The Trump Administration issued a “zero tolerance” policy earlier this year in an attempt to end the chaos at the border. It was this policy that resulted in the odious practice of separating children from their parents. Now these are some very basic observations that lead us to understand that immigration is a big problem for our country. Having laws that regulate who can enter our country is a reasonable enterprise. For example, we tend to be careful about who we would allow to stay in our home, especially if we have young children. A similar reality is in play when countries are discerning about who they allow to enter and who is denied. Our politicians have a duty to change some of the existing laws so that our immigration process is a reasonable one that will protect us from known criminals while allowing men, women, and children of good will to enter and make a contribution to this land of the free and home of the brave. Right now the process is so hopelessly impossible that many immigrants give up and simply cheat the system by sneaking in by whatever means available. If the process were more humane and reasonable, it would significantly reduce the temptation to break the law. Another element is that once reasonable practices are in place and just laws are created, we must do a better job of enforcing the laws in a consistent and just fashion. Frankly, it seems that immigration has not been all that important and so has sat on the backburner of American politics for generations. Our Bishops have long lent their voice to this extremely important civil rights issue, but mostly to no avail. And even though the social media gets carried away and turns just about any event into a veritable tempest in a teapot, maybe now that some tranquility has returned to this topic we’ll find some real progress being made. God knows this will be an extremely delicate and difficult process – determining who can come and who cannot is not a job I would ever want. But we’re hardly alone in this, as European countries find themselves struggling with the same questions. For as long as human beings have lived on this planet we’ve tended to be territorial and that means some people are excluded. While there are legitimate reasons to have a border so as to protect our own interests, we also have a God-given duty to treat non-citizens with charity. So we pray for our politicians (which we should be doing a lot more of – have you signed up for a weekly hour of Eucharistic Adoration?), that they will propose, debate and ultimately find solutions that work.
May God bless America and all who hope to join us as one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all! Your friend in Christ, Father Martin Holy Day of Obligation * The Assumption of The Blessed Virgin Mary * Tuesday- August 14 with vigil mass @ 7 p.m. and Wednesday-August 15 with mass @ 8:30 a.m. Ministry participants are needed for these masses. Sign-up sheets have been placed on back table in gathering area of church. Your help is greatly appreciated.
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Tuesday - Friday: 8:00 AM Saturday: 4:00 PM Sunday: 8:00 AM & 10:00 AM RECONCILIATION
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Monday - Thursday: 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM Friday: 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM Stay Connected with Our ParishWelcome from Our PastorWelcome to Christ the King Catholic Church! Ever since 1938 this parish has been assisting souls in their quest for deeper union with God. Our mission statement is essentially found in the stained glass window above the main altar: “For Christ our King.” Insofar as God made us and we belong to Him, we have come to... Read More
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