Dear Parishioners,

It seems to come earlier and earlier every year! many of us exclaim. “It” being Christmas. For example, the Hallmark channel has been running its “Countdown till Christmas” movies for at least a month. Radio stations are now playing time honored Christmas songs as well as the cultural favorites like “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman.” Stores have been selling indoor and outdoor Christmas decorations since August and are now actually decorating their stores with these same trappings.

During our year-long celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Diocese of Joliet in Illinois, we have emphasized that we are “Founded in Faith, Called to Witness, Sent Forth to Serve.” During the month of October, we decided to focus on the last four words, “Sent Forth to Serve.”

Specifically, I asked every parish to undertake a communal service project during the month of October. I did not care what date they selected or what type of service project they chose. The goal was simply for every parish to do something - anything - of service in the name of the Lord.

Dear Parishioners,

For many centuries Catholicism has set apart the month of November as a particular time to ponder the mystery of death and to pray for those who have already been embraced by this inevitable mystery that awaits us all. Frequently I am asked, Why should we pray for the dead? for as Fr. Ronald Rolheiser once quoted one of his students as saying, If the person we are praying for is in hell, then we can’t help them, and if they are in heaven then they don’t need our help. Rolheiser’s answer to the question, Why pray for the dead? is, For the same reason we pray at all: we simply need to.

Dear Parishioners,

Our upcoming celebrations of Halloween (Oct. 31), All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1) and All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2) remind us of one the most fundamental aspects of our Christian faith – it rests on the belief in the supernatural. This belief is so fundamental that we may unknowingly take it for granted and think very little about it. Or perhaps our culture has tamed or domesticated religion (and its practices) to where we dismiss the notion of anything that is beyond the natural. There might also be the possibility that somewhere deep within our human psyche we fear the prospect of another world besides our own – a world that is unseen and over which we have little or no control. Rather than befriend this unseen reality, we may choose to trivialize it or pretend it does not exist, thereby freeing us from the need to interact with it.

Sometimes I get the impression that many people view the Diocese of Joliet as a "small" diocese. Perhaps this is because we border the mammoth Archdiocese of Chicago. However, to refer to us as "small" is rather misleading and inaccurate. The Joliet Diocese serves over half a million Catholics in a geographic area of 4,218 square miles throughout DuPage, Kankakee, Will, Grundy, Ford, Iroquois, and Kendall counties. We are blessed with 117 parishes, 7 missions, 43 grade schools, 8 high schools, and 3 universities within our diocesan boundaries.

Dear Parishioners,

Autumn is a month when change and transition is poignant. The trees give us one last blast of color and then their leaves shrivel, die and fall back to the earth. Temperatures become cooler announcing the bleak months of winter that are yet to come. Autumn sunsets fill the evening skies with resplendent reds and oranges, which although strikingly beautiful, are the colors of war. In classical Christian mythology the archangel Michael, whose feast day is September 29, is thought to replace the warrior god Mars who was always clothed in red. Not surprisingly, so is the angel Michael.

Dear Parishioners,

The autumn weeks of September and October are especially rich with the unique array of saints’ days that are celebrated during this time. On September 8 we commemorate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, only one of three birthdays that are featured in the liturgical year. September 21, is the feast of the apostle and evangelist (once tax collector) St. Matthew.

Given how violently tax collectors were despised by their own Jewish people, this day assures us that conversion is possible for anyone – both those who are despised and those who do the despising. September 23 honors the beloved Padre Pio whose visible signs of Christ’s Passion (i.e., the stigmata) invite us to look beyond what we immediately see in others to discover what sufferings they endure below the surface of the skin.