July 2019

In the New Testament the laying on of hands is linked with healing, Baptism, and bestowal of the Holy Spirit for mission. The significance of the laying on of hands became one of the foundational teachings of the early Church, as Hebrews 6:2 indicates.

From July 27 to August 4, we’re praying a novena to St. John Vianney entrusting our priests to his intercession. Join us in praying the novena and submit the priests you’d like us to pray for.

The 2019 Priest Conference East was held July 15-18, 2019, at Oglebay Resort and Conference Center in Wheeling, WV.

In speaking about the discernment of desire, Pope Francis makes reference to our Lord himself, who in his encounter with the Samaritan woman “addressed her desire for true love, in order to free her from the darkness in her life and to bring her to the full joy of the Gospel” (Amoris laetitia 294). Jesus offers the woman living water, an inexhaustible spring that will definitively quench the thirst of anyone who drinks of it. She is immediately interested: “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw’” (John 4:15).

It is often thought that priests are the only ones who accompany persons. In fact, this is not the case: the first place in which we are accompanied is the family. It is normally our mother’s hand that first accompanies us to Mass and helps us, in a loving, maternal way, to know the Church and the faith that enlightens us.

Before his Ascension, the risen Christ commissioned the apostles to preach, teach, and baptize all nations. This is often called the “Final Commission” or “Great Commission.” The contexts in the Gospels are varied. The commissioning of the eleven in Mark 16:14–16 occurs in the part of the Gospel (16:9–20) considered by most to be a later addition appended to give the Gospel a neater conclusion than the abrupt original ending of 16:8.

Jesus went to Calvary wearing a seamless undergarment or tunic, woven from top to bottom, beneath his outer garments (John 19:23). John sees great significance in this seamless robe, because he states in 19:23 that it was “seamless” and, at the end of 19:23, that it was “in one piece” (διʼ ὅλου), though the latter is not obvious in all English translations. It certainly was a unique garment, because the tunic worn daily by men and women in Palestine was not seamless but made of two pieces of fabric sown together.