St. Michael Catholic Church-Weimar, TX

05/30/2026

As we are taking pictures in the first full week of July for the new parish directory, I also want to push you to register as a parishioner. Parish registration is a very weird thing, to be honest. It’s one of those things I feel my generation was never really taught to do. Some parishes make a very big deal about parish registration, like offering a reduced tuition rate at the parish school to parishioners, or requiring couples getting married to be registered for one year before they can get married at that church. It can be frustrating as a young Catholic not knowing these things until you end up in need of something that is apparently reserved to registered parishioners. Maybe you were considered a parishioner as a child of your parents, but at some mysterious point you “aged out” of it, and now you need to be your own parishioner household.

As far as canon law goes, parish registration is more or less fake. A parish is normatively a geographic boundary, you are a parishioner simply by living within the territory of that parish, just as you would be a resident of Colorado County.

As you know from experience, the borders between parishes are obviously pretty permeable; there are lots of “Roaming Catholics” out there, attending whichever church suits their particular needs at the time. I was certainly one of those before I was ordained, but I don’t have much of a choice but to attend Mass at my parish now.

So why do I want you to register as a parishioner? I am not at all making a good case. We don’t have a parishioner rate for school tuition, we don’t require you to be registered to receive the sacraments, the only thing I do stick to registration for is purchasing cemetery plots, which is not often an immediate concern for most unregistered parishioners. The thing is, parish registration is more of a benefit for the parish than it is immediately for you. The parish is a local community, and we don’t really know you if you aren’t registered.

I hate saying this for how corny it is, but the parish may be likened to a social media platform. That’s an image immediately accessible to people of my generation and younger. The parish is meant to be a locus of community, and there are in fact a lot of good things we can do if we have a thriving base of registered parishioners. The biggest frustration in your typical Catholic parish is that there are the same few people who work all the fundraisers, assist all the liturgies, attend any special events, but also so many outsiders who have no idea how to get involved, where to break in. Unless you are an extremely “Type-A” personality, you likely won’t break into that first group. The people who do everything want more people involved, and the people who aren’t involved want to get more involved, but those wires aren’t lining up. Part of my job as pastor is to line those up, and the start of it is in getting you registered as a parishioner.

If you register as a parishioner, we will know who you are, we will be able to minister to you better, we will be able to involve you more fully in the life of the parish, and the parish will thrive. Also, I have helped about a half dozen parishioners with immigration issues in my time as a priest, and I know that the US government also likes to see that immigrants seeking naturalization have some paperwork attaching them to the local community.

The Church, on every level, is a community, and a community needs people to thrive. Registration formalizes your membership in this parish community, and it allows us to better minister to you and involve you in the life of the community. The social media comparison is apt, because a social media platform cannot survive if it is solely composed of “lurkers.” It needs active participants to thrive. And unlike social media platforms, we won’t sell your data to advertisers, and our goal is to make your life better, not worse!

Yours in Christ,
Rev. Chase Goodman

05/23/2026

As I mentioned last week at the end of Mass, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops will consecrate our nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a celebration of the 250th anniversary of its founding on June 12th, the feast of the Sacred Heart. Bishop Cahill has also given us priests of the diocese permission to celebrate the Sacred Heart as an “external solemnity” on Sunday, June 14th as well, like we do with the feast of St. Michael in September.
In preparation for this consecration, Bishop would like us to participate in a novena for the nine days leading up to the feast of the Sacred Heart: that is June 3rd through June 11. We’re printing out prayer cards with the novena prayer on it, and we will say the prayer at the end of Mass throughout the novena, and you are encouraged to pray it at home as well.

Further, Bishop is asking us, across the diocese, to pray 250 hours of Eucharistic Adoration, and to perform 250 Corporal Works of Mercy. As for adoration, we will do what we do for the Rosary Congress in October: I will expose the Blessed Sacrament at 7 AM after Mass on Tuesday June 10th, and I will conclude with Benediction before the 6 PM Mass on Wednesday. So that’s 35 hours of Adoration, we will need adorers to sign up for each hour in that timeframe. Unlike the Rosary Congress, you are not obliged to pray anything in particular during your holy hour, but of course I would ask that you pray for the sanctification of our nation, for her people, and for reparation for sins.

As for the Works of Mercy, this requires a bit of explanation. They are a concept that we are vaguely aware of as Catholics, though converts may not have ever heard of the term. The works of mercy are nothing less than what is commanded of us throughout the Gospel; they are most explicit in the parable of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel of Matthew: “I was hungry and you gave me food, 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. Whatsoever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did it for me.” Christ obliges us to care for the bodily needs of the poor as an act of service and love towards himself. If we are to love Christ, if we are to thank him for his blessings upon our nation, if we are to honor what good our country stands for, then we can do no better than to honor the words of Christ, and the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Neither Christ, nor the beautiful words of this sonnet, distinguish between the “deserving” or the “undeserving” poor. America will be great if she stays true to Christ’s command of mercy, if she takes the risk to love those the world scorns. And so, I find it fitting that Bishop has asked us to perform acts of mercy. As to some specific opportunities, of course you can donate canned goods to our blessing box in front of the rectory, or to the Weimar food pantry, but I would also ask you to spend some time, not just money. Visit those in nursing homes, volunteer at the Weimar Food Pantry distribution (first Wednesday of the month at 9 and 11 AM), write letters to prisoners, perhaps an inmate on death row, volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. To bury the dead is also a corporal work of mercy, you can visit a cemetery and pray for the dead, whether a loved one, or all those buried there, or a particular stranger, as you like.

As for a particular corporal work of mercy, we are organizing (with the help of the Youens & Duchicela Clinic, the Knights of Columbus, and the Catholic Daughters of America) a blood drive at the St Michael’s Family Center on Wednesday, June 10th, from 2 to 630 PM. If you are physically able, giving your own blood so that another may live is a pretty good corporal work of mercy! They told us they would like 20 donors, there will be a sign up sheet for the blood drive and for adoration in the narthex of St. Michael’s. Bishop is asking us to submit a record of all the works of mercy performed (who, what, and how long they spent doing it), so that we can reach 250 hours across the diocese. This is a wonderful opportunity for a spiritual bouquet to honor our nation, and to set the next 250 years off to a good start!

Yours in Christ,
Rev. Chase Goodman

05/16/2026

Chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium contains the core purpose of the document, and I think the most important focus for renewal in the life of the Church throughout Vatican II. “The classes and duties of life are many, but holiness is one—that sanctity which is cultivated by all who are moved by the Spirit of God, and who obey the voice of the Father and worship God the Father in spirit and in truth.”

The document is emphatic in this chapter that holiness is for everyone, and that this consists in living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience in accord with one’s state in life, whether “privately or in a Church-approved condition or state of life”.

I recommend the whole chapter to you; there’s just one paragraph dedicated to how holiness is lived in each of the holy orders of bishop, priest, and deacon, but the rest of the chapter considers holiness in the lay state of life. Holiness for a cleric is rather straightforward and simple, at least in concept: the sacramental ministry of a cleric “ought to [be] the principal means also of their sanctification.” Holy Orders is a three-fold office of sanctifying, teaching, and governing, and a cleric finds holiness and joy by doing that, in accord with his rank.

After clergy, the document first considers holiness in married couples and parents, who find holiness by faithful love, mutual support, and raising their children in accord with the gospel virtues (again, poverty, chastity, and obedience), and by doing so, “offer all men the example of unwearying and generous love.” I’m reminded by the final blessing at the end of a wedding mass: “may you be witnesses in the world to God’s charity, so that the afflicted and needy who have known your kindness may one day receive you thankfully into the eternal dwelling of God.”

The document speaks briefly about widows and single people, “who are able to make great contributions toward holiness and apostolic endeavor in the Church,” as well as those who engage in manual labor. The document constantly comes back to Christ: the clergy minister as Christ, married couples image the union of Christ and the Church, and laborers image Christ who labored as a carpenter and “Who in union with His Father, is continually working for the salvation of all men.”

On that note, the document offers solace to all who suffer through poverty, infirmity, sickness, hardship, or persecution, that they are united with the suffering of Christ for the salvation of the world. I find it striking that the document does not say “they can be united,” but that they ARE united with Christ in their suffering. In short, the document says that “all Christ's faithful, whatever be the conditions, duties and circumstances of their lives—and indeed through all these, will daily increase in holiness, if they receive all things with faith from the hand of their heavenly Father and if they cooperate with the divine will.” In a sentence, that really does summarize the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It is poverty to receive all things in life as given by God as a stewardship. It is chastity to live an integral life in accord with one’s state in life, and it is obedience to cooperate with the will of God.

As a final note on the universal call to holiness, I can’t help but think of the introduction to “The Reed of God,” a wonderful little book by Caryll Houselander. She was advised as a young girl to “never do anything that Our Lady would not do,” which she found paralyzing, because “I simply could not imagine her doing anything at all.” She muses then that what is appealing about the saints is the humanness of them, that their lives were not just a series of miracles cast in marble. “It is really through ordinary human life and the things of every hour of every day that union with God comes about.” That’s what Lumen Gentium is getting at. I commend the book to you, the whole thing isn’t even 200 pages, it’s a lovely book on Mary, published in 1944. You can also read Lumen Gentium, which I might add is free on the internet!

Yours in Christ,
Rev. Chase Goodman

05/09/2026

Returning to Lumen Gentium, Chapter 4 considers the laity. The document says up front that the term “laity” is a bit of a catch all for “everyone who isn’t clergy or religious.” The laity are the vast majority of the Christian people, but the work of the laity hadn’t been considered too much prior to Vatican II. There were some saints who focused on the spiritual life of the laity, such as St. Francis de Sales, and there were certainly some lay saints throughout history. But there’s always been a bit of an inclination towards “just become a priest or religious if you’re going to be a devoted Christian.”

I would say that the emphasis on the laity is one of the greatest fruits of Vatican II. This chapter of Lumen Gentium draws quite a bit from St Francis de Sales’ “Introduction to the Devout Life,” where he says that “it is an error, or rather a heresy, to say devotion is incompatible with the life of a soldier, a tradesman, a prince, or a married woman…it has happened that many have lost perfection in the desert who had preserved it in the world.”

We absolutely need priests and religious, but most of the Church in every age is lay faithful. You are part of the mystical Body of Christ by baptism, and there is a way of holiness for you according to your state in life. Lumen Gentium seeks to elevate the role of the laity within the Church, primarily through the work of the lay apostolate. Lumen Gentium says that the laity are commissioned and sent (“apostled”) by Jesus through the Sacrament of Baptism and Confirmation into the world. According to your state in life, you are called to be the salt of the earth, a witness and living instrument of the Church.

What Lumen Gentium does NOT say is that the role of the laity is to do ministry. It is a misrepresentation of the role of the laity and an insult to the lay state to think that the laity must do the work of clergy in order to have value. The Church calls the work of the clergy “ministry:” administering the sacraments and preaching. The work of the laity is the apostolate: the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The clergy are of course not exempt from the work of the apostolate, but the work of ministry is to support and direct the mission of the Church through the sacramental life. We are made Christians and sustained in the spiritual life by reception of the Sacraments. The identity of a Christian and the power of a Christian comes from Christ, by means of the ministry of his priests. It was a grave misinterpretation of Vatican II to think that the laity should be doing the priests’ jobs, or that the priests should be doing the laity’s jobs. The latter is rare these days, but I’ve certainly read in books from the era that priests were working secular jobs rather than ministerial jobs.

The role of a lay person in the Body of Christ is not to serve or read at Mass, distribute Communion, or usher. That’s getting off too easy! Those are, in a sense, “ministries,” that’s why the term is “extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.” Extraordinary, meaning if we had enough ordinary ministers, we would use them. Acolyte, lector, and porter (usher) were formerly known as “minor clerical orders,” and the accompanying responsibilities are baby steps towards the proper sacramental ministries of deacons, priests, and bishops.

If we “clericalize” the laity, we can tend towards the perspective that “I need to be doing something in Mass, or what’s the point.” Your role in the Mass is not to do some measure of work. You work the other six days, you come to Mass to be fed and renewed. The clergy, as Lumen Gentium says, are at the service of the laity. If the clergy give their work to the laity, then the clergy are being rather lazy! Your role in the liturgy is to bring your gift to the altar to be offered by the priest. What you are doing out in the world, all the hard work of proclaiming the gospel in your daily life, bring it back to Mass for the priest to offer. And rest in Jesus, be fed by him, renewed for your joyful work in the apostolate.

Yours in Christ,
Rev. Chase Goodman

05/02/2026

I want to give a heads up for those who read this part of the bulletin, but not the front cover: there will be no Masses Monday through Thursday this week, as I will be making my yearly retreat. Friday’s school Mass will be provided for, and I’ll be back in time to try some Gedenke competition barbecue and celebrate the weekend sacraments. But if you need priestly ministry during the week, please contact the surrounding parish offices.

We priests are required by Canon Law to make a retreat at least once a year. The Diocese provides a retreat every year, and it is mandatory for us priests to attend it every other year. The diocesan retreat is optional this year, and I like to travel to somewhere new in the years where that is possible. In the past, I’ve gone to Our Lady’s Healing Center down in Seadrift, and I’ve gone to Clear Creek Monastery in Oklahoma, and Subiaco in Arkansas. I like the Benedictines, I had been to retreat at Subiaco as a seminarian, and I had heard good things about Clear Creek. That place was gorgeous, and the food was simple, but incredible. French religious can cook.

I’m not going to a Benedictine monastery this year, but my retreat is still Benedictine-adjacent. I’m going to St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, the first Catholic seminary in these United States. I suppose it’s fitting to visit there in this Semiquincentennial year of our nation’s founding. But that’s not why I’m going there, and that’s not the Benedictine connection. The reason I am going there is that Bishop Erik Varden is putting on a priest study day on Wednesday. Bishop Varden is the bishop of Trondheim, Norway, and previously the Trappist Abbot of Mount St Bernard Abbey in England. Most significantly, he was chosen by Pope Leo XIV to lead the Vatican Lenten retreat this year.

I picked up one of his books back in 2024, and then I bought up every book of his I could find. There’s some theologians whom I feel like you can read a few books or essays by them, and then it feels like you can figure out what they would say on anything just from that. But Bishop Varden is a rare case, a very intelligent and well-educated man who speaks with profound spiritual depth. I’ve absolutely aped what I’ve learned from him in my own preaching and counsel, though it’s a poor imitation of his own works.

For example, in the first book of his I read, “Chastity,” he speaks beautifully about how we are made in the image and likeness of God; in particular, that the gift of human sexuality is a participation in the creativity of God. I think this is an important way to think about chastity, because it’s very easy to get bogged down in a repressive or obsessive mindset about such things. Human sexuality IS human creativity. Any creative act you do expresses your human person. If you paint a picture, sing a song, cook a meal, it expresses who you are as a human person, and it can be offered as a gift of love. We tend to reduce human sexuality to what is explicitly sexual, and develop habits of obsession and repression. That is from the devil, that’s only going to tire you out and lead you into sin. Obsessing over not doing the bad things is going to lead you to do the bad things. Instead, focus on doing the good things!

As you might expect, I’m pretty jazzed about my retreat. I’ll spend the rest of the week completely unplugged from all electronics and the outside world, sleeping, praying, and probably quite a bit of journalling. I intend to be dead to the world except in the worst possible emergencies, in which case someone at the seminary can contact me. Know that you will be in my prayers, and please pray for me.

Yours in Christ,
Rev. Chase Goodman

04/26/2026

04/26/2026

AUCTION ITEM!

Hand appliqued lace church veil/mantilla in black and red. The lace was purchased in South Korea and is a one-of-a-kind fabric. It was hand pieced and lace appliqued to its finished shape! It took about 7 hours of hand sewing.

04/26/2026

04/26/2026

Job of the Hall Sitter

Can you imagine the job of the hall sitter in 1983 when church parishioners would bring in their items marked on their cards to supply the ingredients for a successful picnic?

The money envelope parishioners receive today looked a little different in 1983! Parishioners were asked to supply goods for meal preparation and even bingo prizes! Whether it was sugar, tea, or flour, the hall sitters collected and sorted all of these goods!

Rubins grocery store would run specials on the items the parishioners would be picking up and supported the St. Michael Spring Fest!

Ms. Alice Michalke has been sitting for us chairmen the last 5 years, collecting your cakes, surprise packages, raffle tickets, and auction items!

Come see her 8:30-12!

⬇️ comment below your memories!

04/26/2026

We're ready to go for the St Michael's Spring Fest tomorrow!