June 5, 2025

Dear Friends in Christ,

PENTECOST
This Sunday we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost. Pentecost always holds a special place in my heart as it was the Sunday I celebrated my first Mass as a priest. I can say with great assurance that I would not be a priest except for the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Nor would I have been able to able to minister well except for the help the Holy Spirit. In so many circumstances I have simply been a beggar for the help of the Holy Spirit. So, as I give thanks to God this week for 25 years of service to God and his people, I want to especially thank the Holy Spirit for the overflowing abundance of grace he has poured out on me and the people I have had the privilege of serving. I also want to invoke his continued help upon my ministry and all the people of St Anthony, Holy Innocents, and St Jude. Finally, I want to thank you for your prayers and support over the years as a priest. I can’t begin to thank you enough for all the ways you have helped me. May God bless you for your kindness and especially for your prayers.  Please join me in thanking God at the 5pm Saturday Mass at St Jude and 8 AM and 10:30 AM Masses at Holy Innocents. A reception will follow to continue the celebration. 

PENTECOST – A CALL TO SERVE

Pentecost is the birthday of the universal Church, when the Holy Spirit bestowed wonderful gifts upon his disciples. I have seen those gifts wonderfully manifested in you as disciples of the Lord. And one of the things that has really built up our churches of St. Jude, Holy Innocents and St Anthony over the years is the wonderful generosity of parishioners like you sharing your gifts and talents. We would not be able to do what we do and spread the Gospel effectively without your willingness to serve. 

On this Feast of Pentecost, I invite all of us to prayerfully reflect on how God is calling you to use your gifts.  First of all, I want to thank all who are already serving in some way at our churches. We are so grateful for all you do.  If you haven’t been involved in a ministry here at your church, I really want to invite and guide you to discerning a way to use your gifts at the service of the Church and the larger community.  We need everyone’s gifts and talents to tell the good news and to serve God’s people. I invite us all to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for putting your gifts at the service of the Lord! 

FROM POPE FRANCIS ON THE HOLY SPIRIT:

To help us reflect on this great feast here is an excerpt taken from a homily given by Pope Francis on Pentecost in 2022. 

The Spirit of love pours love into our hearts, he makes us feel loved and he teaches us how to love. He is the “motor” of our spiritual lives. He set it in motion within us. The Spirit himself reminds us of this, because he is the memory of God, the one who brings to our minds all that Jesus has said (cf. v. 26). The Holy Spirit is an active memory; he constantly rekindles the love of God in our hearts. We have experienced his presence in the forgiveness of our sins, in moments when we are filled with his peace, his freedom and his consolation. It is essential to cherish this spiritual memory. We always remember the things that go wrong; we listen to the voice within us that reminds us of our failures and failings, the voice that keeps saying: “Look, yet another failure, yet another disappointment. You will never succeed; you cannot do it”. This is a terrible thing to be told. Yet the Holy Spirit tells us something completely different. He reminds us: “Have you fallen? You are a son or daughter of God. You are a unique, elect, precious and beloved child. Even when you lose confidence in yourself, God has confidence in you!” This is the “memory” of the Spirit, what the Spirit constantly reminds us: God knows you. You may forget about God, but he does not forget about you. He remembers you always…. He teaches us not to harbor the memory of all those people and situations that have hurt us, but to let him purify those memories by his presence. That is what he did with the apostles and their failures. They had deserted Jesus before the Passion; Peter had denied him; Paul had persecuted Christians. We too think of our own mistakes. How many of them, and so much guilt! Left to themselves, they had no way out. Left to themselves, no. But with the Comforter, yes. Because the Spirit heals memories. How? By putting at the top of the list the thing that really matters: the memory of God’s love, his loving gaze. In this way, he sets our lives in order. He teaches us to accept one another, to forgive one another and to forgive ourselves; he teaches us to be reconciled with the past, and to set out anew. POPE FRANCIS

Happy Pentecost and blessings on your week!
 
Fr. Johnson