Pastor’s Letter: June 14, 2026

Pastor’s Letter: June 14, 2026

12 Jun 2026 | Posted by: chadmin

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, 1554).  

As we know from the New Testament, “To fulfill their exalted mission, ‘the apostles were endowed by Christ with a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, and by the imposition of hands they passed on to their auxiliaries the gift of the Spirit, which is transmitted down to our day through episcopal consecration’.” (CCC, 1556). From ancient times, we can trace an “unbroken succession” of bishops back to the apostles. We believe that bishops are especially entrusted with governing and teaching for their particular assigned territory. They serve as a visible sign of unity for us, united together with the pope and other bishops throughout the world. One of the ways we recall that unity is by praying for our pope and bishop in the Eucharistic prayer at each Mass. Bishops have many responsibilities in the oversight of a Diocese, including safeguarding the liturgy and celebration of sacraments. As our bishop, Bishop Lou, has shared—some of his particular joys in his life as bishop include celebrating Confirmations and Ordinations (bishops are the normal celebrant for Confirmations and Ordinations in their Dioceses). Earlier this year, Bishop Lou visited our parish for Confirmation and just a few weeks ago he ordained Fr. Blake a priest for our Diocese!

As the Church grew, it was clear early on that bishops would need more help in caring for God’s people. “The function of the bishops’ ministry was handed over in a subordinate degree to priests so that they might be appointed in the order of the priesthood and be co-workers of the episcopal order for the proper fulfillment of the apostolic mission that had been entrusted to it by Christ” (CCC, 1562). Priests are representatives of the bishop for their assigned people and exercise sacramental ministry for them. Priests are ordinary celebrants for Baptisms, the Eucharist at Mass, Confessions, and Anointing of the Sick, as well as serving as officiants for Weddings (we’ll come back to Marriage next after we finish Holy Orders). At ordination, priests promise respect and obedience to the bishop and his successors. “The promise of obedience they make to the bishop at the moment of ordination and the kiss of peace from him at the end of the ordination liturgy mean that the bishop considers them his co-workers, his sons, his brothers and his friends, and that they in return owe him love and obedience” (CCC, 1567).

As mentioned above, with a different emphasis on service, we have deacons. At ordination, the bishop alone lays hands on the head of the deacon, which shows the strong connection deacons have in serving the bishop. Very often (common in our Diocese), bishops assign deacons to particular parishes to assist the priests. “Among other tasks, it is the task of deacons to assist the bishop and priests in the celebration of the divine mysteries, above all the Eucharist, in the distribution of Holy Communion, [in baptisms], in assisting at and blessing marriages, in the proclamation of the Gospel and preaching, in presiding over funerals, and in dedicating themselves to the various minis-tries of charity” (CCC, 1570). There are two kinds of deacons—transitional and permanent. Transitional deacons (like Fr. Blake was) are deacons ordained along the way to being ordained priests. Permanent deacons, just like the name implies, are ordained with an intention to remain deacons in service to the Church (like Deacon Mike in our parish). Next time, we’ll wrap up our reflection of this great Sacrament of Holy Orders and reflect on spiritual fatherhood. Please always be praying for Bishop Lou, and all our Peoria priests and deacons ordained to serve our people! Know of my prayers and blessing for all of you—sent this next week from the priest convocation!

In Christ,
Father Luke