Parroquia del Señor San Isidro Labrador, Bilar

31/05/2026

A month of prayers, flowers, and devotion culminates in a celebration of faith and tradition.

May the virtues of the Blessed Virgin Mary inspire us to carry the beauty of faith beyond this celebration and into our daily lives.

Viva la Virgen Maria!

🎥Jepz Noabut

31/05/2026

Liturgical Feast | With the Solemnity of Pentecost last Sunday, the Easter Season came to an end. On Monday, we began Ordinary Time, that is, the period when priests wear the colour green, a time during which we are called to live the Gospel in the ordinariness of everyday life, witnessing the joy of being disciples of the crucified and risen Jesus. If we were to pause and look back a moment, we would be able to visualize a unique image. From a balcony in the heavens, God the Father, aware of how humanity after Adam and Eve’s sin (see Gn. 3) had gone astray and was unable of finding the way back to heaven, sent the prophets to help them find that way. But humanity not only failed to heed them, they also killed them (see Mt. 23:29ff.).
In the end, moved with compassion, the Father sent His only Son: “And the Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn. 1:14). Jesus, the Son of God, shared everything about our human condition with us except sin, helping us to remember that we are created by God, that we are His children, and that God is our Father. Through His words and His life, He taught us with Truth regarding the Way to return to the Father, who is eternal Life. Thus, Jesus showed us the Father’s face: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). He reminded us that the way to heaven is open to everyone, that there is no need to be afraid, and that we do not need to be ashamed because God the Father is love, He is faithfulness, He is mercy. Obedient to the Father, Jesus died on the cross for our salvation. On the third day He rose, defeating sin and death, thus opening the way to return to His Father and our Father (this is what we celebrated on Easter Sunday).

We can confidently choose this Way because Jesus, having ascended into heaven, gave us the Holy Spirit on Pentecost (the Solemnity celebrated last Sunday), the first gift given to believers – the Person of Love poured out into our beings so we might live as children of God. This is how we can understand why the liturgy invites us to celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This Solemnity is a sort of synthesis and, above all, directs us toward the goal of our journey.

This God, who presents Himself as One and Triune, is not all that distant as it seems, but is so very close that He becomes Bread broken for us, Corpus Christi (which will be celebrated next Sunday). This Bread, the Bread of angels, nourishes us on our journey toward heaven. This gift then reveals the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, celebrated the Friday following Corpus Christi.

These three liturgical feasts are a synthesis of the mystery of our faith which we have lived in these last months: from Christmas to the death and resurrection of Jesus, from His Ascension to Pentecost. The A***n heresy, which disputed Jesus’s divinity and His bond with the Holy Trinity, was condemned by the Council of Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. These two Councils were providential in spreading the doctrine regarding the Trinity both through preaching and through devotion. As early as the 8th century, liturgical prefaces appeared containing references to the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity. A votive Mass emerged toward the year 800 in honour of the Trinity, which could be celebrated on any Sunday. This decision was opposed because the Trinity is honoured every Sunday. In the end, it was Pope John XXII who established the feast throughout the universal Church in 1334.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (Jn. 3:16-18)

God walks with us.
The First Reading comes from the Book of Exodus, chapter 34. It is the moment in which God passes before Moses proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love and fidelity” (Ex. 34:6-7). Before this grand scene of self-revelation, Moses prostrates himself before God and asks, “If I find favor with you, Lord, please, Lord, come along in our company” (Ex. 34:8). This request expresses the desire that every person has at heart. For beyond whatever happens in life, what matters is knowing that “God is with us”, since “nothing is impossible with God” (Lk. 1:37).

God with us.
Perhaps Moses never expected that one day he would one day walk with his flesh and blood in the midst of his people, just as he would never have imagined that God would take on flesh in Jesus. Instead, this is what He did. And He did this not to condemn a disobedient world, but to save it once and for all.

To celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity means being aware of God’s provident care, of His faithfulness towards us, of a God who never became disinterested in human affairs, but who made Himself all things to all people so as to reach them all. Enlivened by the Holy Spirit, each of us is asked to exercise this same care and closeness, trying always to tend toward perfection, cultivating the same sentiments Jesus had, living in peace, as Saint Paul reminds us in the Second Reading (2 Cor. 13:11-13). This Solemnity, therefore, should not be experienced as if we were spectators, but it requires that each of us “walk with” others, to make ourselves their neighbours (cf. Lk 10).

[Prayer]
“Keep uncontaminated this upright faith that is in me and, until my last breath, grant me likewise this voice of my conscience, that I may be ever faithful to what I professed in my regeneration when I was baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Saint Hilary of Poitiers)

Via Vatican News

30/05/2026

Celebrating faith, grace, and tradition at St. Isidore the Farmer Parish as Bilar holds the grand culmination of Flores de Mayo and Santacruzan 2026. A beautiful offering of love and deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary from our entire community.

25/05/2026

Liturgical Feast | The Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, reminds us how Jesus Himself, through an act of entrusting, willed that the divine maternity be extended to all men and women, that is, to the Church herself. In 2018, Pope Francis established the Monday after the Solemnity of Pentecost, the day on which the Church was born, as the date for this memorial.
The title is not a new one. In 1980, Saint John Paul II, invited the faithful to venerate Mary as Mother of the Church. Even before that, on 21 November 1964, Saint Paul VI, on the conclusion of the third Session of the Second Vatican Council declared Mary as the “Mother of the Church”. And in 1975, the Holy See proposed a votive Mass in honour of the Mother of the Church, without it becoming a memorial on the liturgical calendar.
Besides these recent dates, we cannot forget how much the title of Mary, Mother of the Church, was already present in the thought of Saint Augustine and Saint Leo the Great, of Popes Benedict XV and Leo XIII, up until Pope Francis when, on 11 February 2018, the 160th anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin at Lourdes, he made this an obligatory memorial.

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. (Jn. 19:25-27)

Mary “stands” under the cross
Mary “stands” under the cross. “Stands” – this indicates presence, continuity, the strength of being there. Unlike the disciples, Mary never left her Son Jesus along the way of the Cross. It is here that Jesus entrusted the “disciple whom he loved” to His Mother (and vice versa). Mary faced this moment with great dignity. She did not take flight in the face of life’s events, but remained “standing”.

Another “let it be done to me”
Mary was invited by her Son to say “let it be done to me” once again. It is a new, a more convinced and mature “yes”. Her “standing by the cross” matures her experience of faith and of motherhood, making her capable of going beyond. From the beginning, Mary’s heart had been riddled with questions: “she pondered what sort of greeting this could be” (Lk. 1:29). Even in front of Simeon questions arose: “this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Lk. 2:34-35). Mary and Joseph “were amazed at what was said about him” (Lk. 2:33). Mary did not say, “let it be done to me” once and for all. Her consent grew, it matured through what happened in her life, including her Son’s “Cross”, by which she “stood”. It is here, in this fidelity Mary achieved, that she received her new mission, a sort of “supplement” to her motherhood that culminated in her becoming “Mother of the Church”. She is Mother because she regenerates us in grace, provided that we learn to grow to “the full stature of Christ” (see Eph. 4:7-13).

The Christian life anchored in the mystery of the Cross
This memorial “will help us to remember that growth in the Christian life must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed, explains the decree establishing this memorial. As Mary knew how to “stand” by the Cross, without evading or fleeing the difficulty of understanding and of suffering, so too Mary, as Mother, knows how to “stand” by each of those whom her Son has made her children. This leads us to know how to invoke her as “Mother of the Church”:

Mother, help our faith!
Open our ears to hear God’s word and to recognize his voice and call.
Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise.
Help us to be touched by his love, that we may touch him in faith.
Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial, beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature.
Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One.
Remind us that those who believe are never alone.
Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path. And may this light of faith always increase in us, until the dawn of that undying day which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!

(Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter, Lumen Fidei)
via Vatican News

15/05/2026