We are past Memorial Day Weekend yet still some days from the Summer Solstice, but I think it’s okay to start wearing my flip-flops.  So, its summer time and the living is easy.  I am always happy to welcome the summer months even with the heat that comes with them.  I know some of you will be headed off the island in the next few weeks.  Some to visit family, some to travel to new places, and some just to get away.  If you are traveling to an unfamiliar spot, remember you can always check out the Mass times at the local parish online at www.masstimes.org.    It is an amazing site.  Not only does it have times of the Masses for each day in a particular area, it also has maps and directions to each church.  No doubt some of our visitors use it to find us.  It is a great travel resource.
 
And speaking of resources, please continue to be good stewards during these summer months.  The end of June is the end of our fiscal year and as you can see we are behind where we should be in our offertory.  Please continue to place God first in all things this summer.  Please continue to keep current with your offering to our faith community.  And we are most grateful to our summer visitors for your generosity to St. Michael Parish.
 
During the summer months or really anytime of the year, I love to receive bulletins from the Churches you have visited.  Put a stick note on them with your name and any “great practice” that caught your attention during your visit.  I love to get a sense of the good things other parishes are doing. 
 
One of the joys of summer for me is to take in a few movies, especially if it is a rainy day.  Today’s first reading had a role to play in a wonderful movie that I saw with three other priests this week, Pope Francis, A Man of his Word.  “Adam, where are you? Where are you man? Where have you gone?”. In one of Judaism’s most sacred places, the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Pope Francis paraphrased the words from Genesis (3:9). Words spoken by God, words of mercy uttered by a grief-wracked creator no longer able to recognize the being he made in his own image. A creature lost because of sin.
 
The only hope of overcoming the sin of the world, of rising above man’s inhumanity to man, is to turn to the God of Mercy and learn once again from Jesus’ Gospel of Love.  As Jesus reached out to the “least of these”; to the poor, the lame, the blind, the mentally ill, the sinner, so too we are to act with kindness and compassion to those on the margins of our society.   With great humility, Pope Francis talked in plain yet powerful language about the role of Christians in the world.  But the power of the movie went far beyond his words.  I found the most moving sequences in “A Man of His Word” to involve the pontiff’s global travels to the impoverished and suffering: refugees in Greek camps, children in a Central African Republic hospital, victims of a Philippine typhoon, inmates at a Philadelphia correctional facility.
 
I don’t understand why some American Catholics have problems with Pope Francis.  Yes, there were times when I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.  He prophetically calls us to be the type of human community that God is able to recognize; a humanity that is made in God’s own image.  He spoke prophetically to the US Congress in 2015, asking the joint body of policy makers, “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who are planning to inflict untold suffering?”  You could see many in the House Chamber that day were moved by his words, but obviously not moved to the point of action.  As comfortable as the Pope was in being with the outcasts of society, he also met with world leaders in a very relaxed but direct way, including Jewish and Arab representatives. “We are children of Abraham,” he tells the latter. “We are brothers, like it or not.”  
 
Yes, we might be more comfortable and feel more secure if we keep barriers and divisions between peoples.  But Pope Francis isn’t buying that argument.  He believes that we are all God’s children and though he never asked for the job, he sees his role as a Pontifex, a bridge builder.  I love him and think he is doing a great of it.

Fr. Jerry Ragan