God of hope; God of mercy . . .hear our prayer!

 

Litany of Lamentation

For those who are suffering.
For those who are injured.
For families that are separated.

For firemen, police, emergency medical workers and all public officials.
For those who serve in the armed forces.
For those who answer the call to comfort and give aid.
For those who provide support thru their prayers.

For those who are dying.
For those who died while saving the lives of others.
For those who have died from acts of terrorism [or natural disasters] around the world.
For all who lost their lives.

For those who survived.
For the children who have been orphaned.
For the men and women who have lost their spouses.
For all who mourn and those who comfort them.

For peace in our city and in our world.
For unity among faiths.
For a greater appreciation and love of all humanity.

For patience and perseverance.
For calm in the midst of fear.
For forgiveness and the grace to overcome adversity.

For generosity of spirit.
For hope in times of despair.
For light in the darkness.

Gracious and Loving God,
you are our comforter and our hope.
Hear your people's prayers as they come before you.
Strengthen us in this time of need.

Inspire us to acts of charity and generosity
and give us hope of a brighter future.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
- Joseph P. Shadle

The Bread and Wine We Offer:

 

    

The Body and Blood of Christ Sunday 2026 

June 7, 2026

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Deuteronomy 8:2-16; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

 

By celebrating the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Church reminds us of two things: God will always nourish us, and through our partaking of the Eucharist, we become, as St. Paul pointed out, the Universal Body and Blood of Christ. Through our full participation in the Eucharist, we see that our faith is nourished. Faith is first and foremost an action. Faith is proof of what we believe. Faith becomes our capacity for loving action. 

 

The Gospel reminds us that Jesus is the Living Bread and he invites us to drink his Blood, and we become what and who we eat. The Gospel writes, “The one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” By sharing in this meal of faith, we become the living, eternal Body and Blood of the Universal Christ. We become love in action. 

 

Let’s talk about what we do when we gather for Eucharist. After we ask for God’s mercy and sing “Glory to God,” the priest says, “Let us pray.” There might be an awkward brief silence and then the priest picks up his book and says a short prayer. It is not that the priest forgot his place or what he is to do next. This is a privileged moment if presented rightly. This is your moment to remember all that has happened during the week, the accomplishments and struggles, all the stuff of daily life, and you are to raise them up to God’s consciousness. Once that is done, the priest collects your prayers and lifts them up to God, the Father, God, the Parent. All the stuff of your week is gathered and offered to God. We offer to God all of our human experiences.

 

During the offertory, the community offers to God bread and wine as a token gift of gratitude. These are the parts of the meal that Jesus blessed at the Passover supper and asked us to remember. When we offer bread, it is not merely wafers of wheat. The bread is designed to symbolize all human effort, all that you set out to do in the last week. It is your labor, study, research, gardening, cooking – all forms of work and striving. This bread contains every effort that we expend to make our lives pleasing to God and to one another. 

 

We also offer wine, which is something that was first crushed, like grapes. Wine represents whatever crushes the efforts of humanity. This includes all the suffering that people will experience – any pain, anguish, grief, frustration, confusion, failures, and losses. We offer to God anything that hinders and diminishes our strivings. The bread and the wine represent the totality of human life and experience. We place it upon the altar for the Holy Spirit to transform them as the priest raises them up on your behalf. They are brought into the Living Body and Blood of Christ, who seeks to enrich humanity by bringing everyone together in charity.

 

The communion that we receive is a spiritual and physical union of hearts, minds, and bodies of all who are gathered. When we seek communion, we affirm our covenant with God, which entails naturally care for the person next to us. We agree to create unity in Christ as we live and move and have our being in Him. As we participate, we are changed and transformed over time, little by little, into Christ. 

 

When we celebrate the Eucharist, through the Holy Spirit, God transforms us to make us more like Christ. We raise our human labors and our sufferings, alongside the bread and wine, and we are the object of God’s transformation. Let us offer ourselves to our God as fully as we can. Let us raise all that we carry with us so God may touch them with grace. We are profoundly changed, and so are our efforts and sufferings, so that we can be shared with a hungering world. 

 

 

A Celebration of God's Love!

 

 

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

June 12

The story is told that once a young boy was about to have open-heart surgery.  To prepare him the surgeon said, “Tomorrow I will look at your heart.”  Smiling, the boy interrupted, “You’ll find Jesus there.”  Ignoring his remark, the surgeon continued, “After I have seen your heart I will try to repair the damage.”  Again, the boy insisted.  “You are going to find Jesus in my heart.”

The surgeon who had suffered losses in his own family and was still in pain from a failed marriage, felt very distant from God. He replied in a chilling tone, “No, what I’ll find is damaged tissue, constricted arteries, and weakened muscle.”

The next day he opened the boy’s chest and exposed his heart.  It was worse than he expected – a ravaged aorta, torn tissue, swollen muscles and arteries.  There was no hope of a cure, not even the possibility of a transplant.  His icy anger at God began to surface as he thought, “Where is God? Why did God do this?  Why is God letting this boy suffer and cursing him with an early death?”

As he gazed at the boy’s heart, he suddenly thought of the pierced heart of Jesus, and it seemed to him that the boy and Jesus shared one heart, a heart that was suffering for all those in the world experiencing pain and loss; a heart that was redeeming the world by love. 

Struck with awe at such goodness, such redemptive, unconditional love, tears began rolling down the surgeon’s cheeks, hot tears of compassion for the little boy.  Later, when the child awoke, he whispered, “Did you see my heart?”  “Yes,” said the surgeon.  “What did you find?” the boy asked. The surgeon replied, “I found Jesus there.” (Source Unknown)

The heart can be understood as a physical part of each of us – that hidden yet vital organ that circulates the full human blood supply three times per minute and whose hundred thousand beats a day are often taken for granted.  The heart is the very core of a person.  When that very center is deeply affected, one’s whole way of thinking about the world, one’s whole way of feeling it, of being in it is profoundly altered.  As in our opening story, the doctor experienced a conversion of heart – a healing from heartlessness to heart-fullness. And the child – who was all heart and shared in the heart of Jesus – had a heart filled with redemptive and unconditional love.

Today’s feast is the celebration of the “enlarged heart” of God as it was enfleshed in the heart of Jesus through the womb of Mary – a heart filled and overflowing with unconditional love and mercy.  Today is not necessarily a feast of our devotion to the heart of Jesus, but it is a celebration of God’s devotion to us by offering us a heart of love beyond our comprehension, a heart of love beyond any Hallmark card expression, and a heart full of love that is unfathomable. Our God’s love is tender; Our God is totally in love with us, and desires to be of one heart with us.  For as John writes: God is Love!

As we celebrate this feast today of God’s love for us it was different in the Middle Ages – as the devotion was not to the heart of Jesus but to the wound in the side of Jesus.  In later times, especially rising from the visions of St. Margaret Mary, the focus shifted more to the Heart of Jesus.

In the writings of Margaret Mary, she describes what happened one day as she was praying when she received a vision of Jesus:   “For a long time he kept me leaning on his breast, while he revealed the wonders of his love and the mysterious secrets of his Sacred Heart. Till then, he had always kept them hidden; but now, for the first time, he opened his Heart to me.”

Margaret Mary continued to describe in her writings how Jesus revealed his heart as a heart on fire with love as he said: “My divine Heart is so passionately fond of the human race, and of you (Margaret Mary), that it cannot keep back the pent-up flames of its burning love any longer.”  She then reveals what followed. “Next, he asked for my heart. I begged him to take it; he did, and placed it in his own divine Heart.  He let me see it there – a tiny atom being completely burned up in that fiery furnace.  Then, lifting it out – now a little heart-shaped flame – he put it back where he had found it.”

In Scripture we find a number of examples of how Jesus’ love was lived out. . .
• Let the children come to me . . .then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them
• At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them.
• Moved with pity, Jesus touched their eyes and immediately they received their sight.
• (Rich man) Jesus looking at him loved him.

So what is the good news for us today?
Let us through our daily reflection imagine ourselves resting in the heart of God hearing the heartbeat of God in the intimacy of our own prayer. 

(Nouwen)- “when we come to hear the heartbeat of God in the intimacy of our prayer, we realize that God’s heart embraces all the sufferings of the world.  We come to see that through Jesus Christ these burdens have become a light burden which we are invited to carry.  . . It is in the heart of God that we come to understand the true nature of human suffering and come to know our mission to alleviate this suffering not in our own name, but in the name of Jesus.”
For God’s heart goes out to us and God’s love is always there for us –

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061226.cfm

Sharing of the Word . . .

https://www.youtube.com/live/IWJT7ZvqgZk 

Cardinal Blase Cupich's Homily for May 31st, 2026

with video introduction of Pope Leo's new encyclical 

All you Need is Love: Trinity Sunday

 

                                                      

The Trinity Sunday 2026 

May 31, 2026

www.johnpredmoresj.com | predmore.blogspot.com

Exodus 34:4-9; Daniel 3; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18

 

The church celebrates the Trinitarian nature of God by highlighting three aspects of God’s relationship with us. In this God we see the Father, loving the Son, who receives everything from the Creator Parent, and the Spirit between them is the divine love poured into the world. It ought to tell us that life itself begins in joy and overflowing love. We are meant to live in communion, not in isolation or competition. The new encyclical, Magnificent Humanity, by Pope Leo emphasizes this communion through Catholic Social Teaching and care for the common good. God’s love wants us to know that we have life in abundance and overflowing joy.

 

Paul’s letters to the Corinthians show us the way forward: Rejoice, change your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, and live in peace. It is a simple plan of life. We also know life is complex. It is easy to be nice to nice people. It is not so easy to remain nice to people who have poor social boundaries or lack social etiquette. It is less easy to be nice when some family members are divided, when politics remains polarizing, when people think their thoughts are the only right ones. We find ourselves in a world of increasing loneliness and with people living beside one another, but not truly with one another. Hence, a major reason for Pope Leo to concentrate on Artificial Intelligence and faith’s interaction with science. Here is where the Trinity comes in. Every act of reconciliation reflects the mercy of the Trinity.

 

Though we try to listen, it is difficult to be with someone who listens poorly and speaks as if the person owns the truth. They suck the air out of the room and are not open to the informed thoughts of others. It is difficult to remain in relationship when someone has an addiction or mental illness or is stubbornly closed to other’s opinions or looking at one’s own areas of growth. It is difficult for a good person to choose charity over contempt when it appears as the other person seems to get rewarded for bad behavior. It is not easy to stay position and as a person of innate goodwill, and that is exactly what God is asking us to do.

 

Our work of encouragement is not syrupy niceness. It means that we have to strengthen another person’s spirit, even if the person acts poorly socially. We have to call forth courage so that someone who is tentative can choose what is best for herself. We have to help someone remember who he is, not as an accumulation of failures or bad decisions, but as a person that God is still trying to get to one’s real self. Whenever we heal relationships or help one understand herself better, we reveal the image of God. When we take the time to listen deeply or forgive thoughtfully, we reveal the image of God. When seek unity without trying to dominate the other person, when we call the best forth from him, we reveal the image of God. Love does not erase differences. It is able to hold people together in communion. A Trinitarian community is one in which we help each other become fully alive. 

 

          The Trinity reveals the greatest gift possible – self-giving love. God is love. Love is God. If we feel any increase of love, we experience the grace of God. If we cannot know for certain if God was present, we ask ourselves, “Am I experiencing love?” If the answer is yes, God is present. It is the very nature of love, the very nature of God, to join and bond with others because love is intrinsically relational. Love is a cosmic force. It wants to relate. It cannot exhaust itself. Love creates more love, a deeper love, a transformative love. Love is who God eternally is. 

Earth - Our Teacher!

 

Earth Teach Me to Remember

Earth teach me stillness 
as the grasses are stilled with light. 
Earth teach me suffering 
as old stones suffer with memory. 
Earth teach me humility 
as blossoms are humble with beginning. 
Earth Teach me caring 
as the mother who secures her young. 
Earth teach me courage 
as the tree which stands alone. 
Earth teach me limitation 
as the ant which crawls on the ground. 
Earth teach me freedom 
as the eagle which soars in the sky. 
Earth teach me resignation 
as the leaves which die in the fall. 
Earth teach me regeneration 
as the seed which rises in the spring. 
Earth teach me to forget myself 
as melted snow forgets its life. 
Earth teach me to remember kindness 
as dry fields weep in the rain. 
Ute, North American

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu7Ii-ssFh8&t=248s

May 31, 2026

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Dr. Jennifer

Kryszak

It’s an awe-inspiring moment. Moses heads up Mount Sinai to meet with God. God passes by and declares God’s nature, God’s identity – “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity” (Exodus 34:6).

Moses does what many of us would do. He worships God.

It is Moses’ next response that I find awe-inspiring. Moses invites God to journey with the Israelites. His invitation is honest and raw. They are a stiff-necked people. They are sinful. And yet, Moses asks God to receive the people.

And God does.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and ponder the nature of God. The readings encourage us to reflect on who our God is – Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. The Trinity itself is a mystery that we as humans cannot fully understand. And yet, we are called to contemplate the relationship of the three persons of the Trinity and embody their relationship in our lives.

This is in part why I find Moses’ reaction to God awe-inspiring. Moses opens himself to relationship with God in the hope that God will receive the people as God’s own. This includes a recognition of who Moses is and who the Israelites are. Moses does not mince words. They are a deeply flawed and imperfect people.

And yet, Moses trusts in the presence of God.

This openness to relationship with God requires assessment of who we truly are and what it means to believe in and follow the Triune God.

Relationships take work. We hear this again in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. “Brothers and sisters, rejoice. Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11). Paul notes that the call to be in relationship with God requires that we are in relationship with one another – that we mend our ways and move our daily lives in the direction of peace.

We live at a time of great unrest and conflict within our nation and across the world. Violence and war are normalized, accepted, and even praised by political leaders. Gun violence remains the number one killer of our children. Domestic violence and suicide plague our society, cutting short the lives of our family and friends.

Distrust and fear of conflict paralyze us before conversations or relationships can even begin. We know what is right, and we know what is wrong with those who disagree with us. We hold our beliefs tight and restrict our vision, our willingness to see God at work in others.

What does it mean to live in peace with one another at a time when there is so much division and violence? Does it mean that you avoid difficult conversations with family members who disagree with you? Does it mean that we ignore our role as citizens within a democracy in order to maintain a semblance of peace in our families, communities, and nation?

This is not the peace that God calls us to. True peace requires knowledge, understanding, and action. To live in peace means that we are aware of the fear, pain, and isolation of individuals and communities. It requires that we are open to challenging conversations that enable us to see another person’s point of view. It means recognizing our imperfections and when we are the ones isolating and harming others.

Peace means that we work with and advocate for vulnerable communities, encouraging our elected officials to enact policies that value life over profit. It means that we recognize and respond to our nation’s role in conflicts around the world. As we mend our ways, we challenge ourselves to collaborate and develop practices that connect, honor, and nurture.

Like the Israelites and the Corinthians, we are called to deeper relationship with God and with each other. “Mend your ways. . . . live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11).

We cannot be at peace with God if we are not at peace with ourselves and others.

The gospel assures us that Christ did not come to condemn the world but so “that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). In his life, Jesus shows us the way to salvation – a life of deep trust in God, one lived in peace and love. Throughout his ministry, Jesus demonstrated a deep knowledge of people, including the religious and political leaders of his day. This did not lead him to avoid, denigrate, or harm those with whom he disagreed; rather he chose the way of peace and nonviolence, continually inviting others to join him.

Today and every day, we are invited into deeper relationship with the Most Holy Trinity. Like Moses, do we ask God to receive us as God’s people? Do we mend our ways and live in peace and nonviolence?

At a time of such conflict in our society and world, contemplating the Most Holy Trinity and responding with openness takes courage and faithfulness. May we have the audacity to ask God to receive us as God’s people and the willingness and commitment to mend our ways and live in peace and nonviolence.