St. Mary's in St. Elmo Illinois

St. Mary's in St. Elmo Illinois We are a small Catholic Parish located in St. Elmo, Illinois. Our Mass time is 5:30 pm on Saturday and Tuesday Evenings.

We have our Catholic Council of Women meetings on the first Tuesday of the months of Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, Mar, Apr, May.

06/19/2023

Reception Saturday June 24th after St. Mary’s Mass to wish Father Joseph well in his new assignment. Join us in the hall for a light lunch and fellowship as we say good bye and thank him for his pastoral care!

This event did not make it into the bulletin so please let any parishioners know about it. Thank you.

This Weekend’s Message – "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life." Our readings for the last few Sundays have been ...
05/06/2023

This Weekend’s Message – "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life."
Our readings for the last few Sundays have been about the Resurrection, but this weekend’s Gospel takes us back in time to an event in Jesus’ life before his Passion. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house. He promises that where he is going, his disciples will be able to follow. Thomas, who will later doubt the disciples’ reports that they have seen the Risen Lord, contradicts Jesus by saying that the disciples don’t know where Jesus is going or how to get there. Jesus explains that he himself is the way, the truth, and the life. In knowing and loving Jesus, the disciples now love God the Father.
Philip then makes a request that challenges Jesus’ words. Philip wants Jesus to show the Father to the disciples. Recall that Jesus has just told his disciples, “If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” As a good teacher, Jesus responds to Philip by repeating and elaborating on what he has just told the disciples: they have seen and known Jesus, so they have seen and known the Father. Then Jesus offers another reassurance about his departure: because of faith in God and in Jesus, the disciples will do the work that Jesus has done and more.
The connection between Jesus and his Father, between Jesus’ work and the work of the Father, is made clear in this weekend’s Gospel. Jesus is in the Father, and God the Father is in Jesus. As God spoke his name to Moses, “I AM,” so too Jesus speaks his name to his disciples: “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
The revelation of the Trinity is completed in the passage that follows this weekend’s Gospel, and it is the Gospel for next Sunday. Because Jesus goes away, the Father will send in Jesus’ name the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will continue the work of the Father and of Jesus.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, a whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief an...
04/29/2023

“Amen, amen, I say to you, a whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber."

Throughout John’s Gospel the Pharisees fail to accept Jesus’ ministry and teaching. They show themselves to be “robbers and thieves” because they try to lead the sheep without entering through the gate, Jesus. Through these images, Jesus is telling his listeners that those who follow him and his way will find abundant life. He identifies himself both as the shepherd and the gate. The shepherds who are faithful to him are the ones whom the sheep (Jesus’ disciples) should follow.
The relationship between the sheep and their shepherd is based on familiarity. Sheep recognize their shepherd and will not follow a stranger. At the end of the day, shepherds lead their sheep from pastures to a common gated area called a sheepfold. There, one shepherd protects all of the sheep until the next day when each shepherd returns to lead his own sheep to pasture. As shepherds move among the sheep, the sheep follow only their shepherd.
This weekend’s Gospel also gives us the opportunity to reflect on Christian leadership. Jesus’ words suggest to us that those who will lead the Christian community will be known by their faithfulness to Jesus. The leaders will recognize that Jesus is the gate for all of the sheep and that having a good relationship with Jesus is the hallmark of a Christian leader. Jesus’ words also suggests that faithful Christian leadership requires a good relationship with the community: the shepherd knows his sheep, and they know him. Christian leaders follow the example of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, by being faithful to him and by being good shepherds.

This Weekend’s Message – …he was made known to them in the breaking of bread… When we read today’s Gospel, we may be...
04/22/2023

This Weekend’s Message – …he was made known to them in the breaking of bread…
When we read today’s Gospel, we may be surprised to learn that these friends of Jesus could walk and converse with him at some length yet not recognize him. Again, we discover that the risen Jesus is not always easily recognized. Cleopas and the other disciple walk with a person whom they believe to be a stranger; only later do they discover that the stranger is Jesus. We learn that the first community met and recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, just as we meet Jesus in the Eucharist.
We can imagine the feelings of the two disciples in today’s reading. They are leaving their community in Jerusalem. Their friend Jesus has been crucified. Their hope is gone. They are trying to make sense of what has occurred, so that they can put the experience behind them.
Jesus himself approaches the two men, but they take him for a stranger. Jesus asks them what they are discussing. He invites them to share their experience and interpretation of the events surrounding his crucifixion and death. When the two disciples have done so, Jesus offers his own interpretation of his crucifixion and resurrection, citing Jewish Scripture. In that encounter we find the model for our Liturgy of the Word—what we do each time we gather as a community for the Eucharist. We reflect upon our life experiences and interpret them in light of Scripture. We gather together to break open the Word of God.
In the next part of the story, we find a model for our Liturgy of the Eucharist. The disciples invite the stranger (Jesus) to stay with them. During the meal in which they share in the breaking of the bread, the disciples’ eyes are opened; they recognize the stranger as Jesus. In the Eucharist too we share in the breaking of the bread and discover Jesus in our midst. Just as the disciples returned to Jerusalem to recount their experience to the other disciples, we too are sent from our Eucharistic gathering. Our experience of Jesus in the Eucharist compels us to share the story with others.

This Weekend’s Message – We are an Easter People and ALLELUIA is our song! “We are an Easter people and Alleluia is ...
04/08/2023

This Weekend’s Message – We are an Easter People and ALLELUIA is our song!
“We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.” The greatest gift of Easter Sunday is our hearing and experiencing God’s amazing love for us. Jesus’ rising from the dead is our hope of resurrection. This amazing love of God gives us everything and never abandons us. Since that first Easter morning, we continue to celebrate the power of God to open the chains of death so that we might see life in its fullness.
Out of the darkness, Christ shows his light to the world. His resurrection changes the history of salvation and gives our suffering purpose. We have the freedom to live our lives as God intended and experience real joy and happiness. Even when we are buried in our sorrows, we can hold onto the hope that eternal joy is coming and God shall comfort us in our sufferings.
Our concern for the people of Ukraine and the other parts of our world where people suffer unjustly is only one example of our Easter faith. Our faith is put into action when we, like Mary Magdalene, see the empty tomb and begin our search for the Lord. We hear the lord calling our name and we tell the world, “Jesus is alive!” and we will live again!
Easter is not just one Sunday. Easter is a way of life. It is a life where Christ is always at the center lifting us from the things that keep us in the grave and do not allow us to experience the life that God intends for us. As an “Easter people”, we know what it means to rise from the grave and experience life as God has prepared for us. When life’s problems come your way, lift your head up high and say, Alleluia anyhow!

This Weekend’s Message – Hosanna in the Highest!Ride on, ride on in majesty!Hark! All the tribes hosanna cry.O Savior me...
04/01/2023

This Weekend’s Message – Hosanna in the Highest!

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Hark! All the tribes hosanna cry.
O Savior meek, pursue your road,
with palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
O Christ, your triumphs now begin
o'er captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky
look down with sad and wond'ring eyes
to see th'approaching sacrifice.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Your last and fiercest strife is nigh.
The Father on his sapphire throne
awaits his own anointed Son.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die.
Bow your meek head to mortal pain,
then take, O God, your pow'r and reign.

-Henry Hart Milman

This Weekend’s Message – Lazarus, come out! This weekend’s Gospel recounts yet another sign, or miracle, found in Jo...
03/25/2023

This Weekend’s Message – Lazarus, come out!
This weekend’s Gospel recounts yet another sign, or miracle, found in John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus. The context for the story of the raising of Lazarus is the Jewish leaders’ growing animosity toward Jesus. Jesus has been in Jerusalem, taking part in the Feast of the Dedication, which we have come to know as Hanukkah. The people have been pressing him to declare plainly whether he is the Messiah. Jesus tells them to look to his works, which testify to his coming from God. Many do not believe Jesus, however, and some try to stone him for blasphemy.
The scene described at Bethany is a sad one. Martha meets Jesus weeping and saying that if Jesus had been there, Lazarus would not have died. Yet she remains confident that God will do whatever Jesus asks. Martha affirms her belief that there will be a resurrection of the dead in the last days. Then Martha’s sister, Mary, comes to Jesus with the same confidence, saying that Jesus could have cured Lazarus. Jesus asks to be brought to Lazarus’s tomb where he prays and calls Lazarus out from the tomb. At this sign, many come to believe in Jesus, but others take word of the miracle to the Jewish authorities, who begin their plans for Jesus’ death.
Many elements of the raising of Lazarus foreshadow the good news of Jesus’ own Resurrection. Jesus, facing the conflict with the Jewish authorities, acts in complete obedience to God. In raising Lazarus, Jesus shows his power over death so that when Jesus dies, those who believe in him might remember that and take hope. Just as Jesus calls for the stone to be rolled away from Lazarus’s tomb, so too will the disciples find the stone rolled away from Jesus’ tomb.
The Gospel today calls us to reflect on Baptism as a dying and rising with Jesus. In Baptism we die to sin’s power over us, rising as children of God. In Baptism we join ourselves with Christ, who conquered death once and for all so that we who believe in him may have eternal life. With Martha and Mary, we are called to profess our belief that Jesus is indeed the Resurrection and the life!

This Weekend’s Message – A Reflection by B J Brown Conflict with the Pharisees, the religious authorities of Jesus’ ...
03/18/2023

This Weekend’s Message – A Reflection by B J Brown
Conflict with the Pharisees, the religious authorities of Jesus’ day, is a running theme in John’s gospel, in part because those conflicts had continued and intensified in the community that John wrote for. Even when Jesus is dying on the cross, John portrays him as serene and confident in who he is and the reason that he was sent by God.
I don’t worry much about the Pharisees, either, because in this story, John uses them collectively as cardboard characters, as a foil that draws our attention to the experience of the man that Jesus healed.
And I don’t worry about the man that Jesus healed. Even though he must have overheard the disciples commenting on his blindness, talking about him as if he wasn’t even there. Even though Jesus smeared spit and dirt over his eyes and sent him to wash in a nearby pool. Despite his neighbors’ and the Pharisees’ badgering questions, the man that Jesus healed sticks to what he knows. He seems as confident as his healer, growing in his understanding of his encounter with Jesus.
So, it’s not Jesus that I worry about, or the Pharisees, or the man who was born blind who now sees and believes in and worships Jesus. It’s that man’s parents that I worry about.
The man’s parents are there at the beginning of this story, present in the disciples’ thoughtless speculation about whether their sinfulness caused their son’s blindness. They reappear at the story’s center, summoned by the Pharisees to testify on behalf of their son. His parents affirm that he is their son, and was in fact, blind since birth. But, much like the Pharisees, they can’t see beyond that. We do not know how he sees now, they say, nor do we know who opened his eyes.
And so, I worry about the man’s parents. A lifetime of being suspected as the cause of their son’s blindness must have put them on the fringes of their religious community. And now fear blinds them to what their son saw in Jesus. So, I worry for them. And I worry for people like them.
Because the parents of the man born blind are not alone in how they responded to God’s healing power so clearly visible in someone that other people think doesn’t deserve it. They could not see what their son saw in Jesus: an invitation to grow and change, an invitation to a new life of seeing not just the world around him but seeing in Jesus the love and mercy of God present among us.
For that is what it means to ‘see’ Jesus. It is to see the unseen God, to know and love in Jesus the one who sent Jesus to us, to open our eyes and to free us from fear, and to guide us, too, to new life in him.

This Weekend’s Message – III Sunday of Lent – Living Water In today’s Gospel, the dialogue between Jesus and a woman...
03/11/2023

This Weekend’s Message – III Sunday of Lent – Living Water
In today’s Gospel, the dialogue between Jesus and a woman from Samaria is among the most lengthy and most theological found in Scripture. The most startling aspect of the conversation is that it happens at all. Jesus, an observant Jew of that time, was expected to avoid conversation with women in public. The animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans should have prevented the conversation as well. The woman herself alludes to the break from tradition: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Yet, Jesus not only converses with the woman, he also asks to share her drinking vessel, an action that makes him unclean according to Jewish law.
The initial conversation between Jesus and the woman is better understood if we consider the importance of water, especially in the climate of Israel. At first, the woman understands Jesus’ promise of “living water” in a literal sense: “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” With no running water, the daily trip to the well by the women of the community was of great importance. The women of the town would have traveled to the well in the early morning, but this woman came to the well at noon, the hottest time of the day. The timing of her visit is a clear sign that she is an outcast within the Samaritan community. We learn in her conversation with Jesus that she is an outcast because of her “many husbands.”
Behind the conversation lies the animosity and rivalry between the Jews and the Samaritans. Samaritans shared Jewish ancestry, but Samaritans had intermarried with foreigners when they lived under the rule of the Assyrians. Samaritan religion included worship of Yahweh, but was also influenced by the worship of other gods. When the Jews refused Samaritan help in the building of the Temple at Jerusalem, the Samaritans eventually built a temple for themselves at Mt. Gerizim (the same mountain mentioned by the woman at the well). Like the Jews, the Samaritans believed that a Messiah would come.
The high point of the conversation is when Jesus reveals himself to her as the Messiah. His answer to the Samaritan woman’s questions about worship is meant to predict a time when worshiping in truth and spirit will become the way to worship. After the conversation, the Samaritan woman becomes a disciple. Even though she is an outcast and not a Jew, she returns to her town to lead others to Jesus and to wonder whether she has found the Messiah. The Samaritan townspeople return with her to meet Jesus for themselves, and many are said to come to believe in him.

This Weekend’s Message – II Sunday of Lent – Transfiguration Sometimes, without knowing it or even being aware of it...
03/04/2023

This Weekend’s Message – II Sunday of Lent – Transfiguration
Sometimes, without knowing it or even being aware of it, we can get locked into our own world and our particular situation. We can forget about or lose sight of the fact that we are part of a much bigger world.
In the Gospel for this weekend, Jesus takes some of his friends away from the business of the city and marketplace. He invites them to travel with him as he makes his way up the mountain. This is not unusual. We know from the Gospels that Jesus often went off by himself to the mountains to pray. While they were there praying something wild and wonderful happened. Jesus was transfigured; he was changed; his face shone like the son, and his clothes became as white as light. Imagine how surprised, shocked and taken aback those with Jesus were. Once composed, Peter utters the famous words, ‘Lord, it is wonderful for us to be here’. But more importantly than what was said, is what they heard; ‘This is my Son, the beloved, he enjoys my favor, listen to him’.
These words are as much meant for us today as they were for those who first heard them. Today, we are surrounded if not bombarded by news all the time. We now have twenty-four hour news on our televisions, news from around the world arrives in seconds to us through the internet and there is no end to magazines and newspaper we can buy. They are a filled with news, but not all of it good news; some of it may even be fake news.
The Transfiguration gives us a brief and fleeting glimpse of Jesus in all his glory. It is a taste of what is to come. It is offered to us encourage and challenge us in our daily lives. It reminds us that our lives are far more than what see, hear and experience every day. It is not just a matter getting through the day. Being a follower of Jesus is about living with meaning, purpose and hope. The Transfiguration not only offers us a glimpse of Jesus in all his glory, but also offers each of us a foretaste of what God promises each of us in the fullness of the Kingdom.

02/20/2023

+ASH WEDNESDAY SCHEDULE FOR OUR PARISHES+

7:00a.m. St. Clare Altamont
5:00p.m. St. Anne Edgewood
6:30p.m. St. Mary St. Elmo

This Weekend’s Message – Lent is almost here… You’re probably familiar with the three pillars of Lent: prayer, fasti...
02/18/2023

This Weekend’s Message – Lent is almost here…
You’re probably familiar with the three pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Have you taken the time to reflect on what we’re called to do during this holy season?
Lent is, of course, the six-week period leading up to Easter, a solemn time to prepare for the celebration of the death and Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While it is indeed a solemn time, I don’t think that means as Catholics that we should mope around being all miserable. Let’s take a closer look at those three pillars.
Prayer: I bet most of us have some type of daily prayers we do whether it’s Lent or not. Lent is a great time to step up our “prayer game,” whether it’s making more time for our personal devotions, attending daily Mass more often, or simply adding additional prayer time to our days.
Fasting: On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, Catholics eat one normal meal and two smaller meals as part of a fast. And while abstaining from meat on Fridays is not strictly fasting, it’s another important aspect of Lent. These disciplines can be tough to follow. The point of fasting is not punishment. It’s meant to imitate the sacrifice of Christ’s 40-day journey into the desert. I’ve found that thinking about Jesus’s awful suffering during that time is a powerful way to quiet a rumbling tummy while fasting.
Almsgiving: Almsgiving is an act of charity toward those less fortunate or really anyone we deal with. This can take the form of food or monetary donations or volunteering time to help the poor. Almsgiving always reminds me of the well-known and beautiful passage in the Gospel of Matthew: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”
Looking more deeply at Lent, I want to highlight something Bishop Robert Barron wrote recently: “The Church traditionally says there are three things we ought to do during Lent, and I put stress on the word ‘do.’…This is going to sound a little bit strange, but my recommendation for this Lent is, in a certain way, to forget about your spiritual life—by this I mean forget about looking inside at how you’re progressing spiritually. Follow the Church’s recommendations and do three things: pray, fast, and give alms. As you do, pray to draw closer to the Lord as the center of your life and the reason you do everything.”

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Saint Elmo, IL
62458

Opening Hours

Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm

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