Today is the feast of our parish’s patron, St. Leo the Great. It’s wonderful that it falls on a Sunday this year as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the building of our church. I’m also glad that, at least as I type this, the scaffolding is scheduled to be cleared out of the church & that we’ll be able to see the clean new paint of the ceilings. The hole by the back wall of the sanctuary (altar area) has been patched and plastered and the two lights on the top of that back wall which had burned out a long time ago have been replaced. I’m hoping that the shrine to St. Leo the Great will be finished so that we can bless it during Mass today. Again we will have the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar between the 8am & 11am Masses and I encourage you to spend a few moments in prayer, asking the Lord to bless our parish through the intercession of St. Leo. Pray that this Catholic community may be gathered & united every weekend as we celebrated the greatest gift God has given to the Church: the celebration of the Eucharist. So many Catholics today fail to understand and appreciate just what a great gift this is to us. Many have even given up the belief that the Lord is really present to us in the sacred bread and wine that we call the Holy Spirit to transform for us into Christ’s Body and Blood. This belief has been cherished by the Church for 20 centuries. We must not allow ourselves to be influenced by the lack of faith in our world today. We are fortunate to have a relic of St. Leo (most likely part of his bone) which will be on display in the new shrine. May St. Leo the Great pray for us.
A beautiful funeral Mass was celebrated for Matthew Stuczynski last Saturday, November 2nd. Matt had a large family...7 children (all of whom he sent to Catholic School from kindergarten through high school), 19 grandchildren, 3 great-grandchildren and one due later this month. He was an honest and upright man who desired to pass on his faith to his children. He and his wife donated to an orphanage throughout their marriage as he had been an orphan himself. The Lord promised his disciples: “I will not leave you orphaned.” May he now belong to the eternal family that will be ours in the kingdom of heaven.
The funeral Mass for Bishop Lennon was celebrated this past Tuesday. These words were sent to the faithful of the Diocese: “May Richard Gerard Lennon, our bishop, brother and child of God, rest in peace,” said Bishop Christopher Coyne, bishop of Burlington, Vermont, and a close friend of the late bishop. With those words, Bishop Lennon, the 10th bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, was laid to rest on November 5th in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Cleveland. Celebrating the funeral Mass was his successor, Bishop Nelson Perez. Concelebrants included more than a dozen and a half bishops and more than 200 priests from the Cleveland diocese and beyond. Please pray for Bishop Lennon now & pray that with all the faithful departed whom we remember this month, he may rest in peace.