We had our last Pastoral Council meeting of the year this past Monday and the officers for the upcoming year are as Follows: Chairperson, Dan Loch; Vice Chair, Nicole Tobin and Secretary, Kristin Chuba. Our congratulations to all three of them.

The next night we had a dinner at the rectory for 30 of the many people involved in our Social Concerns ministries. Included in the group were people who work on the monthly food drive, representatives from the three funeral reception teams, teachers of English to the undocumented; CONECT core team members, soup kitchen volunteers, Midnight Run Volunteers, and the actual members of the Social Concerns committee that oversees everything. The co-leaders of this ministry are Barbara Bagnato and Rebecca Sweeney, who do so much for the parish. I speak all the time of “The Parish Twelve”. These are the key people who give themselves to the parish all year round. Actually there are many more than twelve, but the number is symbolic and Barbara and Rebecca are in that company. As long as the parish continues to have “The Parish Twelve”, we will be strong!

It is important at this moment in our public life to remember that the Church has always claimed the right to speak on moral issues in the public square. There are areas where morality and politics overlap and in such cases the Church has always spoken out. No one is surprised to hear Catholic Bishops and priests speak against abortion from the pulpit. Nor should you be surprised when Bishops and priests condemn the federal policy of family separation at the border as part of the zero tolerance policy. Cardinal Dolan has called it “Unjust, un-American and unbiblical.” Cardinal DiNardo, the President of the Catholic Bishops said last week, “Our government has the discretion in our laws to ensure that young children are not separated from their parents and exposed to irreparable harm and trauma….separating babies from their mothers is not the answer (to protecting our borders) and is immoral.”

You will be reading this on June 3rd, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. For Catholics of my advanced age, this was the central dogma of the Church differentiating us from all other Christian denominations. In those days, we alone believed that the substance of bread and wine, while keeping its appearances, became the Body and Blood of Jesus. To receive communion, was to take Jesus into your entire self so that you could become more what you just received. We still believe that truth but now we also add that the Risen Jesus is also present in the community as it gathers to celebrate Eucharist. He is equally present when the Scriptures are proclaimed at Mass, and he is likewise present in the presider who acts “in persona Christi”. The Eucharist that we celebrate each day is rich in the many ways it connects us to the Risen Jesus.

This Sunday is the first of two Solemnities that follow Pentecost Sunday. This weekend we celebrate Trinity Sunday and next weekend is the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Jesus. As I get older, I find a deepened appreciation of the mystery of the Trinity. Officially, we pray to the Father in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. This means that our experience of the divine has a relational depth to it. You can have a relationship with each person of the Trinity. While we give a separate “job” to each person, in reality, they act together in all they do. When Jesus came to be with us, He was one with the Father and filled with the Holy Spirit. We are saved by all three acting as one.

Here we are in May, and I do believe spring has sprung. Alleluia!

The last two weekends we had our Annual Pastoral Council elections. The quality of the candidates was exceptional. So many people voted that the counters were here for over two hours on Sunday night. The reason for the turnout, of course, was so that we would have a strong Council for the coming year, when a new pastor will take over the reins.

You should know that we are in a period of change, and as the current pastor, part of my responsibility is to make some changes that will leave the new pastor on solid footing. The future of St. Jerome will almost certainly be that of a one priest parish, with a resident as well as Sunday assistants.

There are several things that go into making us the parish we are. Maybe the most important is that we have a number of small ministry/faith-sharing groups that both deepen the faith of the participants even as they flow into parish ministries. Two examples are the Social Concerns Committee, and the REACH Singers (the musicians at the 9:15am and 6pm Masses).