August 28th, 2022
twenty-Second Sunday in ordinary time
by Fr. Boniface Endorf, O.P.
Dear St. Joseph Parish Family,
This week classes begin again at NYU so we’ll be seeing students returning to the NYU Catholic Center and to St. Joseph’s on the weekends. It’s exciting to see the parish year get rolling again! The parish will begin filling up again and ministries will begin to come back online.
Also, one of the ministries restarting is RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), which is the program for people wanting to enter the Catholic Church. We have a very good RCIA program at St. Joseph’s—all the classes are taught by friars and they are taught on a deeper level than almost any other program. It meets Sundays from mid-September until the Easter Vigil. If you know anyone who may be interested in becoming Catholic, now is the time to start talking about joining RCIA. It also is for adult baptized Catholics who have not yet received confirmation.
God Bless,
Fr. Boniface
Mass Tidbit:
After the sign of the cross, the priest then says: “The Lord be with you,” while the people respond: “And with your spirit.” This short dialogue is very old; the first recorded example of it is from AD 215. The priest is praying that the Holy Spirit will be with the people—that God’s grace will lift them up as they come to worship God in the Mass.
The people’s response can sound strange today. It’s only ever said to ordained ministers—bishops, priests, and deacons. It refers to the graces given to them in ordination, the sacrament of Holy Orders. Just as baptism changes the deepest part of our souls for all eternity, marking us as children of God and thus able to properly worship God in the liturgy, so too does ordination change the recipient’s soul eternally on the deepest level, marking him a minister (bishop, priest, or deacon) of Jesus Christ and giving him the graces to fulfill his role within the Church and her sacraments. The people are praying that those graces from the sacrament of Holy Orders will lift up the priest to fulfill his role in worshipping God at the Mass.
