June 5 – Pentecost

Today we are celebrating the priestly ordination and welcoming back to OLM Fr. Tom Logue.  Ordained a priest on May 21, 2022 by Bishop Ronald Hicks, Fr. Tom served a two-year internship at OLM as a seminarian and transitional deacon.  We at OLM are honored to have played a role in his formation as a priest, and we congratulate him and assure him of our prayerful support.  Fr. Tom will begin his first priestly assignment on July 1, 2022 at St. Raphael parish in Naperville.

Today we also celebrate Pentecost.  Pentecost is a big deal!  But what does it mean to us?  It is of course all about the Spirit, and today’s readings tell us that the Spirit is ready to lead us through transformations every bit as clear and bewildering as the events of Luke’s account of the Pentecost event.  There are five suggested readings for today’s liturgy and the all lead us to reflect on our place in the community of believers.  Not one of the readings speaks of a private experience of the Spirit of God, quite the opposite.  The communal dimension is most obvious in the selection for 1 Corinthians, in which Paul uses the image of a body to explain how intimately the members of the community have become identified with one another.  When Paul speaks of the differing gifts within the body of Christ, he highlights the paradoxical reality that the more unified the people become, the more their personal identity is strengthened.  The more they get involved as integral parts of the community, the more their individual gifts are brought out in service to others.  We were all given gifts of the spirit at our baptism.  May today’s celebration of Pentecost strengthen your awareness of your gifts of the Spirit!

This evening, thirty-six people from Our Lady of Mercy and St. Michael in Wheaton will be leaving with me on a flight to Zurich, Switzerland where we will begin a ten-day tour of Central Europe.  The highlight of our trip will be attending the world famous Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany.  Scheduled to go in 2020, the trip was postponed until now due to the Coronavirus pandemic.  We will see Lucerne, Oberammergau, Munich, Salzburg, and end in Prague.  We fly back on June 15.  Please pray for our safety.

Have a Blessed Week!

Father Don

 

My Retirement Address & E-mail:

Rev. Don McLaughlin

570 Crescent Blvd. Unit 303

Glen Ellyn, IL 60137

don.mclaughlin1081@gmail.com