Reflection for the Solemnity of the Institution 2024

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower… Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.“

Welcome on this Solemnity of the Institution. We take a brief break from Lent yet continue in our Lenten theme – struggle. As I mentioned on Ash Wednesday, struggle is in the very motto of our Church. 

We consider the stories of struggle engaged in by our forefathers and mothers. Through today’s stories of struggle, we realize that the struggle for righteousness in our lives is evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in our Holy Church and in each of us. The Holy Spirit moves to guide and gifts us. Jesus walks with us as we continue in our holy journey toward victory.

In preparation, I reviewed news articles concerning the organization of our Holy Church.

Here, as in Scranton and other places the people wanted a Church where they had a say in the life and matters of the Church; where their voice mattered and where their dignity was protected. The people wanted a Church that was the society Jesus intended to establish, where their lives would be bound together in the one great mission of Christ and where we would be connected one to the other as a rule of life, not just for a Sunday occasion. We have such a Church.

We know our Church was organized on March 14, 1897. Even before that, a September 1896 news articles tells us that a third delegation went to their bishop so their ideas might be heard. They were told to wait. A protest took place subsequent because requests remained unheard (lay representation in parish management, and an end to verbal abuse from the pulpit by their pastor). They were castigated by their bishop, men and women were arrested. Their pastor excommunicated them.

June 1911 – a man shows up at an outdoor Women’s Societies meeting wearing a clown outfit mocking Bishop Hodur and blessing the women with a broom and a pail of dirty water. Other men join him and two woman and two men from the Church had their heads cut open by cobblestones. Bishop Hodur has stones thrown at him. Nineteen-year-old Helen Palinski and three other young women tell the Press. “We would die for him.”

The word Catholic could not be used because of threats. February 1912, lawsuits are used to prevent Bishop Hodur from conducting services. January 1916 George Greizor was shot and killed protecting the church in Dupont. One woman describes three men hanging across a fence dazed by club blows. November 1926, Bishops Hodur and Bonczak are attacked and beaten in Poland. May 1951 Bishop Padewski is martyred in Poland.

We have been pruned, and continue to be, so we might bear much fruit from the struggle and to the victory of the Kingdom in ourselves and in the world. Amen.

Reflection for the Solemnity of the Institution 2023

How to Overcome.

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected when received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the invocation of God in prayer.

Thank you for joining as we celebrate this special day in the life of our Church while simultaneously continuing our journey through Lent.

Over the past six weeks (can you believe it has been that long?) we have identified the hot stoves of sin in our lives, those dangers we love to run toward. We have set to work at getting rid of them. Those old, hot, rusty, greasy, ugly things in our lives must go. 

With that in mind, we discussed the tools available to us that help us get rid of those sin problems. They are the same tools Jesus used and exemplified for us: prayer, studying scripture, speaking about the kingdom, fasting, and communing in relationship centered on the Father. 

Seems easy enough until we set to doing them. Once we move toward that way of life, a deeper relationship with God, the Tempter enters., He comes with distractions, easy outs, and an appeal to our baser selves.

If we do stay on track, guess what? We will have the same success Jesus had. But the work toward success will be marked by further challenges, namely the Accuser comes forward with blame, he doesn’t want us to succeed or to understand the goodness and mercy our God provides. It is almost a last-ditch effort to have us abandon hope.

Jesus overcame all things for us, from the dessert to the cross. We were chosen by Him. Because of that, we are on the road to heaven. We can indeed overcome all hardship and opposition from both the Tempter and the Accuser, but we must change our attitudes and perspectives. We must solely focus on Jesus’ grant of hope. It is our guarantee!

One-hundred and twenty-six years ago a group of people facing poverty, prejudice, and every form of human accusation and earthly temptation took a stand and instituted this Holy Church, consistent with the pristine Catholic Church of the first centuries. Their work and effort was not for the purpose of being different in a simply outward manner, but intended to represent a complete change in attitude, and change of view toward the same path the earliest of Christians saw in Jesus’ redemption. They knew to trust, and so we must trust.

St. Paul tells the young bishop Timothy to differentiate rightly. We must, as St. Paul warned, avoid those who would teach falsely, who would urge us to reject God’s good gifts, so that we might clearly perceive and live in them.

Things that are evil, the hot stoves of sin that harm, destroy, hurt, and lessen human dignity cause one to fail in loving God and neighbor (the greatest commandment). Sometimes it can seem obvious, sometimes we just live with sins we have become blind to. 

Let us then focus on what God has created, foremost the salvation given to us in Christ Jesus. Let us focus on being part of Him, grafted onto Him. Let us then focus our efforts, our strengths and even our weaknesses into overcoming sin, our blind spots, and bearing fruit abundantly for God, bringing Him all glory.