From Father George's Desk 11/16/2025

As we approach the end of the liturgical year, the Church turns her attention toward consideration of “the last things”, or eschatology.  Over the centuries, but especially in recent times, some Christians have used texts like today’s passage from Luke’s gospel or the words of Malachi the prophet to try to “scare the devil” out of others.  The Church at Thessalonika was dealing with those same fears in the decades after Jesus' resurrection and ascension, as today’s second reading makes clear.  The Thessalonians were so obsessed over the coming of the Day of the Lord that they stopped working and sat around idly waiting for the Second Coming.  Paul shows no patience for this kind of foolishness, giving orders to misguided believers to stop sponging off the rest of the community and to keep their noses out of places they don’t belong.  The Day of the Lord will come, says Paul, but as we await that day, we must continue to live the faith, to practice charity, and to tend to our legitimate human needs.  Each week, as recite the Creed at Mass, we profess our belief in the coming of the Day of the Lord.  We cannot hasten or postpone that day, nor should we fear it.  Faith and love of God cannot be based on fear.  We should not interpret passages like today’s gospel as threats of punishment, but rather as assurance that God is ever faithful and loving and that His kingdom will ultimately prevail.  During this Month of All Souls we especially pray for all of those who have died... who have experienced “the last things”...that they may enter into the fullness of God’s kingdom.  And we pray for ourselves that we may grow in the love of God...living the faith, practicing charity, and tending to our   legitimate human needs...as we hopefully, not fearfully, await the coming of the Day of the Lord.

There will be two opportunities next week to join in worship and praise of God for all of the blessings we enjoy.  Next Sunday afternoon, November 23, the Greater Latrobe Ministerial Association will host its annual Thanksgiving Service at St. James Lutheran Church in Youngstown at 2:00PM with refreshments and fellowship to follow. On Thanksgiving morning, Mass will be celebrated at 9:00AM at both Holy Family and at St. John.  The Thanksgiving Collection will be designated to assist those in need in our community.  While    Thanksgiving is certainly not a holyday, I encourage you to make an effort to come to Mass that morning.  What better way could there be to begin this national day of thanks than by celebrating the Eucharist?

On Tuesday the Church celebrates a woman whose remarkable missionary zeal helped to spread the faith during the early westward expansion of the United States. St. Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France in 1769 and, against her family’s wishes, entered the convent just before the outbreak of the French Revolution.  In the anti-Church fervor and tumult of Revolutionary France, her convent was closed but she continued her ministry, establishing a school for poor children and hiding priests from the    terror and violence which plagued France in the 1790s.  When the situation finally cooled, she joined the Society of the Sacred Heart, soon becoming a leader in her community.  Philippine, however, longed to come to North America, inspired by stories of missionaries working in what was then French Louisiana.  In 1818—only a little more than a decade after the Lewis & Clark Expedition—she led four other sisters on a   perilous eleven week voyage across the Atlantic to New Orleans and then another seven weeks up the   Mississippi River to St. Louis.  Despite hardship and disappointment, Philippine persevered in opening the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi in St. Charles, Missouri. With her characteristic strength and determination, Philippine worked for more than 20 years among the Native American tribes of the Central Plains, including the Kansas Territory among the Potawatomi Indians, who nicknamed her the “Woman-Who-Prays-Always”.  Declining health forced her to return to Missouri where she spent the last decade of her life in solitude and prayer.  Nearly blind and increasingly feeble, Rose Philippine Duchesne died in 1852 at the age of 83.  She was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988 and is, among other things, patron saint perseverance amid adversity.