Dear Parishioners,
Saint Paul reveals something personal in his second letter to the Corinthians, our second reading today, something about which scholars have discussed and speculated for the last two thousand years. “That I, Paul, might not become too elated, because of the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.”
Dear Parishioners,
I was recently playing my older brother in a mini-basketball arcade game, much to the delight of my nieces and nephews. It’s the game where there are two little hoops and a whole bunch of mini-basketballs, and you stand next to your competitor trying to make as many baskets as possible in one minute. The particular game we played was such that if one person fell too far behind, or if you didn’t make a bucket in ten seconds, then you were eliminated. The other person could keep playing and scoring points, but you yourself couldn’t score. So, it was pointless to continue. When this happened to me, I just stopped shooting baskets and watched my brother as the minute finished. But looking at my nieces and nephews, and not wanting them to think me a quitter, I decided to keep shooting. Besides, it would be good practice for me for the rematch, and I might be able to stifle my brother from racking up the score. Even though I couldn’t win, there was still a point.
Dear Parishioners,
Christ asleep on the boat in the midst of a storm is a beautiful passage for meditation. We hear that “A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up.” The apostles on the boat were panicking. Their lives were endangered. Keep in mind that Peter and several of the other apostles were experienced fishermen. They lived on this sea and had sailed on it countless times. This must have been a pretty bad storm–the worst they had ever seen–to scare them.
Father James Wallace grew up in Winnetka, Illinois and attended Sts. Faith Hope and Charity grammar school, New Trier High School, and then The George Washington University in Washington DC, where he earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science in 2007. He attended seminary at The Pontifical North American College in Rome and was ordained a priest in 2012 for the Archdiocese of Chicago. In addition to being the pastor of Saint Paul of the Cross Parish, he serves as a canon lawyer for the Archdiocese, a dean in Vicariate II, and a professor of canon law and spiritual director at Mundelein Seminary. He is also one of the featured Mercy Home Sunday Mass celebrants, airing Sundays at 9:30am on WGN.
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