School starts this week!  The theme for our parish school this year is ‘Peace be with you.’  It is a theme that should be for all of us.  It is a theme that truly should last a lifetime.  Peace be with you.  These are the first words Jesus spoke to His apostles after He rose from the dead…after they abandoned Him.  Peace be with you.  Jesus shows what the power of the resurrection can do in your life—offer peace to someone even if they don’t deserve it.  Then He turns to them and breathes His Spirit on them enabling them, to offer that same kind of a peace to a world that needs it so much.

Peace be with you.  With Jesus we can offer that peace our world so desires.  In light of the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen on September 24, let’s be more mindful than ever of the gift of peace we can offer in Christ to those me meet with each day.  Fulton Sheen once said, “unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace.”  Whether we believe it or not, each of us is after peace of soul in all we do, reach for, and undertake in life.  Thank God this peace is not as far a reach for us as Catholic Christians.  It is found in the Eucharist.  The words we speak, the peace we offer comes from our time spent with Him in the Blessed Sacrament.  Sheen once said, “When I stand up to talk, people listen to me; they will follow what I have to say. Is it any power of mine? Of course not. St. Paul says, 'What have you that you have not received and you who have received, why do you glory as if you had not?' But the secret of my power is that I have never in fifty-five years missed spending an hour in the presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. That's where the power comes from. That's where sermons are born. That's where every good thought is conceived.”  As we enter into this coming academic year and all things begin to kick-off, as we start to reprioritize our lives, my hope is that we can make spending time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament the most important action we do in addition to worshiping God on Sunday at Mass.  Our very own St. Francis de Sales said, “We must visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament a hundred thousand times a day.”  This year, my hope is that every class, every family, every person growing in holiness can make more time for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  In this way, peace can enter into our hearts and flow out to those who need it the most.

Lord, make us all channels of your peace,
Fr. Jeremy