My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

This year we will celebrate several very important solemnities on the liturgical calendar in the month of June.

The month begins with the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord on June 1 in those ecclesiastical provinces such as ours that have moved the observance from the traditional Ascension Thursday to the following Sunday so that more people will participate in this liturgical celebration. After our Lord appeared to the disciples following his resurrection, surely they would have preferred that Jesus would remain with them. We too would love for our resurrected Lord to be walking on this earth with us now. Although Jesus had to return to his Father in heaven, our Lord promised that he would come back to us (cf. John 14:28), and until that day comes, he would not leave us orphans, but would send his Spirit to be with us always (cf. John 14:16-18).

We will celebrate this descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and on the whole church next week on Pentecost Sunday, June 8. At our Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Pentecost Sunday at 2 p.m., I will celebrate Mass with the sacrament of confirmation for adult Catholics who for whatever reason were not confirmed when they were younger.

In the early church, the bishop presided over all baptisms, but as the church grew numerically and spread geographically, this became a physical impossibility. In the fifth century, two ecclesiastical councils authorized local priests to baptize and to anoint with oil following the baptism, but the bishops were directed to visit the parishes and “confirm” the baptisms.

Bishop Faustus of Riez preached a Pentecost sermon around 460 A.D. in which he taught that episcopal confirmation made its recipients more fully Christian and gave strength for battling the evils of the world, the flesh and the devil. Thus to this day the bishop is the ordinary minister of the sacrament of confirmation.

The following Sunday, June 15, is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. The timing of this celebration flows naturally following the Ascension of the Son to the Father and the descent of the Holy Spirit. In baptism we are brought into relationship with the Holy Trinity when we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The next Sunday, June 22, is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, traditionally known as the feast of Corpus Christi. This great feast celebrates another way that Christ has fulfilled his promise to remain with us, by making himself present in the Eucharist and coming into our hearts when we receive holy Communion.

We will observe this Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield with a Corpus Christi procession through the streets around the Cathedral following the 10 a.m. Mass. On this day we will also be celebrating the 175th anniversary of the Cathedral parish community, which was originally founded as Old St. Mary’s Church, the 125th anniversary of Catholic education in the schools of the Cathedral Parish, the 85th anniversary of the Cathedral Church and School, as well as the fourth anniversary of my installation as bishop of Springfield in Illinois.

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken eloquently about the meaning of the Corpus Christi procession for contemporary Catholics in his homilies for the feast. The procession is a profession of faith: the Solemnity of Corpus Christi developed at a time when Catholics were both affirming and defining their faith “in Jesus Christ, alive and truly present in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist,” and the procession is a public statement of that belief. The sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood always “goes above and beyond the walls of our churches.” The procession blurs the separation between what we do inside the church, and what we do outside: we immerse Christ, so to speak, “in the daily routine of our lives, so that he may walk where we walk and live where we live.” Pope Benedict declared, “The procession represents an immense and public blessing for our city.”

Tuesday, June 24, will mark the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist, who prepares the way and points us towards Jesus.

Friday, June, 27, will be the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, to which I have had a deep devotion since childhood. My episcopal coat of arms has an icon of the Sacred Heart in homage to this devotion. My episcopal motto flows from the recognition that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the source of all love, hence the “Law of the Heart is Love.”

Sunday, June 29, will be the Solemnity of the Apostles, Ss. Peter and Paul, who showed us how to proclaim the Gospel throughout the world and sacrificed their lives in doing so.

Thus, by a quirk of the calendar, we will have several major solemnities of the church throughout the month and on every Sunday of June before we return to the Sundays of Ordinary Time in July. By focusing our attention on their meaning and on the way that these solemnities are connected to each other, we can make this month an opportunity for deeper growth in our faith.

May God give us this grace. Amen.