Dear Parish Family,

Listen to the words of longing expressed by the disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Stay with us, Lord" and "Were not our hearts burning within us while He spoke to us on the way!" We all have a desire to remain in a relationship with Jesus. Intimacy with Him is the deepest desire of our hearts. We recognize this intimacy in times of prayer, Adoration, and reception of Holy Communion. Jesus indeed stays with us in the Holy Eucharist. Our hearts burn within us each Sunday as we listen to His life-giving Word and receive His Body and Blood, the Bread of Life and the Chalice of salvation. This Sunday, make a commitment to spend some added time in prayer and Eucharistic Adoration. 

With Jesus being the deepest desire of our hearts, I am reminded of a quote by St. John Paul II which I shared last Sunday with our parents and teens of next year's Confirmation class. This quote capitalizes on prioritizing a relationship with Jesus above all else: "It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

RCIA Invite
As our Catholic Church throughout the world welcomes our newly baptized and professed, now is a great time to extend the invitation to family and friends to consider becoming Catholic. You may consider reaching out to someone in your life who has shown some interest in learning more about the Catholic faith and just gauge where they're at. Invite them to listen to Fr. Michael Schmitz' Catechism in a Year or Bible in a Year podcast. Buy them a book on the Catholic faith, perhaps Fr. Robert Barron's Catholicism book or Trent Horn's Why We're Catholic. Ask them how you can pray for them, and that you're available if they want to learn more about the faith. Invite them to come to Mass and breakfast with you. Basically, begin the inquiry process by offering the invitation to explore our faith. We begin our formal RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) in September. Since this is such a big decision for people, give them time in the coming weeks and months to let the Lord speak in their hearts through your invitation. Be open to the Lord who will give you the right words, tone, and intensity with which to speak.

I am yours in Christ,
Fr. Scott Goodfellow