From Our Pastor

Welcome!

Dear Friends of St. Andrew's,

From the founding of our Parish in 1958, we have grown and developed with Sierra Vista - as partners in building up this great community we call home.

Over the decades, we sought to be active participants in every aspect of community life. We believe that serving the common good and making this city a place where people come first, where the least and most easily-overlooked are served and cared for, and where the quality of life is enhanced for all our fellow citizens, is an essential witness to our faith.

We hope our parish church is a place where all experience the Presence of God and the welcome of God's People. We pray that its beauty will speak a wordless invitation to those who are seeking, those who are wearied by life's burdens and those who are drawn to lift their hearts in prayer.

We thank God for giving us this opportunity to extend His blessings and to share our church and campus facilities with the Sierra Vista community.

The pulse of St. Andrew's is reflected through our ministries and individual parishoner efforts. I hope to highlight these achievements and bring focus to upcoming events in the article following this message.

Yours because His,

Fr. Greg Adolf
Pastor

Bienvenido

Estimados amigos de San Andrés,

Desde la fundación de nuestra Parroquia en 1958, hemos crecido y nos hemos desarrollado junto con Sierra Vista construyendo esta gran comunidad la cual llamamos nuestra casa.

A través de las décadas hemos tratado de participar activamente en todos los aspectos, dentro de nuestra comunidad. Creemos que un testigo esencial de nuestra fe es el servir al bien común y el hacer de esta ciudad un lugar para quienes lo más importante es su gente, donde los más necesitados y los más olvidados son servidos y cuidados, y donde la calidad de vida es mejorada para todos nuestros ciudadanos.

Deseamos que nuestra parroquia sea un lugar donde todos puedan sentir la Presencia de Dios y se sientan bienvenidos como hijos de Él. Rogamos que su belleza les haga una invitación silenciosa a aquellos quienes están en busca de Dios, a aquellos quienes se encuentran abrumados por los problemas de la vida, y a aquellos quienes han sido llamados a levantar sus almas en oración.

Agradecemos a Dios por darnos esta oportunidad de extender sus bendiciones y de compartir nuestra iglesia y nuestras facilidades con la comunidad de Sierra Vista.

El servicio de San Andrés está reflejado en nuestros ministerios y los esfuerzos individuales de nuestros parroquianos. Espero que podamos realzar estos logros y llevar enfoque a futuros eventos los cuales mencionamos en el artículo debajo de este mensaje.

Suyo en Cristo,

Padre Greg Adolf

Pastor

Did You Know...

...That we begin this month dedicated to prayerful remembrance of the Holy Souls, with special Masses and the Blessing of our Memorial Prayer Garden and the Fry Pioneer Cemetery on Saturday, 2 November?

We have a wonderful tradition in Christianity of praying for the souls of all the dead. We don’t separate the rich from the poor, or the black from the white, or the male from the female; we don’t leave out those who were criminals or had AIDS or were illiterate; we don’t give special prayer privilege to millionaires, movie stars, politicians, renowned scholars, or popes. On All Souls’ Day, we pray for them all.

Our Church clearly teaches the resurrection of the dead and the afterlife. For centuries, Christians have imagined heaven as a blissful site somewhere “up there,” God presiding, and hell as an overheated netherworld full of very nasty demons. Both Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have sketched a quite different picture of life after death.

Heaven and hell exist, these popes have said, but they are states of being and not physical locations. And any physical descriptions of these ultimate realities always fall short. Heaven, Pope St. John Paul stated, “is neither an abstraction nor a place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Trinity.” In St. John Paul’s teaching, there is no “where” to heaven any more than there is a “where” to God. God isn’t on a planet somewhere beyond Jupiter and neither is heaven. So where are our loved ones? They are in the arms of a loving and merciful God. That is really all we can and need to say.

We, Catholics hold several unique beliefs around the experience we call the afterlife, one of which is purgatory. Purgatory is the entryway to heaven, the part of our journey home to the Heart of God, which continues after our death. Those who are “in Purgatory”, are within the shelter of God’s healing and redeeming love; they are continuing to experience God’s Presence in a growing, deepening way. Purgatory is that part of the journey “higher up and deeper in’, in which we are lovingly “purged” of the ‘baggage’ we have been carrying; all those missed opportunities of our lives to give ourselves in love to others need to be revisited and resolved. Purgatory teaches us something very important about this life: that is, it is in the challenges of our lives that we learn to love and grow close to God. And we can’t run from those challenges; we can’t shortcut them or avoid them. We believe that our prayers, for those who have gone before us on the final journey, actually strengthen and support and comfort them. Our forgiveness of them can also be part of their final healing. In this prayerful “solidarity” of all of the Faithful – in heaven, in purgatory, and on earth – the ‘Communion of Saints’ – we grow, together, more and more in the love of God.

Pray for the Holy Souls, especially in this month of Remembrance, and with them, celebrate the mercy of God in Christ, by which we will all be saved and restored fully to God’s love. On Saturday, 2 November, All Souls’ Day, we will have the Blessing of our Memorial Prayer Garden and Columbaria, following the 9:00 AM Mass. At Noon on Saturday, we will have the Blessing of the Fry Pioneer Cemetery.

At 7:00 PM on Saturday, we will have our beautiful Annual Memorial Mass, when we remember and pray for the Souls of all of those who have died in the past year.

(This special Memorial Mass will follow the regular 5:00PM Vigil Mass for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time – two different Masses on Saturday evening!)

Prop 139

The Bishops of Arizona have released a video on the dangers of Arizona's Proposition 139

Read the text below:

"As Catholic Bishops of Arizona we want to express our strong opposition to Proposition 139. If passed, this initiative threatens to enshrine a constitutional right to virtually unrestricted abortion in Arizona. What makes a constitutional amendment especially grave is that our own Arizona legislators could lose the ability to regulate abortion in any meaningful way, leaving us with the potential for what would likely become nearly unrestricted abortion. Arizona law currently allows for abortions up until 15 weeks of pregnancy. Proposition 139, however, would go far beyond even this current law. The proposed amendment, among other things, would likely remove most safeguards for girls and women that are currently in place at abortion clinics, permit a minor to obtain an abortion without parental involvement or permission, and allow for painful late-term abortions of viable pre-born children. While this ballot measure claims to be moderate in nature, its vague language would make Arizona one of the most extreme states in terms of abortion. We believe that even many of those who support abortion in limited instances would find this proposed constitutional amendment extreme and misleading. Arizonans deserve far better than the measures being proposed in this initiative which is why we strongly oppose Proposition 139."

Sundays

8:00 AM

10:00 AM

12:00 Noon (Spanish)

5:00 PM

Mon - Fri Daily Mass

9:00 AM

12:05 PM

Saturday

9:00 AM

5:00 PM (Vigil)

6:30 PM at Good Shepherd Mission (Whetstone)

Masses on Holy Days of Obligation are usually 9 AM, 12 Noon, and 7 PM (bilingual)

+ Reconciliation +

Weekdays: 8:30-8:55 AM – before the Mass
Saturdays: 8:30-8:55 AM and 3:30-4:55 PM
Sundays: 7:30 – 7:55 AM and 4:30-4:45 PM

Anytime by appointment

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Weekly Bible Studies are in Madonna Hall. Please join us for study and discussion of the Word in a relaxed setting!

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This Week's Soul Food

“Open your human heart, your Christian heart, and ask yourselves the three questions Ignatius of Loyola put to himself as he stood in front of the crucified world: What have I done for Christ in this world? What am I doing now? And, above all, what should I do?”

- Fr. Egnacio Ellacuria, Jesuit Martyr of El Salvador (1989)

This Week's Catholic Quiz

This week’s Question: “Why is incense used at the Mass and at Benediction?”

The Answer to Last Week’s Question: “What is the ‘Sanctus Bell’?”

The hand bell traditionally rung during the Mass at the Epiclesis (when the Holy Spirit is invoked), (once), and at the Consecration (three times each at the Elevation of the consecrated Host and Chalice). Although the practice – with some variations – began in the Sixth Century, it is not universally used, and is no longer strictly required in the rubrics of the Mass. The reason for the ringing of the ‘Sanctus Bell’ was to alert the Faithful, who may have been praying their own prayers during the Latin Mass, to give special attention to these specific actions and words!

(If you would like to be as smart as the “Quiz Master” – pick up a copy of the Catholic Source Book – available in the Parish Office, for only $25.00!)