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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Catholic Church!!! Today is Pentecost Sunday the birthday of the Catholic Church the bride of Christ. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to His apostles. (And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.")

1.Jesus gave the key and authority to St. Peter (First Pope) (Jesus said to Simon: "I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will bed bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will bee loosed in heaven.) And Jesus put the care of His sheep to St.Peter (First Pope). (Jesus asked Peter 3x "Do you love me? and on each answer, Jesus commanded St.Peter one at a time. (" Feed my lambs, Take care of my sheep, Feed my sheep.)

2.Jesus instituted the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. ("Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.") And Jesus gave a new command to abide ("Just as I have loved you, so also must you love one another.")

3. Jesus instituted the priesthood and the sacrament of confession (Jesus breathed on the apostles, and said to them: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.")

4. Jesus commanded to make disciples of all nations and told the apostles to stay in Jerusalem and Jesus had promised the Holy Spirit will come upon the apostles. (“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age”) And ("You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Sama'ria and to the end of the earth.")

Keep the fire of faith burning!!!

Some weeks ago I paid a visit to the Car Wash. They received my car, gave me a ticket, and invited me to sit down in a small waiting room area. I found a seat in the waiting room, which was empty apart from a man and a woman sitting together; I pulled out my cellphone, to start posting something on my blog. I was wearing my roman collar, and I noticed that the couple seemed to be staring at me from across the room. I ignored them and went back to my cellphone to open up on Facebook and Twitter. I looked up again and they were still looking at me. I tried to angle my body away from them so that I couldn’t see them, but then they whispered something to each other, stood up, made their way towards me, and took a seat right next to me.

“Are you a Christian or Catholic?” The first thing I thought about was today’s Reading, in which it is asked, Are you of Paul? Or of Apollos? I told them, “I’m both.” They were taken aback, “What do you mean? Are you Christian or Catholic?”—”Well,” I told them “There’s no such thing as a non-Christian Catholic, so I’m Christian; and the fullness of the Christian faith is universal, world-wide. In fact, that’s what the word Catholic means, universal; and so I’m both!” They gave me a strange look, “Wait a minute, so are you a Priest or not?” — “I try to be!” I said, jokingly, ” Why do you ask?” — “Well,” said the man, “I used to be Catholic…” (I always know it’s going to be an interesting conversation when it starts off like that!) “But when I used to go to Mass I would see Father so-and-so arriving with his big car, not saying hello to the parishioners, and generally being completely unwelcoming. Then I found out that he liked his martinis every once in awhile! I lost my faith. I don’t believe in Priests, and that’s why I left the Church.” Then the wife piped up and said, “You want to know why I left? The choir! Nobody sang, and if they did they were off key. Mass was boring and useless to me, especially the homilies. I could barely hear them because the PA system was so bad. I was falling asleep anyway.”

After all this I think they must have picked up something in my expression, because they stopped all of a sudden and asked me, “Well, what do you think?” I said to them, “Well, it sounds like you didn’t have a Christian faith to begin with.” They were surprised, “Why do you say that?” “Well,” I said to the husband, “I don’t believe in Priests either. If you place your faith in a human being, the moment you discover that that human being is not perfect, that he has flaws, then your faith will crumble and fall. It sounds like what you had was not a Christian faith, but a priesty faith” Then I turned to the wife, “And you? It sounds like you placed your faith not in a human being, but in an experience. You placed your faith in the experience of an emotional high, singing and dancing and feeling God. That doesn’t sound to be a Christian faith either, that sounds like a choiry faith. True faith is founded on Jesus Christ and not on people or even emotions. It is He who calls us and fills us with life, not Priests, not the Choir, or the PA systems, or exciting homilies. That is the message of today’s Gospel, “Come and follow me!” This is Jesus’ message to each and every one of us, “Follow me” (Mt 4:19).

If we place our faith only in a human being, be it our spouse, our boss, our best friend, or our priest, we will always be disappointed. People disappoint; we’re not perfect. The most that any religious leaders can do is to point to Christ and try to be a selfless instrument for His work, especially through the Sacraments. With our fallen human nature, and bearing our own sins, we try to point to Him who is life, to Him who continues to seek us out. Day after day, He calls out to us, “Will you follow me, today?” and day after day we decide what our answer will be. Day after day, we see Christ also seeking us in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, seeking union, communion, with us, “Follow me.” In Jesus Christ is the glue that binds all of our relationships together; He is the life, the way, and the truth. He is love made flesh, so it is only through Him that we can find true love for our spouses, our neighbors, ourselves, and even our enemies. Beyond our emotions, beyond our flawed human nature and our sins, Christ binds us together in love. You may ask, but how can I love myself, when I am both sinful and redeemed? These two opposing realities can be reconciled by the love of Christ.

By Rachel Held Evans April 30, 2015

Rachel Held Evans is a blogger and the author of “Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church.”

Bass reverberates through the auditorium floor as a heavily bearded worship leader pauses to invite the congregation, bathed in the light of two giant screens, to tweet using #JesusLives. The scent of freshly brewed coffee wafts in from the lobby, where you can order macchiatos and purchase mugs boasting a sleek church logo. The chairs are comfortable, and the music sounds like something from the top of the charts. At the end of the service, someone will win an iPad.

This, in the view of many churches, is what millennials like me want. And no wonder pastors think so. Church attendance has plummeted among young adults. In the United States, 59 percent of people ages 18 to 29 with a Christian background have, at some point, dropped out. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, among those of us who came of age around the year 2000, a solid quarter claim no religious affiliation at all, making my generation significantly more disconnected from faith than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their lives and twice as detached as baby boomers were as young adults.

In response, many churches have sought to lure millennials back by focusing on style points: cooler bands, hipper worship, edgier programming, impressive technology. Yet while these aren’t inherently bad ideas and might in some cases be effective, they are not the key to drawing millennials back to God in a lasting and meaningful way. Young people don’t simply want a better show. And trying to be cool might be making things worse.

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You’re just as likely to hear the words “market share” and “branding” in church staff meetings these days as you are in any corporate office. Megachurches such as Saddleback in Lake Forest, Calif., and Lakewood in Houston have entire marketing departments devoted to enticing new members. Kent Shaffer of ChurchRelevance.com routinely ranks the best logos and Web sites and offers strategic counsel to organizations like Saddleback and LifeChurch.tv.

Increasingly, churches offer sermon series on iTunes and concert-style worship services with names like “Vine” or “Gather.” The young-adult group at Ed Young’s Dallas-based Fellowship Church is called Prime, and one of the singles groups at his father’s congregation in Houston is called Vertical. Churches have made news in recent years for giving away tablet computers , TVs and even carsat Easter. Still, attendance among young people remains flat.

[How to take Christ out of Christianity]

Recent research from Barna Group and the Cornerstone Knowledge Network found that 67 percent of millennials prefer a “classic” church over a “trendy” one, and 77 percent would choose a “sanctuary” over an “auditorium.” While we have yet to warm to the word “traditional” (only 40 percent favor it over “modern”), millennials exhibit an increasing aversion to exclusive, closed-minded religious communities masquerading as the hip new places in town. For a generation bombarded with advertising and sales pitches, and for whom the charge of “inauthentic” is as cutting an insult as any, church rebranding efforts can actually backfire, especially when young people sense that there is more emphasis on marketing Jesus than actually following Him. Millennials “are not disillusioned with tradition; they are frustrated with slick or shallow expressions of religion,” argues David Kinnaman, who interviewed hundreds of them for Barna Group and compiled his research in “You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church . . . and Rethinking Faith.”

My friend and blogger Amy Peterson put it this way: “I want a service that is not sensational, flashy, or particularly ‘relevant.’ I can be entertained anywhere. At church, I do not want to be entertained. I do not want to be the target of anyone’s marketing. I want to be asked to participate in the life of an ancient-future community.”

Millennial blogger Ben Irwin wrote: “When a church tells me how I should feel (‘Clap if you’re excited about Jesus!’), it smacks of inauthenticity. Sometimes I don’t feel like clapping. Sometimes I need to worship in the midst of my brokenness and confusion — not in spite of it and certainly not in denial of it.”

When I left church at age 29, full of doubt and disillusionment, I wasn’t looking for a better-produced Christianity. I was looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity: I didn’t like how gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people were being treated by my evangelical faith community. I had questions about science and faith, biblical interpretation and theology. I felt lonely in my doubts. And, contrary to popular belief, the fog machines and light shows at those slick evangelical conferences didn’t make things better for me. They made the whole endeavor feel shallow, forced and fake.

While no two faith stories are exactly the same, I’m not the only millennial whose faith couldn’t be saved by lacquering on a hipper veneer. According to Barna Group, among young people who don’t go to church, 87 percent say they see Christians as judgmental, and 85 percent see them as hypocritical. A similar study found that “only 8% say they don’t attend because church is ‘out of date,’ undercutting the notion that all churches need to do for Millennials is to make worship ‘cooler.’ ”

In other words, a church can have a sleek logo and Web site, but if it’s judgmental and exclusive, if it fails to show the love of Jesus to all, millennials will sniff it out. Our reasons for leaving have less to do with style and image and more to do with substantive questions about life, faith and community. We’re not as shallow as you might think.

If young people are looking for congregations that authentically practice the teachings of Jesus in an open and inclusive way, then the good news is the church already knows how to do that. The trick isn’t to make church cool; it’s to keep worship weird.

You can get a cup of coffee with your friends anywhere, but church is the only place you can get ashes smudged on your forehead as a reminder of your mortality. You can be dazzled by a light show at a concert on any given weekend, but church is the only place that fills a sanctuary with candlelight and hymns on Christmas Eve. You can snag all sorts of free swag for brand loyalty online, but church is the only place where you are named a beloved child of God with a cold plunge into the water. You can share food with the hungry at any homeless shelter, but only the church teaches that a shared meal brings us into the very presence of God.

What finally brought me back, after years of running away, wasn’t lattes or skinny jeans; it was the sacraments. Baptism, confession, Communion, preaching the Word, anointing the sick — you know, those strange rituals and traditions Christians have been practicing for the past 2,000 years. The sacraments are what make the church relevant, no matter the culture or era. They don’t need to be repackaged or rebranded; they just need to be practiced, offered and explained in the context of a loving, authentic and inclusive community.

My search has led me to the Episcopal Church, where every week I find myself, at age 33, kneeling next to a gray-haired lady to my left and a gay couple to my right as I confess my sins and recite the Lord’s Prayer. No one’s trying to sell me anything. No one’s desperately trying to make the Gospel hip or relevant or cool. They’re just joining me in proclaiming the great mystery of the faith — that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again — which, in spite of my persistent doubts and knee-jerk cynicism, I still believe most days.

One need not be an Episcopalian to practice sacramental Christianity. Even in Christian communities that don’t use sacramental language to describe their activities, you see people baptizing sinners, sharing meals, confessing sins and helping one another through difficult times. Those services with big screens and professional bands can offer the sacraments, too.

But I believe that the sacraments are most powerful when they are extended not simply to the religious and the privileged, but to the poor, the marginalized, the lonely and the left out. This is the inclusivity so many millennials long for in their churches, and it’s the inclusivity that eventually drew me to the Episcopal Church, whose big red doors are open to all — conservatives, liberals, rich, poor, gay, straight and even perpetual doubters like me.

Church attendance may be dipping, but God can survive the Internet age. After all, He knows a thing or two about resurrection.

Dear Pilgrims to Mary and with Mary!

Thank you for your welcome and for joining me on this pilgrimage of hope and peace.  Even now, I want to assure all of you who are united with me, here or elsewhere, that you have a special place in my heart.  I feel that Jesus has entrusted you to me (cf. Jn 21:15-17), and I embrace all of you and commend you to Jesus, “especially those most in need” – as Our Lady taught us to pray (Apparition of July, 1917).  May she, the loving and solicitous Mother of the needy, obtain for them the Lord’s blessing!  On each of the destitute and outcast robbed of the present, on each of the excluded and abandoned denied a future, on each of the orphans and victims of injustice refused a past, may there descend the blessing of God, incarnate in Jesus Christ.  “The Lord bless you and keep you.  The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.  The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace” (Num 6:24-26).

This blessing was fulfilled in the Virgin Mary.  No other creature ever basked in the light of God’s face as did Mary; she in turn gave a human face to the Son of the eternal Father.  Now we can contemplate her in the succession of joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious moments of her life, which we revisit in our recitation of the rosary.  With Christ and Mary, we abide in God.  Indeed, “if we want to be Christian, we must be Marian; in a word, we have to acknowledge the essential, vital and providential relationship uniting Our Lady to Jesus, a relationship that opens before us the way leading to him” (PAUL VI, Address at the Shine of Our Lady of Bonaria, Cagliari, 24 April 1970).  Each time we recite the rosary, in this holy place or anywhere else, the Gospel enters anew into the life of individuals, families, peoples and the entire world.

Pilgrims with Mary…  But which Mary?  A teacher of the spiritual life, the first to follow Jesus on the “narrow way” of the cross by giving us an example, or a Lady “unapproachable” and impossible to imitate?  A woman “blessed because she believed” always and everywhere in God’s words (cf. Lk 1:42.45), or a “plaster statue” from whom we beg favours at little cost?  The Virgin Mary of the Gospel, venerated by the Church at prayer, or a Mary of our own making: one who restrains the arm of a vengeful God; one sweeter than Jesus the ruthless judge; one more merciful than the Lamb slain for us?

Great injustice is done to God’s grace whenever we say that sins are punished by his judgment, without first saying – as the Gospel clearly does – that they are forgiven by his mercy!  Mercy has to be put before judgment and, in any case, God’s judgment will always be rendered in the light of his mercy.  Obviously, God’s mercy does not deny justice, for Jesus took upon himself the consequences of our sin, together with its due punishment.  He did not deny sin, but redeemed it on the cross.  Hence, in the faith that unites us to the cross of Christ, we are freed of our sins; we put aside all fear and dread, as unbefitting those who are loved (cf. 1 Jn 4:18).  “Whenever we look to Mary, we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness.  In her, we see that humility and tenderness are not virtues of the weak but of the strong, who need not treat others poorly in order to feel important themselves… This interplay of justice and tenderness, of contemplation and concern for others, is what makes the ecclesial community look to Mary as a model of evangelization” (Ap. Exhort. Evangelii Gaudium, 288).  With Mary, may each of us become a sign and sacrament of the mercy of God, who pardons always and pardons everything.