Mary’s Moms invites all mothers to a beach-themed potluck brunch. Connect with other moms at our parish for a potluck brunch and
enjoy food uninterrupted!
Sr. Collette Cassar, daughter of Joe and Kathleen Cassar, will profess her first vows on August 10, 2024, and will become a novice for The Little Sisters of the Lamb. Members of the Women’s Guild will be outside after each Mass on July 20/21 and July 27/28, collecting prayers for a spiritual bouquet to present to Sr. Collette. A spiritual bouquet is a collection of prayers for Sr. Collette, such as a certain number of Our Fathers, Hail Marys, rosaries, Holy Hours/Adoration hours, etc. Please stop by the table outside after Mass to sign up to participate in the spiritual bouquet.
Join us for Dinner and Dancing to the live Big Band Sound of the 30s and 40s! The Ticket Price ($35 per person) includes a full catered dinner with dessert, beverage, wine, or beer. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and dinner is served at 6:45 p.m., followed by wonderful music and dancing until 9:45 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online HERE or after all Masses on the weekends of July 27-28 or August 3-4.
We ask that all families register in our Faith Formation program regardless of where your children will receive their religious education, including MOQ’s Parish-led Program, Catholic School, or an approved Home School Curriculum. By registering, you will stay updated about MOQ parent and family events and help us serve you better. Please note: There is no cost for at-home/at-school learning unless your child is in a sacramental formation year.
If you have any interest in supporting our Faith Formation programs in any capacity please give us your name, contact, and area of interest.
All middle and high school students are invited to hang out with us on Wednesday evenings through the summer! We will break open the Catechism, spend time in Adoration, enjoy some ice cream, and play lots of Flickerball. Come by any time and bring a friend.
Questions? Contact Lindsey Martin at lmartin@maryourqueen.com
Come to the Table is a chance to get to know one another better by sharing a meal. It is a way for the adult members of our church to meet other people in the church in an informal home setting.
How it works:
For each round of Come to the Table, groups are formed combining couples and singles for a meal at a host’s home. Group sizes are usually eight but can be 6 or 10 depending on what the hosts can accommodate. This size ensures that the group is large enough to meet new people and small enough for all to be involved in conversation.
Hosts will contact the people assigned to their group to arrange a date that works for all starting in April. Get togethers will be scheduled every other month.
Once a date is established, participants agree on what they will bring to the dinner. These dinners are not intended to be gourmet events, they are gatherings to get to know one another better so any level of culinary expertise is welcome!
How to get involved:
Getting involved is as easy as providing some simple information on the form below including whether you are willing to host. You can join as a single, a couple or a couple of friends who enjoy spending time together. Non-Catholic spouses or friends are absolutely a welcome part of these dinners.
Please join us for our fun gatherings by submitting the form below.
In the Catholic Church’s rich heritage of social teaching is the principle of Subsidiarity. This principle first appeared in the 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno by Pope Pius XI, in which he explains that nothing should be done by a larger organization that could be done in a smaller simpler one. The closer you are to a situation the better equipped you are to handle it. Based on this teaching, the Church encourages parents to be actively involved in the education of their children. This is the case, whether your children attend public, private, Catholic or home school, particularly in their religious formation.
In fact, immediately after a child is baptized, the deacon or priest blesses the father with these words, “God is the giver of all life, human and divine. May he bless the father of this child. He and his wife will be the first teachers of their child in the ways of the faith. May they also be the best of teachers, bearing witness to the faith by what they say and do, through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Parents, there are many opportunities for you to take an active role in your child’s education and MOQ Faith Formation & the Annunciation Cooperative are here to help. Please let us know how we can support your efforts and check the website to learn more about current or potential offerings. Loretto@maryourqueen.com
In the late thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas taught, “The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; it signifies Love, it produces love. The Eucharist is the consummation of the whole spiritual life.” More than seven centuries later, Pope Benedict XVI (2007) issued an Apostolic Exhortation entitled “Sacramentum Caritatis” (The Sacrament of Charity), expanding in detail the meaning of Aquinas’ teaching. In his letter, the Pope beautifully explained the Church’s teaching concerning the life-giving, life-altering importance of the Eucharist as it applies to virtually all aspects of the life of the Church, our existence as children of God, our sacramental lives, and the responsibility we each have to live daily the Eucharist through our charity to others. The document is quite long (more than 70 pages), and while a remarkably insightful, most will likely be unwilling to take the time to consume it all. Several relatively short sections, extracted from the introduction and conclusion, however, provide a great deal of insight into what Pope Benedict means by “living the Eucharist” in our daily lives as Catholics. (Possibly reading these few paragraphs might inspire you to read the entire document, which can be found on the Vatican website by simply searching, “Sacramentum Caritatis.”)
EXCERPTS from:
APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS
OF THE HOLY FATHER
BENEDICT XVI
INTRODUCTION
“The sacrament of charity (1), the Holy Eucharist is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of himself, thus revealing to us God’s infinite love for every man and woman. This wondrous sacrament makes manifest that “greater” love which led him to “lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). Jesus did indeed love them “to the end” (Jn 13:1). In those words the Evangelist introduces Christ’s act of immense humility: before dying for us on the Cross, he tied a towel around himself and washed the feet of his disciples. In the same way, Jesus continues, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, to love us “to the end,” even to offering us his body and his blood. What amazement must the Apostles have felt in witnessing what the Lord did and said during that Supper! What wonder must the eucharistic mystery also awaken in our own hearts!”
The food of truth
“In the sacrament of the altar, the Lord meets us, men and women created in God’s image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:27), and becomes our companion along the way. In this sacrament, the Lord truly becomes food for us, to satisfy our hunger for truth and freedom. Since only the truth can make us free (cf. Jn 8:32), Christ becomes for us the food of truth. With deep human insight, Saint Augustine clearly showed how we are moved spontaneously, and not by constraint, whenever we encounter something attractive and desirable. Asking himself what it is that can move us most deeply, the saintly Bishop went on to say: “What does our soul desire more passionately than truth?” (2) Each of us has an innate and irrepressible desire for ultimate and definitive truth. The Lord Jesus, “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), speaks to our thirsting, pilgrim hearts, our hearts yearning for the source of life, our hearts longing for truth. Jesus Christ is the Truth in person, drawing the world to himself. “Jesus is the lodestar of human freedom: without him, freedom loses its focus, for without the knowledge of truth, freedom becomes debased, alienated and reduced to empty caprice. With him, freedom finds itself.” (3) In the sacrament of the Eucharist, Jesus shows us in particular the truth about the love which is the very essence of God. It is this evangelical truth which challenges each of us and our whole being. For this reason, the Church, which finds in the Eucharist the very centre of her life, is constantly concerned to proclaim to all, opportune importune (cf. 2 Tim 4:2), that God is love.(4) Precisely because Christ has become for us the food of truth, the Church turns to every man and woman, inviting them freely to accept God’s gift.”
Conclusion
“Dear brothers and sisters, the Eucharist is at the root of every form of holiness, and each of us is called to the fullness of life in the Holy Spirit. How many saints have advanced along the way of perfection thanks to their eucharistic devotion! From Saint Ignatius of Antioch to Saint Augustine, from Saint Anthony Abbot to Saint Benedict, from Saint Francis of Assisi to Saint Thomas Aquinas, from Saint Clare of Assisi to Saint Catherine of Siena, from Saint Paschal Baylon to Saint Peter Julian Eymard, from Saint Alphonsus Liguori to Blessed Charles de Foucauld, from Saint John Mary Vianney to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, from Saint Pius of Pietrelcina to Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, from Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati to Blessed Ivan Merz, to name only a few, holiness has always found its centre in the sacrament of the Eucharist.
This most holy mystery thus needs to be firmly believed, devoutly celebrated and intensely lived in the Church. Jesus’ gift of himself in the sacrament which is the memorial of his passion tells us that the success of our lives is found in our participation in the trinitarian life offered to us truly and definitively in him. The celebration and worship of the Eucharist enable us to draw near to God’s love and to persevere in that love until we are united with the Lord whom we love. The offering of our lives, our fellowship with the whole community of believers and our solidarity with all men and women are essential aspects of that logiké latreía, spiritual worship, holy and pleasing to God (cf. Rom 12:1), which transforms every aspect of our human existence, to the glory of God. I therefore ask all pastors to spare no effort in promoting an authentically eucharistic Christian spirituality. Priests, deacons and all those who carry out a eucharistic ministry should always be able to find in this service, exercised with care and constant preparation, the strength and inspiration needed for their personal and communal path of sanctification. I exhort the lay faithful, and families in particular, to find ever anew in the sacrament of Christ’s love the energy needed to make their lives an authentic sign of the presence of the risen Lord. I ask all consecrated men and women to show by their eucharistic lives the splendour and the beauty of belonging totally to the Lord.
At the beginning of the fourth century, Christian worship was still forbidden by the imperial authorities. Some Christians in North Africa, who felt bound to celebrate the Lord’s Day, defied the prohibition. They were martyred after declaring that it was not possible for them to live without the Eucharist, the food of the Lord: sine dominico non possumus. (252) May these martyrs of Abitinae, in union with all those saints and beati who made the Eucharist the centre of their lives, intercede for us and teach us to be faithful to our encounter with the risen Christ. We too cannot live without partaking of the sacrament of our salvation; we too desire to be iuxta dominicam viventes, to reflect in our lives what we celebrate on the Lord’s Day. That day is the day of our definitive deliverance. Is it surprising, then, that we should wish to live every day in that newness of life which Christ has brought us in the mystery of the Eucharist?
May Mary Most Holy, the Immaculate Virgin, ark of the new and eternal covenant, accompany us on our way to meet the Lord who comes. In her we find realized most perfectly the essence of the Church. The Church sees in Mary – “Woman of the Eucharist,” as she was called by the Servant of God John Paul II (253) – her finest icon, and she contemplates Mary as a singular model of the eucharistic life. For this reason, as the priest prepares to receive on the altar the verum Corpus natum de Maria Virgine, speaking on behalf of the liturgical assembly, he says in the words of the canon: “We honour Mary, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God” (254). Her holy name is also invoked and venerated in the canons of the Eastern Christian traditions. The faithful, for their part, “commend to Mary, Mother of the Church, their lives and the work of their hands. Striving to have the same sentiments as Mary, they help the whole community to become a living offering pleasing to the Father” (255). She is the tota pulchra, the all-beautiful, for in her the radiance of God’s glory shines forth. The beauty of the heavenly liturgy, which must be reflected in our own assemblies, is faithfully mirrored in her. From Mary we must learn to become men and women of the Eucharist and of the Church, and thus to present ourselves, in the words of Saint Paul, “holy and blameless” before the Lord, even as he wished us to be from the beginning (cf. Col 1:22; Eph 1:4) (256).
Through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, may the Holy Spirit kindle within us the same ardour experienced by the disciples on the way to Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-35) and renew our “eucharistic wonder” through the splendour and beauty radiating from the liturgical rite, the efficacious sign of the infinite beauty of the holy mystery of God. Those disciples arose and returned in haste to Jerusalem in order to share their joy with their brothers and sisters in the faith. True joy is found in recognizing that the Lord is still with us, our faithful companion along the way. The Eucharist makes us discover that Christ, risen from the dead, is our contemporary in the mystery of the Church, his body. Of this mystery of love we have become witnesses. Let us encourage one another to walk joyfully, our hearts filled with wonder, towards our encounter with the Holy Eucharist, so that we may experience and proclaim to others the truth of the words with which Jesus took leave of his disciples: “Lo, I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Mt 28:20).”
