Dear Parishioners,

I will be away from the parish for about a week and a half starting this Monday so there will be no daily masses this week, then Msgr. Bob Pearson will be covering for me at next weekend’s masses. I will be flying to St. Louis where I will meet my twin brother and we will drive to Texas to stay a few days at my sister’s who lives there. We will also be joined by two other sisters, so kind of a family get together.

While I am away, our seminarian Colby will be beginning his Saturday Series on Prayer (beginning June 15), which he explains within this bulletin. I have given him a goal this summer to find ways to help our parishioners enrich their prayer life and our adoration program. The 15-hour Eucharistic Adoration Vigil last weekend was very successful. Thank you to everyone 

who took part in it. The adorers said it was a great experience, and we hope to do it again in the future. Thank you also to everyone who helped with the Corpus Christi Procession at Jump off Joe. It is a special time for our parish to celebrate this 100-year tradition to honor the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and it takes many people to make it possible. We appreciate you all.

On Friday, we celebrated the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and June is the month of the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart reveals the merciful love of our Savior, banishing all fear, shame, and discouragement from our own hearts. Devotion to the Sacred Heart remains one of the Church’s great treasures and sources of consolation on our pilgrim way.

I would like to offer you a reflection on the Sacred Heart by Chiara Lubich: Believing and Trusting in His Heart. Christ wants to give us paradise. He wants us to be where he is, to show us his eternal glory…We feel the heart of a friend, of a brother, of a loving teacher, of a father who gives to his own everything he can: participation in his divinity…What will Jesus be like in paradise? He is certainly glorified and also as a human being. And Mary, his Mother, assumed into heaven, is sufficient reward for his life, death, and Passion through which he preserved her from sin. Yet his involvement with mankind must make him want us too, who are now his brothers and sisters, to ascend to the place he has prepared for us. What the heart of a God-man desires ultimately cannot be fully understood. But this heart of flesh – which, though transfigured, still beats in heaven – must surely be filled with ardor and tenderness, with hope and inexhaustible, never-ending love…The world of today, with its discoveries and boundless aspirations, can no longer understand it. And yet, this heart is like a sun that shines on the whole world and on every human person. We must believe and trust in this heart, which will never delude us. It is a source of great hope for every human being; a lamp that shines even amidst the dark moments of life. (Excerpt from June 2024 Magnificat, Page 105).