Good afternoon everyone, As more information continues to come out/become available, it is necessary to update our liturgical schedule here at St. John the Evangelist and Immaculate Conception.  Per the newest guidelines from the CDC and the directives received from Bishop Jugis, UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, all public Masses, devotions, classes, gatherings, etc., are hereby canceled. This is heartbreaking for us all, but I am confident that as Our Lord opened heaven with His Passion and Death, He will open heaven in our lives, in the life of our parish, and in the life of the Church throughout the world, through this momentary affliction (2 Cor 4:17).  It is my prayer and hope through all of this that our longing for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament--the Most Holy Eucharist--will increase and that we will hunger for Him with holy desire.  The Church Universal needs this kind of growth, and I feel Our Lord will use this as an opportunity to assist us in it. Although we will not be able to have public Masses, I will continue daily to offer in-private the Masses for their assigned intentions, and for the good of the faithful of SJE, IC and [...]

Last weekend I had the blessing and privilege of helping out with the John Paul II Healing Center's Undone: Women's Conference at St. Mark Catholic Church in Huntersville.  It was a beautiful experience and I'm grateful to Our Lord for allowing me to be a part of the retreat team for the weekend.  I was just a team member and not a participant, and Our Lord worked and is still working some beautiful healing in my heart. If you have never heard of the JPII Healing Center, I encourage you to check them out.  It was formed by Dr. Bob Schuchts after he experienced Our Lord's healing embrace in his own life and his family through prayer, the Church and the Sacraments.  He and his staff have been offering retreats and leading conferences for a number of years now and the demand for their ministry is increasing rapidly.  This is due to the powerful and Divine experiences of those being ministered to, but also to an increased realization in the woundedness/brokenness of the members of the Body of Christ.  We are all wounded in one way or another--and that's not to be a pessimistic downer, but to be a [...]

First off, I apologize to those of you who were checking this blog on a regular basis.  Toward the end of November, things started getting busy as we prepared for the December events from the Guadalupe Novena to Las Posadas and then Christmas. Second, for the next good bit, most of my posts will contain the One Minute Catechesis reflections that I began to offer at the end of my homilies a few weeks back.  I hope that they have been beneficial for you and have helped you come to a better understanding of some of the basic nuts and bolts of our Faith. Below you'll find the first two catechesis reflections.  Again, if there's anything in particular you'd like me to talk about or cover, please let me know or send me an email @ [email protected]. OMC #1--What is Catechesis and why is it important? During my first assignment at St. Mark in Huntersville, my brother priests and I decided to start a series at the end of our homilies titled The One Minute Catechesis. We did this because we saw that many of our parishioners, most of whom had been Catholic their entire lives, either misunderstood [...]

Not the warm-fuzziest of paintings, I know... In about a week we will come to the end of our liturgical year and enter once again into a new year beginning with the season of Advent.  As I’ve mentioned in my last few Sunday homilies, the Church helps us prepare for the end of this year by drawing our focus to two different ends: the end of the world and the end of our own lives—both of which are inevitable and are coming at an unknown time. I mentioned this past Sunday that such a focus is not a morbid attempt by the Church to instill crippling fear in us or make us depressed or anxious, but rather to help bring back into perspective something that we often lose sight of: namely, our end goal of Heaven. The Church has been encouraging her faithful to keep this in mind for centuries since we don’t know the day or the hour when Our Lord will come again or when our life breath will leave us.  There even are stories of Saints throughout our 2,000 year history who would keep a skull on their desk as a reminder that [...]