Greetings to all of you.  I pray you are well.  I return spiritually strengthened and not a little tired from my trip to the Holy Land.  My brother, Fr. Jim, and I have travelled to the Holy Places where our Lord walked and proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven to be at hand.  I remembered the parish in my prayers at the holy sites and during the Masses I celebrated.  I hope to be able to share about this pilgrimage before I leave.  As I mentioned last week, I had planned on this trip, but not on announcing any changes in my life.  When I began last summer, I told Janet and JP that I would be here for a year.  Well, the prediction rang true.  I had a hunch that I was in a holding pattern for another parish.  Not that I want to leave.  Being at St. Paul’s is not administratively taxing, and there is enormous potential to be had here in a college environment.  Nevertheless, I got the call and I must respond. These transition moments are never easy, and my short stay here does not change that.  Please pray for me as I prepare for this move.

From the Liturgy of the Hours  6th Week of Easter

At Easter, beloved brethren, it was the Lord’s resurrection which was the cause of our joy; our present rejoicing is on account of his ascension into heaven.  With all due solemnity we are commemorating that day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, above all the hosts of heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father...And so our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments.  Our faith is nobler and stronger because sight has been replaced by a doctrine whose authority is accepted by believing hearts, enlightened from on high.  This faith was increased by the Lord’s ascension and strengthened by the gift of the Spirit.

Dear faithful of St. Paul's Newman Center.  By now you have heard rumors about my assignment for the future.  At this moment, I am in Jerusalem with my brother, Fr. Jim.  We had planned this trip to the Holy Land before I knew that I was moving from the parish.  Please know that I am praying for all those of the Newman Center.  Because I did not receive the official letter from the bishop until Monday May 3, I was not able to announce the move at Mass on May 2.  I knew that my time at the Newman Center would be short.  Changing situations in the diocese at various parishes have hastened my move.  I will speak more upon my return, but until then know that I have enjoyed my vacation...I mean...pastoral time, at the Newman Center.  I am blessed to know all of you.

Sincerely in Christ,

Fr.  Eric Weldon

“Mary is the great believer who humbly offered herself to God as an empty vessel for him to use in his mysterious plan.  She did not try to live according to human calculations but put herself completely at the disposal of God’s mysterious, incomprehensible designs.  All she wanted to be was the instrument and servant of the Word…she remained a believer despite all the darkness and all the inexplicable demands God made on her.” (Benedict XVI)  Mary is not distant for us.  She is the young girl entering the house of Elizabeth and she “deflects” Elizabeth’s praise as she gives glory to God proclaiming “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”

Living in the darkness of the world, Mary is open to the mystery of life.  Life is a mystery and life is all around her.  Life unfolds and she receives it all the while focused on the promise that God is with her and will reveal himself to his people.   She desires the good, so she is open to the good.  Msgr Luigi Giussani, the founder of the Communion Liberation lay ecclesial movement, wrote in his book Charity: Is it Possible to Live this Way? “There is something greater than us, among us.  And recognizing something greater than the self, something that reason isn’t able to identify well in all its reasons, but that it cannot reject without risking the greatest irrationality it can risk.”  Mary is a model for us, because her humility before the author of life makes it possible for her to embrace the life.  The very angel brings her a life-giving and very mysterious message.  She is receptive, because she is not the great one.  There is something greater than her, it was and is a presence that she cannot wrap her mind around completely.  In our incredible fear of the unknown, we cling to knowledge hoping that will empower us; thus, proffering to us a type of control.  The Christian, following Mary as model, does not seek to control.  Knowledge can be given.  The angel gave a little bit of knowledge to Mary.  For our part, we may imagine that relationship is about power and control resting upon knowledge.  Mary lives life.  She recognizes her smallness, and there is something—someone—greater than her.  She is blessed not because she has knowledge, but because she, in all her womanhood, loves the good.  The mysteries of God’s ways are unfolded to her, and she accepts them because her person, in all the complexities of reason and mystery, is disposed to the good.  To reject that what she does not completely understand, would be completely irrational.

Pope Benedict writes:

“The Resurrection was like an explosion of light, an explosion of love which dissolved” the inseparable union of "dying and becoming,” or dying and changing. “It ushered in a new dimension of being, a new dimension of life in which, in a transformed way, all creation was integrated and through which a new world emerges.”

The Resurrection is not just an event from the past where each of us can remain indifferent.  This event of Christ Jesus transforms the world and is an event that continues to live now.  The world starts from Christ and at the same time he draws the world to himself.  The Resurrection of Christ comes to us through faith and baptism.  Baptism is not an event of the past.  Through baptism, Jesus comes to each of us.  Baptism is not an old complicated ritual that makes someone a member of the Church.  It is more than washing the soul clean. It is all this and a rebirth, a transformation of life.  St. Paul says “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2: 20)  The “I” of St. Paul was essentially changed.  It was taken from him in baptism and the restored to him.  He was transformed.  St. Paul is saying ‘who I am is taken up into God and transformed.’ This is not a historical mystical experience that happened to one man only.  This change and transformation happened at baptism.

Divine Mercy Sunday:  The Sunday immediately following Easter is the last day in the octave of Easter.  During the Middle Ages it was known as Whitsunday, and up to Vatican II it was called Low Sunday.  This Feast, which had already been granted to the nation of Poland and been celebrated within Vatican City, was granted to the Universal Church by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the canonization of Sr. Faustina on 30 April 2000. In a decree dated 23 May 2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments stated that "throughout the world the Second Sunday of Easter will receive the name Divine Mercy Sunday, a perennial invitation to the Christian world to face, with confidence in divine benevolence, the difficulties and trials that mankind will experience in the years to come." These papal acts represent the highest endorsement that the Church can give to a private revelation, an act of papal infallibility proclaiming the certain sanctity of the mystic, and the granting of a universal feast, as requested by Our Lord to St. Faustina.

St. Faustina is the apostle of Divine Mercy.  She was born in 1905 in Glogowiec, Poland, the third of ten children.  After having a vision of the suffering Christ, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in August 1925, and took the name of Sr. Maria Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament.  Having a deep love for the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin Mary she also meditated on the mercy of Christ coming from his suffering.  Her years in the convent were marked by extraordinary gifts:  revelations, visions, experiencing the stigmata without having the external signs, bilocation, reading of souls, prophecy, and a deep mystical and spousal love with our Lord.  She experienced her relationship with the supernatural and spiritual world in a physical and spiritual reality.  She died at the age of 33 in Cracow in 1938.  (similar to St. Catherine of Siena:  spiritual stigmata and death at 33)

Her mission consisted in three main tasks:

1.    Reminding the world and the Church of the truth of God’s mercy for every human being, as revealed in Sacred Scripture.

2.    Entreating Divine Mercy for the whole world, especially for poor sinners, through the practice of new forms of devotion to The Divine Mercy.

3.    Initiating the apostolic movement of Divine Mercy, which is to proclaim or evangelize with the Divine Mercy and strive for Christian perfection.

Hour of divine Mercy is 3pm.  This is the hour that Jesus gave up his spirit and died on the cross.  The greatest devotion since St. Margaret Mary had her visions of the Sacred Heart.  The Sacred Heart and the Divine Mercy are similar in nature and even in appearance.  The heart of Jesus is aflame with love for sinners.  The Mercy of Jesus comes forth as two rays of light, red and white, from the side of Christ bringing mercy to those who ask.