Have you ever wanted to go deeper in your walk with Christ? Do you feel called to share your thoughts on Youth Ministry events? Then consider joining the CORE Team. Any student who is in high school is welcome to join us. As part of the CORE team you will provide input on what topics we will cover at youth group, where we go on trips, or even the kinds of events we host. The CORE team also meets together to strengthen your leadership skills and deepen your spiritual life. If you are interested, please reach out to me via email!
 

The bishop has extended the dispensation from our Sunday Obligation to attend mass until September 6th. However, if you would like to attend mass again in person, the parishes are starting to do so. Before you attend please consider looking over the "Things To Know" information that has been provided by the diocese. Please also try to arrive early to receive specific instruction on how pews will be dismissed to receive Holy Communion, along with other practical instructions. Al list from the diocese can be found at the link below:
 
www.diokzoo.org/return

We are still collecting any goodbye letters that you may have or well wishes to this years team over the next week. If you have a note that you would like us to send to the team members at their home, please mail them to the Youth Ministry Program at:
 
4Churches YM
c/o (Insert Netter Name Here)
220 Church Street
St. Joseph MI 49085 
 

Pope Francis' Prayer to Mary
 
I also want to share this prayer that Pope Francis has written asking for Mary’s intercession during this time of distress. He has dedicated his pontificate to Our Lady Health of the Roman People, and in this time has entrusted his prayers to her care. I encourage you to print the attached image of Our Lady and join with the Holy Father in asking Mary to pray for us that the Lord bring the sufferings of our time to an end.
 
O Mary, you shine continuously on our journey as a sign of salvation and hope. We entrust ourselves to you, Health of the Sick At the foot of the Cross you participated in Jesus’ pain, with steadfast faith. You, Salvation of the Roman People, know what we need. We are certain that you will provide, so that, as you did at Cana of Galilee, joy and feasting might return after this moment of trial. Help us, Mother of Divine Love, to conform ourselves to the Father’s will and to do what Jesus tells us: He who took our sufferings upon Himself, and bore our sorrows to bring us, through the Cross, to the joy of the Resurrection. 
Amen.

We seek refuge under your protection, O Holy Mother of God.
Do not despise our pleas – we who are put to the test –
and deliver us from every danger, O glorious and blessed Virgin.
 
Know of my prayers for you, and your family, and stay tuned for more reflections and activities.

Be sure to join us today at 9:00 AM for the celebration of the .
Mass will be live streamed on Facebook and on YouTube Live.  

Reflection For This Week:
This weekend as we celebrate Independence Day, we hear the phrase "God bless America" repeated over and over again. So I wanted to invite you to take a moment to think about that phrase, and what it means for us as Catholics. When we ask for a blessing, we are asking someone or God to give us a good word or to wish us well. Specifically with God, we are asking that his word not just support us as human words do, but that the Word he speaks (Who is Jesus) actually and concretely bring change and good things into our lives. 
 
SImple enough right, but let's think of how we often use that phrase. It is usually a statement. Here is my plan for x, y, or z, and God bless America! We say it as almost a catch phrase, or even as a command. But, are those the best ways to be speaking to the Lord?  The phrase "God bless America" most likely started as a short heartfelt prayer. I think this weekend is a good time to reflect on not only how or if we pray for our country, but how we pray in general. 
 
When we pray, is our prayer focused on speaking and listening to the Lord, or is it a time where we read our list of demands. Is our prayer time a list of catch phrases, "Thy will be done"... "Our Father"... Hail Mary"... or is it a chance for us to speak to the Lord what is on our hearts? So let us today ask ourselves, what are we doing in our prayer lives, and how can we enter into it not with a list of demands or just with words we say because we "should". Let us ask for the grace to pray from the heart and to truly encounter God in those moments.
  
Reflection Questions:
Does your prayer life look like a list of demands or a series of prayers that you just say so that you can say you did them?
How often do you pray for our country, its leaders, its citizens, and for peace within it?
How can you pray this week more from the heart?

Jesus said to the Twelve:
“Fear no one. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”
 
-Gospel For the 12th Sunday in Ordinary
 
What scares you? What fears do you have? How do you react then when you have to face those fears? Today in the Gospel, Jesus asks us about our fears. He reminds us that the only fear that should truly stir us is a fear of the loss of God. That is a tall order though. To be honest, I have a ton of fears. Mostly irrational, like getting paper cuts on my eyeball. But, I think that our fears are rooted in a lack of something we hold dear in our life. Papercuts = A Lack of Comfort, Death = Lack of Life, Loss of Friends = Lack of Relationships, Sickness = Lack of Health, and so on. Another way of looking at it is, we fear poverty. We fear being poor, because it reminds us that we are not all powerful, that we have weaknesses, and we need others to help us grow. The interesting thing is that when we become poor, we can discover the richness of God. We hear this in scripture all over the place. Think back "That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:10. In this weakness of poverty, we find God's strength. In a lack of comfort, we find God's consolation, in our loneliness we find our Lord never leaves us, in death we remember we have been offered everlasting life. This is what the Lord tells us, don't be afraid to be poor, do not be afraid to learn from it, do not be afraid of hardships. He tells us the only fear we should have is turning away from the one person that redeems and gives purpose to those moments. He reminds us to only fear God himself.
 
However, Jesus doesn't stop there. He doesn't just say, fear God, avoid hell. He goes on to remind us that while we should fear being separated from God, nothing will stop him from pursuing you even if you go astray. He tells us that we are precious and loved. Think of it this way, many of us have been fans of certain people, athletes, actors, or other role models. We start to learn more information about them. However, we typically are not so obsessed with them that we know exactly how many hairs are on their heads. God is so in love with you, so obsessed with you, that he knows the number of hairs on our heads and even more. He reminds us that he will always chase after his precious one (Luke 15: 4-6). He will always be there to welcome you back into his love (Luke 15:7). 
 
The Gospel today ends with an intimidating line. The line isn't there to make us panic but to move us toward a healthy fear of God. It is the cherry on top of this teaching. It reminds us that if we are loved, we should respond to it. We should live it out. We should live like we are loved, or as St. Anthony of Padua said this love should move us to "preach with our word and speak with our actions". We should not fear what comes as a result of this love, but rather we should fear failing to respond. So let us pray for the grace to respond well to this overwhelming love and acknowledge all the Lord has done for us.
  
Reflection Questions:
What fears currently exist in your life?
How do those fears compare to your fear of leaving God?
How have you responded to how much the Lord loves you?
Have you experienced the obsessive, personal, and overwhelming love of God for you? (If not pray for that grace!)
Have you ever denied God before others? What resulted from it?
 

As we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (The Most Holy Body and Blood) I am reminded that in the last couple of decades a young man named Carlo, was moved by his devotion to the Eucharist to take the time to catalogue all the approved Euchristic Miracles around the World! Carlo's website is still up today and the info put into a travelling exhibit. I invite you to take some time today and even this week to explore some of these Eucharistic Miracles. You can learn about the soon to be Blessed Carlo Acutis at the official page for his canonization HERE.
 
Carlo's Website

 "Flesh is food, blood is drink: however, Christ entire remains under either species. [Christ] is not severed by the partaker, nor broken, nor divided: He is received entire "
-Lauda Sion (The Sequence for The Solemnity of Corpus Christi)
 
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. The celebration of God's gift of himself to man. Where to start to talk about such a gift!? The Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives. It is the reason and orientation of all the other sacraments, and the life of faith. It is the basic physical manner, by which the Lord gives himself to us to strengthen us on the journey to him. The Eucharist is the Bread of the Angels, given to men. I could literally take days just writing these beautiful short explanations about what and who the Eucharist is. I know for many of us right now, the Eucharist can be a touchy subject. Many of us are only starting to receive Our Lord again, while others still cannot. It is a bit ironic, that as Bishop Bradley has proclaimed this"Year of the Eucharist" we find ourselves having to "fast" from the Eucharist himself. However, I think we should in a special way today, take a minute to think about the blessings that came with this "fast". 
 
Many people I have spoken with during this time of pandemic have said how much they miss receiving the Lord. Many of them felt this loss deeply in their lives. It made me start to think, why is this "fast" so hard to endure? The conclusion I came to was that it is because we have within our deepest parts, a desire to encounter the Lord. Not only that, but that we typically find the fulfillment of that need for God in the intimate connection of receiving him into our bodies in the Eucharist. Which makes sense because the Eucharist is truly our Lord, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. That in these moments when we cannot receive him on a regular basis, it affects us. Possibly even in ways we cannot fully understand. Now to be clear, I'm not saying this is time of "fasting" was the worst thing to happen. Many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world are deprived of this blessing. It is a time (albeit forced) of solidarity with those brothers and sisters. This "fast" has also taught me another lesson about the reality of God's gift of himself in the Eucharist. That when we receive him, he does not limit himself to "just enough Jesus to get me through to next week". But rather, Jesus offers himself completely that, if we are open to it, we can receive as much of him as we need for our entire life, and then some. We may not have known the last time that we received the Eucharist; it would be our last time for a while, but the Lord did and provided enough grace until we could receive him again.
 
So let us today ponder this great gift of the Eucharist. How the Lord desires to remain with us physically and to enter intimately into our lives. Let us also pray for the grace to be, as St. Francis of Assisi said, seized with fear as the whole Earth trembles and heaven exults, "when Christ, the Son of the Living God, is on the altar in the hands of the priest."
 
Reflection Questions:
Have you taken for granted, how often you could receive the Eucharist?
How did you come to the understanding that the Eucharist is truly God's Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity or what part of this reality do you struggle with?
How has this time of pandemic affected your understanding of the Eucharist?
How can you revernace the Eucharist, or recieve him more worthily during this upcoming week and beyond?
 

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, or Trinity Sunday. We are invited to remember that our God is Love (1 John 4:8). So in short, today we celebrate love! This feast reminds us of what true love looks like. We know love is not actually love unless there is a relationship. That true love always has a lover and a beloved. We see this reflected in the Trinity in the way that God the Father, who is love, gives himself completely to God the Son. The Son, who also is God responds in kind, giving himself completely back to the Father. This exchange is done over and over for all of eternity. The Father and the Son respond in love perpetually to each with true self -sacrificial love (John 15:13).  This exchange of love is so perfect that we identify that love as God the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God's love, which is in turn poured out on his people. A true experience of the Holy Spirit, then brings us continually back into the relationship of love between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit brings us into the inner life of God himself. This is why the Holy Spirit is always spoken of as purifying and bringing us closer to God. 
 
In this understanding of the Trinity as purely true love, comes one of the deepest mysteries of our faith. That everything that exists, everything we experience, everything we are, is a result of this relationship of love. That the love relationship is what we are made for. We come to realize that when we participate in true love, we find ourselves participating in the life of God himself. There is a catch though, like God, our love needs to be relational. We need to be the beloved. We need to be a lover. To participate in the life of God we need relationships. We cannot become holy on our own We need relationships. First we need God, who is the only one who can love us fully as we deserve. Second we need those around us. We need to love others as best as we can, growing and learning what this means through our whole life.Our love needs to be put into action. That like God whose love overflowed into his work of creation, our love needs to overflow into our actions, bringing life into our relationships. This love is what the whole world craves, because, as St. Augustine says, we have been made for the Lord (who is love) and "our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.  We all crave this love because we all are made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). How crazy is that we are made as a result for love, and we are made in the image of love, even though we all have flaws and are broken (Romans 3:23). This true and pure love is what we need in our world right now. We need to be true witnesses of this mystery of true self sacrificial  love. So let us embrace our relationships with and in God. Let us let our love overflow into a world craving authentic truth, love, and peace.
 
Reflection Questions:
How is your relationship with the Lord? How can you dive deeper into it?
How are your relationships with others? Who is it hard to Love?
Has an experience of this authentic selfless love ever affected you? Who showed it to you and what changed in your life?
How can you more readily and deeply enter into your relationships with other people?

We are going deeper! Join us at 6:30 via Zoom as we talk about Spiritual Warfare and what is the deal with temptations. Where do they come from, and what do we do with them? Do we have options? Come find out. We hope to see you there.

Have you joined us on Facebook for our 3:00 prayers yet? Don't worry you still have time to join us. We will continue to pray them until May 17th. We hope to see you there.

Don't forget that the rosary is prayed daily at 9:00 AM via Zoom. As we start May, the month of Mary, I invite and challenge you to integrate this prayer more deeply into your life, and to truly get to know your spiritual mother during this month!