SUMMER IS UPON US! PLEASE DRESS FOR WORSHIP!
Dear Parish Family,
During this time of the National Eucharistic Revival, there is a greater emphasis on celebrating and honoring the Real Presence of Jesus our Lord in the Eucharist. So especially if you’ve never attended an outdoor Eucharistic procession, this is the year! TODAY (Sunday, 6/2 at 3:00 p.m. is our Jackson region’s Corpus Christi procession at Lumen Christi! This will also be the community farewell event for Fr. Brian, who will be leading the Eucharistic procession around Lumen Christi’s campus. There will be a reception in his honor right after the procession.
HONOR THE SACRED HEART THIS FRIDAY!
We also celebrate later this week on Friday the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and we will have a special Mass on Friday at 7:00 p.m.! Last year, we enthroned the Sacred Heart of Jesus at our parish, which then followed many of you enthroning the Sacred Heart in your homes! Thanks to the special collection at last year’s Mass, we celebrate this year’s solemnity with our parish’s very own image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, painted by Joseph Macklin. We are making professionally printed and numbered canvas copies of that image as a thanksgiving to those who support this year’s special collection (minimum donation yet to be determined).
SUMMER DRESS FOR MASS!
Memorial Day often inaugurates warm weather for us Michiganders (at least for us trolls of the lower peninsula)! So please be aware of how you are dressed for Holy Mass, particularly on Sundays. Just last week, I received an email from one of our young moms who wrote to me describing how a young woman whose virtually exposed backside was eye-level to her 7-year old son standing behind her at Mass. So she pleaded with me:
Now that it’s summer, and the shorts are coming back to Mass, I have to ask: “Can we PLEASE have a dress code at Mass during the summer time?” It should be a safe place for our men and boys who want to come worship Jesus. As a mother of boys, I get soooo stressed by the low cut, spaghetti-strapped tops, and uber-short skirt/shorts coming into Mass during the summer.
Speaking of local families, recall Bishop Boyea’s challenge from Week 7 of his “On the Road to Emmaus” videos on the Mass: “Dress for Sunday Mass in such a way to honor the Lord,” and it proceeded to feature a local Lansing family who strives to answer that often chaotic challenge of dressing themselves and their five children (oldest being 8 years old) for Sunday Mass each week! The father of the family, Rich Budd, shared what helps him, and that is to remember that “there’s really nothing more important in your life than attending Mass; it’s where we encounter God.”
Rich’s wife, Maureen, shared the mindset that helps her: “Jesus asks us to give Him all that we have,” and often “all that we have is the chaos of getting ready to go see Him!” adding that “we may be ruffled and untucked and all of that, but we have tried, and the Lord sees the work behind the scenes…. It’s NOT ‘are you dressed up fancier than the next person?’ It’s ‘what’s the disposition of your heart, and how is your exterior lining up with that?’”
So to the extent that we can on a given weekend, let’s strive to have our exterior appearance align with the disposition of our heart, one that is desirous and ready to receive Jesus. in charity to our fellow worshippers and as a sign of our interior love for God, let’s all strive to dress for Mass in a way that is befitting for worship. We don’t have to dress all fancy or wear expensive clothes, and there are times when we are coming to Mass directly from another more casual event. We all need a pass on occasion because it’s always better to come to Mass less prepared than to not come at all, but perhaps try to think ahead and bring something to toss in the car that you could throw on quickly before Mass that is more reverent than what we would wear out on the lake or in the gym.
Would you enter a royal palace as a guest dressed inappropriately? Yet you are entering the house of One who is infinitely more regal than all the earthly kings and queens combined, but loves YOU all the same if you came in dressed as a pauper.
Yours in Christ,
Father Chas