June 2025: Newsletter Reflections
The Ascension of the Lord
1 June 2025 • World Communications Day
Ascension
As I reflect on the Jubilee we are celebrating this year as a moment of grace in these troubled times, I would like in this Message to invite you to be ‘communicators of hope’ Too often today, communication generates not hope, but fear and despair, prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred All too often it simplifies reality in order to provoke instinctive reactions; it uses words like a razor; it even uses false or artfully distorted information to send messages designed to agitate, provoke or hurt
I dream of a communication that does not peddle illusions or fears, but is able to give reasons for hope Martin Luther King once said: ‘If I can help someone as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song… then my living will not be in vain’. To do this, though, we must be healed of our ‘diseases’ of self-promotion and self-absorption, and avoid the risk of shouting over others in order to make our voices heard A good communicator ensures that those who listen, read or watch can be involved, can draw close, can get in touch with the best part of themselves and enter with these attitudes into the stories told Communicating in this way helps us to become ‘pilgrims of hope’, which is the motto of the present Jubilee.
From the message of Pope Francis
for 59th World Day of
Social Communications 2025
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Pentecost Sunday
8 June 2025
Pentecost
The Feast of Pentecost reminds us that there is an important connection between the gifts of peace and forgiveness and the action of the Holy Spirit We are reminded that the Church is called to be God’s reconciling presence in the world This reconciling presence is also to be a way of life for Christians In situations of conflict, we are to be agents of peace and harmony among all people.
Jesus greets his disciples with the gift of peace ‘Peace be with you,’ he says Jesus then commissions his disciples to continue the work that he has begun: ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ He breathes the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and sends them to continue his work of reconciliation through the forgiveness of sins Both the Greek and Hebrew words for ‘spirit’ can also be translated as ‘breath.’
As we celebrate this great feast of the Church’s fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, how have we been a sign of reconciliation in our families, in our world, and among people of faith everywhere? Have we been an instrument of God’s peace to everyone we meet?
Spiritans.org
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The Most Holy Trinity
15 June 2025 • Day for Life
Trinity
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are persons. And as persons, they want to be known. And they want to be known primarily through a life of deep and intimate prayer. Praying to one person, of course, is praying to all, since they are one God. But we are, nonetheless, called to a relationship of love with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Prayer often begins by saying prayers, by meditating upon Scripture, and by listening. But true prayer is something much deeper. True prayer is contemplative prayer that ultimately leads to divine union. Only God can initiate this form of prayer in our lives, and only God, through this deep form of prayer, can communicate himself to us as he is. Some of the greatest mystics of our Church, such as Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Ávila, explain in their mystical theology that the deepest knowledge of God does not come through concepts or images.
Reflect, today, upon the Most Holy Trinity. As you do, say a prayer to God asking for a deeper and more intimate knowledge of him. Ask him to communicate to you his divine love and to open your mind and heart to a deeper understanding of who he is. Try to humble yourself before the great mystery of the inner life of God. Humility before the mystery of God means that we know how little we know about him and how little we know of him. But that humble truth will help you move closer to the deeper relationship of love to which you are called.
Catholic-daily-reflections.com
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The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)
22 June 2025
The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
The Eucharist is essentially and of its very nature a community action in which every person present is expected to be an active participant We are here, on the one hand, recalling what makes us Christians in the first place – our identification with the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus And that identification with Jesus is expressed not through a one-to-one relationship with him but in a community relationship with him present in all those who call themselves Christian We relate to him through his Risen Body, which is the whole community bearing his name There is no place in Christianity for individualism It is a horizontal faith: we go to God with and through those around us.
Every Lord’s Day we come together as that Body, as a community, to say thanks to him and hence the name ‘Eucharist’ which means ‘thanks’ It is regrettable, then, if we are only in church to ‘keep the Third Commandment’ on a purely private, individual, devotional basis With that mentality, it will not be surprising if we think it does not matter if we are late or leave early Because, with that mentality, ‘going to Mass’ is a private affair for me and all the others who ‘happen’ to be there, too.
Some even resent that there is too much going on They wonder why they cannot be ‘left in peace to say their prayers’ It is true some Mass celebrations can be overactive or over-intrusive but, on the other hand, it is not a time for contemplative prayer. One can do that much better at home The whole point of being at Mass is to celebrate together with one’s fellow-Christians as a community of the disciples of Jesus.
www.sacredspace.ie
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SS Peter and Paul, Apostles
29 June 2025
‘Surely we need to ‘abound in hope’ (cf Rom 15:13), so that we may bear credible and attractive witness to the faith and love that dwell in our hearts; that our faith may be joyful and our charity enthusiastic; and that each of us may be able to offer a smile, a small gesture of friendship, a kind look, a ready ear, a good deed, in the knowledge that, in the Spirit of Jesus, these can become, for those who receive them, rich seeds of hope.’
Pope Francis
Some people bless themselves – make the Sign of the Cross – when they pass a church. What does it mean? Perhaps only God knows. It is a prayer, an invocation, a visible act of faith, a public yet personal gesture as you pass ‘God’s house’ – ‘teach Dé’ – ‘teach an phobail’. It is a reminder of how precious and universal that gesture is: to bless yourself in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You see people blessing themselves in all sorts of situations: absentmindedly on the way into church; solemnly at the end of Mass; in thankful delight, as with sports people; poignantly, in the case of mourners at a grave. In extreme sickness, when the brain can no longer form words and the only way we can turn to God may be with our feeble fingers, forming a cross. This sign can grow hurried and thoughtless through custom, but in moments of crisis and deep emotion, there are few gestures as rich in meaning as blessing ourselves.
Adareparish.ie
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