St. Pius Catholic Church

Hello Everyone,

Happy Monday morning before the storm!  The weather forecast for the next few days does not sound too nice right now.  I first have to start off by apologizing to everyone that I wrote in my blog last week that Bishop Jenky was coming.  Apparently there was some confusion about when he was coming to Jordan school and contrary to what was passed on to me earlier, Bishop Jenky was not able to make it up here for the Catholic schools week mass at Jordan this year.  So I apologize to those who were looking to see Bishop Jenky, but did not during the Catholic Schools Week Mass last week.

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on winning their first Super Bowl last night.  I really had no ties to either team and just wanted to see a good game, but I did predict that the Colts would win the game, I guess I was wrong.  Also congratulations to Fighting Illini on their awesome victory over #5 ranked Michigan State last Saturday, the atmosphere was electric in Champaign and the Illini rose to occasion and played their hearts out to win a tough, well played game on Saturday night.

Lent is only 9 days away from starting...Have you thought about how you are going to grow closer to God this Lent?  Please check out the bulletin for our schedule of activities to help you better prepare for the pinnacle event of our faith, Easter.  We will again have Stations of the Cross every Friday during lent at 4:45pm followed by 5:15pm Mass.  Our penance service for Lent will be on Monday night March 29, at 7pm in church as well.  Please also keep all of our RCIA catechumenates and candidates in your prayers as well, as they enter into their last weeks of preparation to receive their sacraments this Easter vigil.

Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation, however, for those interested in coming to mass for Ash Wednesday, masses will be at 7am, 8am, 11am (Jordan Mass), and 5:15pm.  The church does not allow vigil masses for Ash Wednesday so there will be no masses on Tuesday night.  Next week I will post a great article written on fasting and abstaining from meat during lent and why we do it and why it is so important to do during lent.

As some of you know I am an Eagle Scout and today, February 8, 2010 marks the 100th Anniversary of Boy Scouts here in the United States.  Congratulations to Scouting on such a great anniversary and may it continue to mold and shape the future leaders of tomorrow and continue to teach others the joy of doing good deeds and not counting the cost.

This upcoming weekend is TEC 271 (Boys Weekend) from February 13-15, 2010 at the Believers Together Center at Christ the King Church in Moline, Illinois there is still room available on the weekend, it is not too late to sign up.  Please sign up as soon as possible for this upcoming Boys Weekend.  And for the girls interested in going on TEC, the next girls weekend is March 6-8, 2010 also at the Believers Together Center at Christ the King Church in Moline.  Remember you must be at least 16 years old to attend a TEC weekend.  Details and registration are available at: www.northwest-tec.com

I would like to continue to invite everyone to continue praying about joining the pilgrimage that I will be spiritual director for coming up in October.  There several parishioners who have told me that are seriously considering going on the trip, as well as people from other pilgrimages that I have been a part of over the last 2 years.  Your not going to want to miss this trip, we again are going to: Portugal, Spain, and France, with stops in: Fatima, Lisbon, Santarem, Salamanca, Avila, Burgos, Loyola & Lourdes from October 9-19, 2010.  Then there is also a post-trip excursion, for four more days in France, available for an extra fee to: Nevers (This is where St. Bernadette\'s incorrupt body is), Lisieux (To see the Carmelite Monastery where Saint Therese of Lisieux was a nun), Rouen, and Paris.  All the details and information, as well as, registration are available at: www.pilgrimages.com/frzorjan

For those who listen to the Christian Music Station K-Love here in the Quad Cities.  There is a great Christian concert coming up at the I-Wireless Center on Friday night March 12 at 7pm.  The event is called "Winter Jam" and is going to feature some great bands.  Headlining the show is Third Day, and if you have never seen Third Day then you are in for treat.  Joining Third Day is also: Newsboys, Tenth Ave. North, Fire Flight, Sidewalk Prophets, Revive, and more.  Tickets are only $10, and only are available at the door the day of the show, there is no advance ticket sales for the show.  First come, first served until the event sells out that day.

Other than that there is not much more to say for now.  This week I am going to post my homily for this past Sunday on listening to God\'s calling in this life and not being afraid to answer it.  It contains the amazing story of Grant Desme, at the end of homily I will have some article references to check out for further reading about Grant.

In Christ,

Father Peter Zorjan
Assistant Pastor at Saint Pius X
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"We All Have A Calling From Christ To Work With Him"
(This homily is based off of the readings from the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Isaiah 6:1-8, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, and Luke 5:1-11)

    If I were to ask everyone here, why did Jesus Christ come to us here on earth in the first place?  Most people I believe know exactly why Jesus came to earth.  He came to redeem the fallen world, to pay the price for our sins, and to lead every member of the human family back into friendship with God.  This is the standard textbook/Catechism answer to that question that we all learned from the time when we were little children.  We all know that, and we do not usually forget it.  However, we do sometimes forget that Jesus did not do all the work Himself and that part of Jesus’ mission was to teach us and show us that we have a role play in the salvation of the world.  As Saint Augustine used to say, “Although God created us without us, He won’t save us without us either.”  In other words, He has chosen to accomplish His mission of salvation with our cooperation.  Every one of us, since the moment of our baptism, has been called by God to be co-missionaries with Jesus Christ.  Another word that describes our calling is vocation.  Everyone has a specific vocational calling in life.  For some, it is a calling to the priesthood, for others it is be a nun or sister, still others the married life, and for everyone else to be good, holy Catholic single lay people.  The question is, do we respond back to God with all of our heart or do we ignore his call?
   
    This is why, in today’s First Reading, the prophet Isaiah hears God ask the question, “Whom shall I send?”  God wants us to participate in His mission of salvation.  He gives us a chance to join him in building up the Kingdom.  All we have to do is follow Isaiah’s lead and say back to God, “Here I am!  Send me!”  The encounter between Jesus and his first Apostles in today’s Gospel gives us the same message, as Christ was calling Peter and the other apostles to become fishers of men today.  Christ’s mission is to save the world, but He is no Lone Ranger; he has chosen to depend on a volunteer army of co-missionaries; Peter, James, John, and each and every one of us as well.
   
    Every Christian is called to be Christ’s co-missionaries.  However, some experience the call in a more dramatic way than others.  Just last month, the call reverberated in a fairly dramatic way in the locker rooms of Major League Baseball.  One of the best 2010 prospects in the Oakland A’s minor league system was a 23-year-old outfielder named Grant Desme.  If you have attended daily mass over the past two weeks here at Saint Pius X, you have heard me talk about Grant Desme.  Last season, Grant hit 31 home runs and stole 40 bases, and was named the Most Valuable Player of the Arizona Fall League in 2009.  Things were looking good for his future as a Major League Baseball player, actually very good.
   
    Despite, having such a promising start to his professional baseball career, Grant never lost sight of his faith in God.  Grant is a life-long Catholic whose family taught him not only to value his faith as he was growing up, but also to live it.  And so, as his baseball career accelerated, he did not forget about the bigger picture or to listen to God is in heart.  According to an article that was published, Grant was quoted as saying, “I am doing well in baseball.  But I had to get down to the bottom of things, to what was good in my life, what I wanted to do with my life.  Baseball is a good thing, but that felt selfish of me when I felt that God was calling me more.  It took awhile to trust that and open up to it and aim full steam toward him ... I love the game, but I am going to aspire to higher things.”  We are all called to aspire to the higher things, to answer Christ’s vocational calling in life for us and for Grant Desme that meant putting baseball aside and entering into seminary to follow Christ’s calling to be a Catholic priest.
   
    Just a few weeks ago, Desme made a public announcement, shocking the baseball world that he was going to give up his professional career in baseball to enter into seminary this upcoming fall.  It made the front page of The Rock Island Argus Sports Section and even page 2 in the Sports Section of the Chicago Sun Times.  Without a doubt, with all the pressures in the world today, to make such a decision takes courage; it means making sacrifices.  For Grant, the sacrifice involved saying goodbye to the money and fame that were knocking on his front door.  Some might be asking, how did he do it?  Where did he find the courage?  From the same place Isaiah found it, and Peter found it, and Paul found it: from discovering the personal love of God for them and being willing to trust their lives over to Christ and no one else.  In Grant’s own words, “I want to give my life completely to God out of love because of everything He’s done for me, something like this is even very little compared to what He’s done for me.”  It’s stories like Grant’s that challenge all of us to look inside ourselves and to ask, are we answering God’s call in this life or have we ignored God?
   
    While Grant’s call is certainly not ordinary and one that took a lot of courage to answer.  God is always calling us also in little ordinary ways to make a difference as well in our world.  Tomorrow, we as a nation will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of Boy Scouting here in the United States.  And if were not a for a faithful Boy Scout doing his good turn daily, we might not have this great program in our country to help teach young boys and men, how to be good citizens and how to look beyond themselves and make the world a better place.  As the story goes, William D. Boyce, who was a citizen of the diocese of Peoria at the time, stopped in London for a short visit en route to going to Africa.  While in London, he managed to get lost and did not where to go.  He ran into a Boy Scout who showed him the way to where Boyce was going, when they got to the location, Boyce offered the young man money, but the scout refused to accept it, saying that it was his responsibility to do a good turn daily. 
   
    Boyce was completely stunned at the joy this young man had in helping without receiving a reward, that he asked the young man for the address of scouting headquarters in London from him.  Boyce went their and picked up a copy of Scouting For Boys and other printed material on Scouting, which he read while on his trip to Africa.  He  was so impressed that instead of making his return to America immediately, he returned to the Scout headquarters in London.  He volunteered to organize Scouting in America and was told that he could use their manual and so on February 8, 1910 Boy Scouting was born in the United States.  All because of a simple and yet humble act of one stranger helping another and not counting the cost, and a result of it God only knows how many more lives have been touched and transformed by all the good work done by the Boy Scouts in our own country and around the world.
   
    In the end, we are reminded today that we all have a part to play in helping God fulfill His plan of redemption in this world.  Now this might lead some of us to ask, “Why did Jesus choose to require our help to save the world?”  It is not because the job was too much for him; after all, as God He is all-powerful.  Rather, because He knew that we needed a mission, a purpose in life that reaches beyond the fleetingness of earthly life and unites us to Him on a deeper level.  He knows we need a deeper meaning, because that’s how he designed us when He created us “in his own image.”  Saint Paul tells us in today’s Second Reading, “I handed on to you, what I myself have received.”  Now it’s our turn to go out and share the good news and to answer God’s calling in what He feels is the best way for us to be able to spread the good news.  Whether it be in a large way like Grant Desme or in a small way like the unknown Boy Scout doing his good turn daily, it all makes a big difference in the end, never be afraid to answer God’s calling in your life.

For further reading on Grant Desme check out any of the following online articles:

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x113240837/FROM-BASEBALL-TO-PRIESTHOOD

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/sports/NATL-Grant-Desme-Why-I-Chose-God-Over-Baseball-82693282.html

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/baseball/Top-baseball-prospect-Grant-Desme-retires-from-baseball-to-enter-priesthood.html