June 11 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this week's LinC Letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass at 8:00am and 12:30pm on Sunday

More Like Mike

 This weekend we celebrate the feast of the most holy Trinity and our parish founders day family festival. The bottom of both of those realities is "communion" or its kissing cousin, community.

In April of this year Mike Venditti, the chairperson of our parish picnic for the past 10 or 15 years tragically died. In my friendship with Mike over the years and especially during his battle with cancer and in my knowledge of so many of his friends I have come to the conclusion that Mike was the personification of "communion"/community.

What do I mean by a personification of communion? Well, he is a person for others, a person selfless in his commitment to other people's success, a person of genuine joy and childlike laughter.  At Mike's funeral mass I suggested that all of us including me need to be "More like Mike".  The picnic planning committee who have worked alongside Mike over these many years have printed their typical picnic committee T-shirts for this year and on the back of them they have written this phrase "be like mike".

 The revelation of Jesus Christ as to "how God is" is what we in the church call the mystery of the Trinity. What Jesus came to celebrate and bring about in our midst was this reality of God, a communion of persons in love. This communion is the pattern of our creation, it is the nature of our life in the church, it is the grace of the sacraments especially the Eucharist and it is the call and the invitation to our lives in the body of Christ. To be more like God, to be more in communion, to be more of communion, to be more like Mike!

 Every once in a while God is really successful in exposing divinity in a local personality.  The first among these was of course Jesus himself. His mother Mary was another and I'm thinking Mike Venditti.  Let's take the lead of all of these "people of communion" and let's be "more like Mike". I'll see you at the parish picnic