Pastor's Weekly Message
14th Sunday in ordinary time, 5-6 July 2025
Dear Fellow Saints-in-the-Making,
Joyful greetings in Christ Jesus, because of Whom we have every hope to soar to the highest Heights of Heaven!
Our nation is blessed to celebrate its 249th anniversary of Independence this weekend, and we praise God to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where our religious liberties are preserved in the First Amendment.
Since the bald eagle is our national bird, it is good to know that the eagle figures prominently in Church Tradition, where since the Middle Ages, the eagle represents the Gospel of John. With the angel for St. Matthew’s Gospel, the lion for St. Mark’s, and the ox for St. Luke’s, the four creatures are collectively called the tetramorph (Greek for “four forms”). These find their first appearance in the Bible in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, where, in a vision, Ezekiel sees, in a great storm cloud, four living creatures, each with six pairs of wings, with the faces of a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. (1:10).
They are next found in the Book of Revelation, where John the Beloved Disciple has a vision of Heaven and sees these four six-winged creatures, where “The first creature resembled a lion, the second was like a calf, the third had a face like that of a human being, and the fourth looked like an eagle in flight…Day and night they do not stop exclaiming: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, / who was, and who is, and who is to come” (4:7-8).
St. Matthew is represented by an Angel for his Gospel “focuses on the humanity of Christ”; St. Mark, a lion, because his Gospel “focuses on the majesty and royal dignity of Christ”; St. Luke, an ox, because his Gospel “focuses on the sacrificial character of Christ’s Death, and the ox is the sacrificial animal par excellence”; and St. John, an eagle, because his Gospel demonstrates his skill in “seeing beyond what is immediately present”. (source: Aleteia). As we celebrate our nation’s Independence, let us pick up one of the Gospels to gain a deeper understanding of how the Evangelist underscores a particular character of Jesus’ mission and so thank God for our freedoms. Happy Fourth!
God love you! I do. Fr. Lewis
Update on Extending Our Arms Expanding Our Hearts
Part of the fundraising for our capital campaign included applying for grants to various charitable organizations. Though we completed applications last year, we recently received the delightful news from The Anthony and Catherine Fusco Charitable Foundation (from the State of Delaware) that we have been awarded a $2500 grant for our expansion. What an unexpected blessing! Please pray for the Fuscos and their Foundation. Please keep our renovation and expansion in your prayers. St. Joseph the Worker and St. Jude the Apostle, pray for us!