Friday, August 18, 2023
Feast of Saint Helen
Dear Sisters and brothers in Christ,
Welcome to our tenth week On the Road to Emmaus. I’m Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing. It’s so very good to have you here. For two months we have been walking together through the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Every week I’ve issued a communication – just like this one – containing catechesis, inspiration and a challenge.
This week, however, our challenge is a little different. This week we will take a pause and refocus on a challenge that we’ve already done over the past four weeks. This is something we’ll do every fifth week. Why is that a good thing to do? Because in the interior life, a virtue is an acquired good habit and acquiring good habits requires repetition.
Hence, you can either further reflect upon Eucharistic Prayer III and all it unfolds to us regarding Christ’s sacrifice to the Father upon the cross out of love for you and me, or you can frequent the Sacrament of Reconciliation this week or, if you like, do both!
Okay. That’s our challenge taken care of. We’ve also had quite a bit of catechesis in recent weeks. So now it’s time for some inspiration. 18-year-old Barna Hatvany is a young man from Budapest in Hungary. Barna didn’t grew up Catholic and, perhaps not surprisingly, had little awareness of the Holy Eucharist. That all changed, however, when Barna came to school last year at Father Gabriel Richard High School in Ann Arbor. Here’s his story.
+ Earl Boyea
Bishop of Lansing