Upcoming Events

Pastor’s Letter: June 14, 2026

Dear St. Philomena Parish Family, 

Blessings to you all this week! As I think many of you know, this week nearly all of the priests of our Diocese will be away for our first ever convocation. Bishop Lou has shared that the vision for these days is to truly have time away together to pray, learn, and rest. Bishop has asked that you all would especially pray for priests this week—your prayers truly are a great gift to us and help strengthen us for our service here at St. Philomena! Since we are away, we won’t be able to offer some of our normal sacrament times this week. However, we are blessed to still offer the 7am Mass each morning, Monday-Thursday. Fr. Jerry Ward, one of our good priests with senior status, will be here each morning offering a Mass for our Peoria area. For all of our regular morning Mass goers, please be especially welcoming to others who will be joining us from around the Peoria area. We will resume our normal schedule on Friday, June 19.

Last time in our reflection of Holy Orders, we talked about the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood. This week, we’ll reflect on the three degrees of the Sacrament of Holy Orders: bishops, priests, and deacons. As the Catechism teaches, “Catholic doctrine, expressed in the liturgy, the Magisterium, and the constant practice of the Church, recognizes that there are two degrees of ministerial participation in the priesthood of Christ: the episcopacy and the presbyterate. The diaconate is intended to help and serve them…Yet Catholic doctrine teaches that the degrees of priestly participation (episcopate and presbyterate) and the degree of service (diaconate) are all three conferred by a sacramental act called ‘ordination,’ that is, by the sacrament of Holy Orders” (CCC,..