How to be a leader in the Church

Fr. Gregory Gresko, Chaplain of the Blessed John Paul II Shrine, gave a fantastic homily for the opening Mass of the Knights of Columbus State Deputies meeting last week. He said:

Both now and during the upcoming Year of Faith, it is vital that Christian leaders strengthen the brethren in the truths of our Faith, through prayerful sacrifice of time and effort in service to God and neighbor, while embracing a joyful, hope-filled spirit of faithful love…If we respond with fully open hearts to the Lord’s calling us to be holy, we will become authentic Christian leaders who, grounded first in ever deepening communion with God, will become new members of the great Communion of Saints by the end of the race that is life, having brought the presence of God to each person we encounter in spirit and in Truth.

The whole homily is worth the read, especially for lay men and fathers looking to become better leaders in the Church.

Holy Trinity Sunday - so much to celebrate!

Some years it’s difficult to transition from Easter to ordinary time. Our hearts get so used to celebrating, that it’s hard for them to slow down the pace and find excitement in normalcy. It’s nice, then, that the Church gives us some feast days after Pentecost, so we can ease our way back into ordinary liturgies with ordinary vestments and ordinary altar flowers.

We are blessed to celebrate one of those feast days today—Holy Trinity Sunday. Blessed John Paul II explained its significance during his Angelus for the solemnity in 2003:

This Sunday which follows Pentecost we celebrate the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity. The Triune nature of God is the principal mystery of the Catholic faith. With it, we come to the end of the journey of revelation which Jesus fulfilled through his Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection. From the summit of the "holy mountain" which is Christ, we contemplate the first and last horizon of the universe and of history: the Love of God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

God is not solitude, but perfect communion. From God being communion derives the vocation of all humanity to form the one great family in which the various races and cultures meet one another and are reciprocally enriched (cf. Acts 17: 26).

Today we celebrate this “perfect communion,” this union of the Trinity which is ceaselessly praised in our liturgy and in our prayers. When we make the sign of the Cross, when we repeat the Glory Be, and when we profess the Apostles’ Creed—we glorify the Trinity, the central mystery of the Catholic faith. As Blessed John Paul II once exclaimed: