Our current weekend Mass schedule is as follows: Saturday 4:30pm, and Sundays at 7:30, 9:30 and Noon. At some point in the near future we are going to restructure our three Sunday Masses down to two, while keeping our Saturday evening Mass at 4:30pm. Here’s why.

1. Need: In terms of seating capacity, we don’t need four weekend Masses. Our church comfortably seats 700 people; 800 elbow to elbow, and 900 thigh to thigh. We have 900 people in the pews twice a year; for the first Christmas Eve Mass, and the 9:30 on Easter Sunday. Pre-pandemic we were averaging 400 people per Mass, or 1,600 per weekend. Meaning, that even before Covid we had 1,200 empty seats per weekend, or 57% of our full capacity (pre-pandemic). Currently we are averaging 1,128 people per weekend with 1,672 empty seats, or 40% full. While it remains to be seen how many Mass-goers will return when the pandemic is completely finished, we don’t expect that number to return to what it was before the pandemic; some people have gotten used to not going to Mass. By the numbers, we’re offering more Masses than we need.

I’m recycling this pastor’s column from six years ago because the subject matter never loses its importance. Devotions, religious practices that are not obligatory, are the surest way to reveal God to us and to deepen our relationship with Him. To that end, I encourage all of you to develop a devotional life to grow in your relationship with God through Jesus Christ and the Communion of the Saints. You will be richly rewarded for your efforts. One of the devotions that I want to encourage is known as: First Friday & First Saturday devotions. I found a website that does a fantastic job explaining these devotions that I include below. We are blessed at Holy Redeemer to have confessions and Mass available every Friday and Saturday, making these devotions possible. I encourage you to start observing them.

After having been a priest for about five years I came across the stages of the spiritual life. That’s right; I got none of this in my seminary formation! Having the knowledge that there is a path or way in the spiritual life, common to all saints, is super helpful – if you know what it is. One of my sabbatical goals was to explore the stages of the spiritual life; specifically to answer the question: how does one go from living in habitual mortal sin, to the highest state of holiness? I’m not the first to explore this topic; as one day on my sabbatical a monk simply handed me the information you’re about to see.

There are three basic stages of the spiritual life (holiness), called the Purgative, Illuminative, and Unitive Ways. One passes from the lowest (purgative) to the highest (unitive) along a spectrum.

What you ask, is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary? The Church has always taught that like her Son, the Blessed Virgin Mary ascended body and soul into heaven (not just soul). There are two differing traditions as to where this took place: Jerusalem or Ephesus in Turkey [much more likely]; both traditions relate that at the death of the BVM, her soul left her body, then returned a few days later to reenter and reanimate her body, and then ascended into heaven with apostles looking on. Along with Jesus, the BVM is the only other person in heaven with both her soul and body – who has died. Two others have ascended into heaven but have yet to die: Enoch and Elijah – Genesis 5:24 & 2 Kings 2:11. Tradition holds that they will return in a later generation and give witness against the Antichrist, be slain, rise from the dead, and ascend again into heaven.

Well where do I begin? I’ve been gone now for over three months, the longest absence (by far) of my 17 year priesthood. I was on a sabbatical for the first three months; two of them at Mt. Angel Abbey living as a monk, the third month staying by myself at my family home in Stevenson, in the woods without TV or internet. The last week away was a family vacation. It was arguably the best three months of my life.

A little refresher: diocesan priests (parish priests) are entitled to a three month sabbatical every so many years depending on the diocese, for the Archdiocese of Seattle, it’s every seven years. Most priests never go on one as they never feel like it, or more likely, they don’t feel they are worth the effort, given all that goes into planning one. In my case, I had to find the priest coverage and of course know that things wouldn’t fall apart in my absence. There is also a stigma that I wasn’t aware of until I was on my sabbatical: lazy priest, or more likely, problem priest.

So why did I go away on a sabbatical?

If you only remember one thing from this pastor’s column, let it be this:

Catholics who marry are obligated to wed in the Catholic Church.  Failure to do so would constitute grave evil and the union would not be a valid marriage in God’s eyes. 

I never heard this fact growing up Catholic, so it was news to me when I discovered it in my early 30’s, and it may well be news to you too. 

So what happens to a Catholic who weds outside of the Catholic Church?  Although the union is recognized by civil society as marriage, it is not recognized by God as such: thus the couple are sleeping together outside of marriage. 

There is no Jesus without the Catholic Church, and hence, there is no salvation without the Catholic Church. Let me explain. Jesus Christ, God, founded only one Church and that Church is the Catholic (Greek for ‘universal’) Church. Before the Catholic Church, God made a covenant with the chosen people, now called Jews. If you belong to a religion other than Judaism or Catholicism, then God is not your founder. Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews and Gentiles, with his revelation a new covenant of salvation was created through the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Everything we know about Jesus Christ, the Holy Trinity, the Communion of saints, heaven, purgatory, and hell comes from the Catholic Church. It was the Catholic Church that wrote the New Testament and decided what books and letters would go into the Bible.

Remember the first precept, that we are obligated to attend Mass on all the Holy Days of Obligation, and Sunday is always a Holy Day of Obligation. However, we are not obligated to receive the Holy Eucharist (Communion) at each of those Masses, for that-we need to be in a “state of grace” or free of mortal sin. Concerning the fourth precept, as evident by the percentage of people who receive the Holy Communion at Mass, most Catholics in the U.S. assume that they are supposed to receive Holy Communion if they attend Mass, this is not correct. Only those who are Catholic, have received their 1st Communion, and are not aware of unconfessed mortal sin are able to receive Holy Communion.

Forgiveness of sins is so important that God decided to sacramentalize it. Today the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls that sacrament by various names: Confession, Reconciliation, Penance, Forgiveness, and even Conversion. A supernatural thing happens when we go to confession: our sins are absolved (removed), no matter how bad or how often they have been committed, and we are restored and strengthened in our life of grace with God. There is no other way on earth to have our mortal sins absolved other than through sacramental confession. So why don’t more people take advantage of it: ignorance of the information being presented here, and pride.

This week we continue our series on the Precepts of the Catholic Church: “pre” meaning “before”, and “cept” meaning “life” – before there can be full life in God, these seven laws must be observed. Failure to live them out would constitute a mortal sin: when one has knowledge of them, and acts without undue coercion to disregard them. “The obligatory character of these positive laws decreed by pastoral authorities is meant to guarantee to the faithful the very necessary minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and neighbor”. Catechism #2041. This week we continue working our way through them by exploring the second precept.

We know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide; we know how to drive a car with all its myriad rules; we know about photosynthesis; we know what it takes to do our taxes annually; but when it comes to knowledge of our faith, we can be woefully uninformed. Almost four years ago I ran a multiple part series on the precepts of the Catholic faith. I run them again now because they are critically important to know and live, and most of you don’t have them memorized and should, finally we should be able to teach them to others.

The easiest way to develop a greater devotion to the Eucharist is to attend daily Mass, so you can partake of Christ’s body and blood on a regular basis. You can also take part in a holy hour at a local chapel that hosts perpetual adoration or the Forty Hours Devotion. “This devotion takes place, as its name suggests, for forty hours after the sacrament is exposed. In Scripture, the number forty symbolizes the transformation for holy people, such as when the Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert or when Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days. Likewise, through the Forty Hours Devotion, the worshipper can take part in a spiritual transformation by spending time adoring the Lord (though he is not obligated to remain in adoration for the entire forty hours).

Although there have been no miracles involving the Eucharist that the Church has required Catholics to believe as articles of faith, there have been several reports of miracles that the Church has investigated and deemed appropriate for Catholics to accept. Here are just a few of them:

• Lanciano, Italy, 8th century: During Mass the consecrated bread and wine became actual flesh and blood. The host and globules of blood were preserved and are on display to this very day. A team of researchers in the 1970s and ‘80s examined the host and determined that the flesh came from a human heart and the blood was type AB.

The Church, of course, adores the Eucharist at every Mass, and treats it with adoring reverence whenever it is transported. The practice popularly called “eucharistic adoration” refers specifically to praying before the Eucharist outside of a liturgical setting, when it has been reserved or exposed in a sacred vessel.

The first recorded instance of eucharistic adoration took place on September 11, 1226, when, “In compliance with the wish of Louis VII, who had just been victorious over the Albigensians [a group of heretics], the Blessed Sacrament, veiled, was exposed in the Chapel of the Holy Cross, as an act of thanksgiving. So great was the throng of adorers that the bishop, Pierre de Corbie, judged it expedient to continue the adoration by night, as well as by day, a proposal that was subsequently ratified by the approval of the Holy See,”

The Mass and the sacrament of the Eucharist are discussed throughout the documents of the Second Vatican Council. For example, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, teaches that the Eucharist holds a central place in the life of the Church. It says:

The liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows. For the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of his Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s supper.

According to the Code of Canon Law, “Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to Holy Communion. The administration of the Most Holy Eucharist to children requires that they have sufficient knowledge and careful preparation so that they understand the mystery of Christ according to their capacity and are able to receive the body of Christ with faith and devotion . . . . A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.”

A person must normally be baptized or received into the Catholic Faith in order to receive the Eucharist and even then that person must be free from mortal sin or canonical penalties such as excommunication. For example, the Didache admonished first-century Christians to “let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, ‘Give not that which it holy to the dogs.’”

Keep in mind that this rule is not carried out because of a sense of spiritual superiority or because the Church wants non-Catholics to feel bad. Instead, it is done out of a sense of concern for non-Catholics who might want approach the sacrament.

Just as we should never take the Lord’s name in vain, we should never treat the Lord himself in vain by acting in an irreverent or blasphemous way toward him when he is present with us in the sacrament of the Eucharist. That is why special care must be taken with the remaining elements of the precious body and precious blood after Mass has concluded.

The Code of Canon Law states: “A person who throws away the consecrated species or takes or retains them for a sacrilegious purpose incurs a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; moreover, a cleric can be punished with another penalty, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state.”

Along with being properly disposed to receive the Eucharist by being free from the conscious knowledge of mortal sin, the faithful are required to fast before receiving the Eucharist. According to the Code of Canon Law, “A person who is to receive the Most Holy Eucharist is to abstain for at least one hour before Holy Communion from any food and drink, except for only water and medicine.” But the canon also specifically states that “the infirm” are not bound to observe the eucharistic fast.

After many years of sacrificing, saving, planning, permitting, and working we are finally ready to move into the addition on the back of the church! On the weekend of April 24-25, there will be tours of our new addition after all the Masses, so stick around after Mass. When I return from my sabbatical in August, we’ll have Archbishop Etienne come and formally dedicate the space [I’ll be gone from April 26 thru August 3].