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Catholic Church

Dear Friends and Families of Guardian Angels Parish,

This has been quite the week, if you follow Church news. First on Pentecost, Benedict XVI named Hildegard of Bingen not only a saint but the 35th Doctor of the Church. A Doctor of the Church is a teacher of such note, depth of thought, richness of wisdom, and insight into the Christian life, that they hold first place among those we as a Church should listen to and read more carefully. Benedict XVI also named St. John of Avila the 34th doctor of the Church, whose preaching was followed by St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross; he was active just before and during the Council of Trent and is credited with the creating the template for the modern seminary

Hildegard lived in Germany of the 1100s and ruled a great Abbey; actually she founded two. She was a composer of music, poetry, plays, and mystical and theological texts. She was a noted herbalist, illuminator, and inventor. She currently has 34 cd's of her music available on iTunes. Her original art was all destroyed during World War I, but not before it was photographed before the war. A significant number of her books are in print today. She is credited with the writing the first completely sung play, a precursor to the opera.

And Bishop Samuel Joseph Aquila is our new Archbishop of Denver. He was in Denver last Tuesday for a press conference; it was apparently more of a homecoming for him because he was ordained for our diocese and was a parish priest for eleven years here. He had been bishop of Fargo, ND for eleven years, and was outside gardening when he was called. He visited Catholic Worker House, Catholic Charities, Guardian Angels Parish in Denver, and Arrupe Catholic High School in Denver to signal to us his interests. His installation will be July 18th. Please keep him in your prayers in the months ahead as he moves into his new ministry as our bishop.

This is Trinity Sunday. We believe in the Trinity because of the truth revealed by Jesus in his commission to the Church to baptize in a Trinitarian formula, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," in Matthew's gospel. The majority of the Nicene Creed that we profess every Sunday proclaims the Church's faith in the Trinity; each phrase is a very carefully crafted theological statement of our faith, and comprises the first quarter of the Catechism. To be Christian is to be baptized in this way and into this faith.

In the first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people to know this truth about God, and "fix in your heart". This "fixing" in the heart is accomplished through the daily ritual of prayer and signing ourselves with the cross and repeating the ritual words of baptism literally over our whole bodies in the sign of the cross. In this way, the truth about God and us is "fixed" in our hearts, traced daily and engraved deeply into our lives as Catholics. It is one of the most fundamental things we do and one of the first things we teach our children. God gets "fixed" in us by daily engaging with God and professing his dominion over us.

Just as our own personhood cannot be defined, so too, God is a mystery. The human person is a mystery, in that we do not fully even know ourselves, so how could it be that we think we could confine God to definitions, as if God were the object of some sort of scientific investigation. It is because of this mystery that we are in awe before the gift of life, the human person, and before the divine presence of God. When our culture loses that sense of mystery and awe, we get the kind of superficial culture served up by hollywood and the media. My computer wants automatically to capitalize hollywood, so I had to go back several time to put it lower case because I refuse to give it any respect. The root word behind "celebrity" means to bewitch or beguile; I'm neither by hollow-wood.

Your priests have you in our prayers during these summer months: that you are refreshed in spirit, come and go in safety, and attend Church no matter where you are. Peace and blessings.

Sincerely yours,
Fr. Alan

06/03/2012