With great joy, we again welcome back Archbishop Peter Chong who will be with us over the next couple of weeks for rest, rejuvenation, and retreat. With him we welcome again members of the Fijian community in the Bay Area who join him this Saturday for Mass and a reunion celebration that is open for all of us. We are always enriched by your prayer and music, good food and fellowship and the example of your faith. Welcome!
Next Saturday, we will celebrate with mostly members of the second grade, First Communion. I always say this is one of my favorite celebrations of the whole year. The girls and boys have worked diligently throughout the year preparing for this day. We thank and welcome their families and friends who join them to celebrate. May God who has brought them to this day, continue to feed them and bless them throughout their lives.
On Sunday, May 17, the Sacrament of Confirmation will be celebrated at Corpus Christi Church at 10:30am. Last year when we lost our Confirmation coordinator rather abruptly, we were able to combine the programs of Corpus Christi and several other parishes in one program that has met at our parish site on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The visibility of our own students has been less evident, but it has been an overall good program for them and their families.
Over the summer we will evaluate the program and have also been advertising for a part time person to coordinate these efforts. I invite you to pray for our candidates and all their classmates from other parishes. I invite you to pray that the Holy Spirit will guide our staff as we look for someone to coordinate the parish catechetical efforts.
With great joy, we welcomed several adults into our Church at Easter. This is always a good time to reflect on the meaning of our own Baptism which unites us. Here is an Easter homily to the neophytes that is worth all of us reading.:
From a Sermon by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop
The baptism of Christ
“Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptized; let us also go down with him and rise with him.
John is baptizing when Jesus draws near. Perhaps he comes to sanctify his baptizer; certainly, he comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters. He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; he who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through the Spirit and water.
Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The Spirit comes to him as to an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like the dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honor to the body that is one with God.
Today let us do honor to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of men, for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all mankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven. You are to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now you have received – though not in its fullness – a ray of its splendor, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.”