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Note: Bishop Donald J. Hying is serializing his Pastoral Letter on the new Evangelization Initiative being launched in the Diocese of Madison. This is the second part of that letter. For the complete letter, go to the Diocese of Madison and Catholic Herald websites.
We may be tempted to consider the preceding exercise in recalling God’s deep, abiding, and personal love and our own response to that, a simple thing.
Msgr. James Bartylla, Vicar General, announces the following priest appointments made by Most Reverend Donald J. Hying, Bishop of Madison, effective as stated below:
• Rev. Fr. Samuel Hakeem, OP, to promoter of vocations of the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Albert the Great, Chicago, per canon 682 §2, effective July 1, 2020, from parochial vicar, Blessed Sacrament Parish, Madison.
• Rev. Fr. Ronald Kreul, OP, to parochial vicar, Blessed Sacrament Parish, Madison, per canon 545, effective July 1, 2020, after presentation of the candidate, per canon 682 §1, by Rev. Fr. James Marchionda, OP, Prior Provincial of the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Albert the Great, to Most Reverend Donald J. Hying, Bishop of Madison, from Parochial Administrator, Saint Rita Parish, Cottage Grove, Minnesota.Note: Bishop Donald J. Hying is serializing his Pastoral Letter on the new Evangelization Initiative being launched in the Diocese of Madison. This is the first part of that letter.
Jesus Christ died for you. For you, the person receiving these words, God — the Eternal Creator — became a human being, entered into the messiness of humanity, lived, worked, loved, and prayed with those around him, and at the end of a young life, was unjustly condemned, cruelly tortured, and died as a criminal on a cross.
He did it for you.
Stop, even just for a second, and actually consider that.
You’ve likely heard it before — maybe even a hundred or a thousand times — but reconsider it; try to internalize it anew.
MADISON — Bishop Donald J. Hying of Madison issued the following statement on June 5 regarding the death of George Floyd and the steps forward towards healing and justice:
One of the Missal prayers in the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary expresses a beautiful aspiration: “In our mortal flesh may we show forth the life of Jesus.” This simple hope expresses succinctly the nature and purpose of evangelization.
Msgr. James Bartylla, Vicar General, announces the following priest appointments made by Most Reverend Donald J. Hying, Bishop of Madison, effective Saturday, July 11, 2020, unless otherwise specifically stated, and announced at weekend Masses of Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and May 17, 2020.
• Rev. Msgr. Thomas Baxter, resignation from pastor, Good Shepherd Parish, Madison, in accordance with canon 538 §1, to pastor emeritus.
• Rev. Msgr. Duane Moellenberndt, V.F., resignation from pastor, Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Parish, Sun Prairie, in accordance with canon 538 §1, to pastor emeritus, and resignation from parochial administrator, Saint Peter Parish, Madison, and from Vicar Forane of the East Dane Vicariate Forane, due to no longer holding an office for the care of souls in the East Dane Vicariate Forane, remaining as Spiritual Advisor, Diocesan Council of Catholic Women.
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The Bible is so rich and vast that we can never fully fathom or remember the totality of the Scriptures, which allows for constant pleasant surprises when we discover a text which bears a new divine revelation to our hungry hearts.
This phenomenon happened to me recently as I was reading the Letter to the Hebrews. This New Testament letter was addressed to Jewish Christians to strengthen them in the practice of the faith and not to grow weary or become indifferent.
Two central themes of the text are the Priesthood of Jesus Christ as Savior and Redeemer and the pilgrimage of the people of God to the heavenly Jerusalem, where Jesus ministers in the heavenly sanctuary.During this challenging pandemic experience, I have been meditating lately on power and the lack of it, the fear of vulnerability and dependence, the need to surrender control and accept what is beyond one’s ability to change.
Since the definition of power is “the capacity to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events,” we have probably all felt an ebbing of power and influence in our lives. The social restrictions, the loss of health or employment, the cancellation of activities and events have all thrust us into this opaque existence of limitation and diminishment.
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We may be tempted to think that once Jesus had risen from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit upon the early Church, the lives of the Apostles were easy; after all, they were filled with the light and joy of knowing that the Lord had conquered sin and death; they knew that He was with them in the power of the Holy Spirit and the sacraments of the Church.
Yet, a simple reading of the Acts of the Apostles reveals that they met with immediate and violent opposition when they began to proclaim the Resurrection of Christ. Those who had conspired to kill Jesus certainly did not want Him coming back from the dead. How much easier for them if He had remained cold and lifeless in the tomb.
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In the summer of 2016, I was blessed to go to World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, with 80 pilgrims from the Diocese of Gary.
The highlight was Saturday evening. More than a million of us from every country on earth gathered to spend the night in an open field as an oppressive sun in a cloudless sky beat down.
After the pope’s talk, he placed an enormous monstrance on the altar for Eucharistic Adoration and we all knelt down in silent prayer for 20 minutes.You could hear a pin drop.
The evening shadows lengthened as the sun descended towards the horizon.