CONTENT
PAGE 2 Stewardship and Lent: How the Wise Men’s Gifts Symbolize Our Lenten Obligations
PAGE 3 A Letter From Our Pastor
PAGE 4 Adoration: The Best Way to Spend Your Time on Earth
PAGE 6 Journeying With Christ through Stations of the Cross
PAGE 7 Ushers Ministry Serving Parish Community with Hospitality as We Gather for Mass
Building their family on a strong marriage foundation has been a priority for Katelyn and Zach Kinscherf. This was the reason they became involved in the Relationship Committee here at St. Peter.
“We want to set an example for our children to follow and help build this throughout our community to help show how strong a family unit can be in today’s ever-changing and hectic world,” Zach says. “Our feeling is that without time for us to keep our relationship healthy and strong, we cannot keep our family healthy and strong.”
Zach and Katelyn married in 2017 and have three young children — Theodore, Lucas, and Siena. The family serves as greeters for Mass and Zach also helps out as an usher.
“I enjoy being able to participate in the Mass in another manner through ushering and greeting,” Zach says. “Being able to be a part of the weekly service helps me be more involved and focused on the Mass each week.”
Zach was welcomed into the faith here at St. Peter when he was baptized by Fr. Bauer. He attended St. Peter, QND, Augustana College, then Northwestern University to complete his DPT degree. He currently works as a physical therapist at Advance Physical Therapy. continued on page 5
We experience great joy when we celebrate the coming of the Magi at Epiphany each year. For many of us, it is the completion of Christmas. Yet, the gifts offered by the Magi — gold, frankincense, and myrrh — can serve to guide us on our stewardship journeys as we observe Lent this month.
It may seem strange to connect the joyful celebration of Epiphany with the penitential season of Lent. But our spiritual life should not be divided into separate, unconnected bits, and in the same way, the Church’s liturgical year also flows from one season to another. The different feasts and seasons certainly have different emphases, but they are intended to build on each other.
So, let’s see if we can connect what the Magi gave Jesus with what we’re going to offer Him this Lent.
The basic ingredients for our Lenten rule come from what is termed the “Three Notable Duties” — prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These in turn come from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). How do we connect the wise men’s gifts with the Three Notable Duties?
Frankincense is the basic ingredient in the incense used in the worship of God, in the ancient world, and in the Church today. Offering it to Jesus points out His divine nature, and so it symbolizes prayer — the stewardship of time. Our Lenten rule needs to include prayer and worship. Of course, we are bound to worship at Sunday Mass year-round. Maybe during Lent, we might add a weekday Mass. Perhaps we can increase the time we devote to private prayer at home or at adoration. Devotional reading from the Bible or another appropriate book can be added. In addition, don’t forget the possibility of adding family devotions during Lent, so that the whole family prays together.
When we offer our gold to Christ to build His Church and to help His poor, we are engaged in almsgiving — the stewardship of treasure. While giving from the treasure God has entrusted to us is a duty throughout the whole year, maybe this Lent we can practice being a little more generous than usual. If our giving is a thankful response to the gift of eternal life that God has given us, we will find that the giving is indeed a means of grace.
For centuries, myrrh has been associated with fasting. In the ancient world, it was regularly used in embalming. Generations of theological writers have seen the gift of myrrh as a foreshadowing of Christ’s sufferings.
Fasting may be the most difficult of the Three Notable Duties for modern Americans. We usually think of fasting only under the heading of dieting to lose weight. Instead, try to think of fasting as a way to become more spiritually fit. Body and spirit affect each other. The whole sacramental system is built on the truth that we can receive spiritual grace through material things and physical actions.
Our specific requirements of fasting are limited — abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent, and a reduction in the quantity of food we eat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But the discipline of our physical bodies for our spiritual well-being does not have to be limited to Lent!
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh were indeed valuable gifts for the wise men to present to the Child Jesus, which is stewardship at its very core. So, when we look at their symbolism, we can see their relationship to the Three Notable Duties of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. What gifts of our time, talent, and treasure are we going to offer to Jesus this Lent?
Dear Parishioners,
With the passing from this life of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Dec. 31, I found it fitting to share with you some of his teachings and reflections on Lent, as we have now embarked on our own Lenten journeys.
Pope Benedict was a lifelong scholar, a priest for 71 years, and pope from 2005 to 2013. Throughout his papacy, he offered us all a treasure trove of reflections, prayers, and advice for our Lenten journeys and constantly reminded and encouraged us during this 40-day journey to increase our faith and charity. In other words, through conversion of heart, we must intensify our commitment to stewardship with the sharing of our gifts during Lent.
In his final Lenten message as pope in 2013, he wrote: “The celebration of Lent… offers us a valuable opportunity to meditate on the relationship between faith and charity: between believing in God — the God of Jesus Christ — and love, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and which guides us on the path of devotion to God and others.”
While Lent is a time when we tend to ramp up our prayer lives, Pope Benedict always pushed us to do even more, and he encouraged us to take the next step as good and faithful stewards. He explained how faith leads to charity, which is a response to God’s love for us, thus urging us to use our renewed faith by sharing our time, talent, and treasure with others.
He wrote: “The entire Christian life is a response to God’s love. The first response is precisely faith as the acceptance, filled with wonder and gratitude, of the unprecedented divine initiative that precedes us and summons us. And the ‘yes’ of faith marks the beginning of a radiant story of friendship with
the Lord, which fills and gives full meaning to our whole life. But it is not enough for God that we simply accept his gratuitous love. Not only does he love us, but he wants to draw us to himself, to transform us in such a profound way as to bring us to say with Saint Paul: ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’” (cf. Gal 2:20).
Pope Benedict continued his 2013 Lenten message, saying: “For its part, charity ushers us into the love of God manifested in Christ and joins us in a personal and existential way to the total and unconditional selfgiving of Jesus to the Father and to his brothers and sisters. By filling our hearts with his love, the Holy Spirit makes us sharers in Jesus’ filial devotion to God and fraternal devotion to every man” (cf. Rom 5:5).
While we grieve that he is no longer with us here, I remain grateful to our Lord for Pope Benedict XVI and his ministry and invite you to reflect on his teachings and messages on Lent as you continue your own Lenten journeys with trust and joy.
In Christ,
Rev. Msgr. Leo J. EnlowWant to read more from Pope Benedict XVI on the Lenten journey? Pick up his 2006 book, Journey to Easter: Spiritual Reflections for the Lenten Season, and his 2012 book, Lent with Pope Benedict XVI: Meditations for Every Day.
Since Oct. 25, 1987, Jesus has come to be with us in our Perpetual Adoration Chapel in an extraordinarily beautiful, powerful way. Vibrantly alive, Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity dwell humbly in the Sacred Host inside the monstrance, waiting for us to come and visit.
“The Blessed Sacrament has real power, and people like to be in His presence,” says Gina Wolf, who coordinates Perpetual Adoration along with Mary Voorhis. “When you are in adoration, a wonderful feeling comes over you and you can pray in a way that you can’t at home or in the park.”
Currently, our parish offers Eucharistic Adoration each week from Wednesday at 9 a.m. to Saturday at 9 a.m.
“Before the coronavirus hit, we had adoration 24-7, and now we are trying to get back into the swing of things and start having it perpetually again,” Gina says. “It would be lovely if we could encourage people to get back into it again, and to encourage some more young people to come.”
Regular adorers such as Gina find that adoration enriches their spiritual life, their faith, and their relationships in amazing ways.
“My husband, Deacon Jeffrey, and I pray together regularly,” she says. “We have gone to adoration together many times. It is very powerful
and wonderful for our relationship. It has strengthened our marriage bond. At one point in our lives, we weren’t praying and attending Mass together regularly, so it is great to have come back full swing.”
Ultimately, this wondrous devotion allows the adorer to discover a heavenly sense of serenity amid the hustle and bustle of modern life.
“I feel a real peace after I have been to adoration,” Gina says. “Most people do. When I enter the Perpetual Adoration Chapel, I know I am in a holy place. I feel God’s presence there and all my problems seem to slip away. When I leave the Chapel, I am refreshed and ready to face the day.”
The Adoration Chapel is a place that has been set aside so that others may come and spend time with God.
“When the Israelites were in the wilderness, a tent was erected to offer prayer and sacrifice to God,” Gina says. “When Our Lord was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed to God the Father in His agony over what was to come. Jesus had several apostles with Him waiting while He prayed. He went to them, and finding them asleep, asked, ‘Can you not spend one hour with me?’ The Adoration Chapel is an answer to that question — it enables adorers to spend an hour with the Lord.”
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“I feel a real peace after I have been to adoration. Most people do. When I enter the Perpetual Adoration Chapel, I know I am in a holy place. I feel God’s presence there and all my problems seem to slip away. When I leave the Chapel, I am refreshed and ready to face the day.” — Gina Wolf
According to Mary Voorhis, adoration is one ministry the Church simply cannot survive without.
“There is a saying, ‘You never know how much you will miss something until you don’t have it!’ and this proved true for me,” she says. “When the Adoration Chapel was closed in March 2020, it created a void that could not be filled. It is an oasis that helps me deal with the chaotic world in which we now find ourselves living. The chapel is a place of peace, and when you spend a quiet hour there, it will be one of the best hours of your life.”
For more information on adoration, call or text Gina Wolf at 217-257-9966 or call Mary Voorhis at 217-653-3127.
After completing graduate school, and upon returning to Quincy and meeting Katelyn, Zach came back to the parish in 2015.
“I came back to the parish at that time as I had gotten away from regularly attending Mass throughout my college years,” he says.
The pair participated in the RCIA process here at the parish to complete Katelyn’s reception of the sacraments and, in turn, gained a better understanding of the Catholic faith, growing together.
St. Peter was familiar to me and Katelyn helped bring me back to my faith at that time,” Zach says. “We liked what Fr. Leo had built here at St. Peter.”
Through their involvement at our parish, the Kinscherfs have developed friendships they likely otherwise wouldn’t have experienced.
“It has been wonderful to get to know more people in the parish community and begin to forge our own path within our parish, as individuals and as a family,” Zach says.
The Kinscherfs prioritize living out their faith in
everyday life. Through his profession and serving clients, Zach makes a conscious effort to treat each person with respect and dignity.
“I try to use the example set forth by Christ of this eternal respect for all to guide my daily work,” he says.
Outside of work, he and Katelyn strive to guide their children to be respectful of everyone as well.
“We try to run our house on a model of respecting others,” Zach says.
The Kinscherfs also desire to build up their faith community and parish through their service. Zach says this means taking action to make it so.
“It is easy to sit back and passively take part, but by starting to fully invest in the parish, the rewards truly start to show,” he says. “I can honestly say that I am much more invested in my faith than I have been at any point previously in my life, and know that I have much more room to continue to grow in my faith — all by simply becoming involved and invested in my parish.”
For Roman Catholics throughout the world, the Stations of the Cross are synonymous with Lent, Holy Week and, especially, Good Friday. This devotion is also known as the Way of the Cross, the Via Crucis, and the Via Dolorosa. It commemorates 14 key events on the day of Christ’s crucifixion.
The Stations originated in medieval Europe, when wars prevented Christian pilgrims from visiting the Holy Land. Later, for the many who wanted to pass along the same route, but could not make the trip to Jerusalem, a practice developed that eventually took the form of the 14 stations currently found in almost every church. It was St. Francis of Assisi who devised the list of stations and started the tradition of reciting it as a type of devotional service. European artists created works depicting scenes of Christ’s journey to Calvary.
In 1761, St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote: “The pious exercise of the Way of the Cross represents the sorrowful journey that Jesus Christ made with the cross on His shoulders, to die on Calvary for the love
of us. We should, therefore, practice this devotion with the greatest possible fervor, placing ourselves in spirit beside our Savior as He walked this sorrowful way, uniting our tears with His, and offering to Him both our compassion and our gratitude.”
Praying the Stations of the Cross is one of the most popular devotions for Roman Catholics, and is often performed in a spirit of reparation for the sufferings and insults that Jesus endured during His Passion. The object of the Stations is to help us make a spiritual pilgrimage of prayer, through meditating upon the chief scenes of Christ’s sufferings and death.
This devotion may be conducted personally, by making your way from one station to another and saying the prayers, or by having the celebrant move from station to station while the congregation make the responses.
A plenary indulgence may be gained by praying the Stations of the Cross. If, for some reasonable cause, the Stations are interrupted, a partial indulgence may be gained for each station.
Opening Prayer
Station 1 ...............Jesus Is Condemned to Death
Station 2 ..............Jesus Carries His Cross
Station 3 ..............Jesus Falls the First Time
Station 4 ..............Jesus Meets His Afflicted Mother
Station 5 ..............Simon Of Cyrene Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross
Station 6 ..............Veronica Wipes the Face Of Jesus
Station 7 ..............Jesus Falls the Second Time
Station 8
Jesus Meets the Women Of Jerusalem
Station 9 Jesus Falls a Third Time
Station 10 Jesus Is Stripped of His Clothes
Station 11 Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
Station 12
Jesus Dies on the Cross
Station 13 The Body of Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross
Station 14 Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb
Closing Prayer
Sunday Mass may seem straightforward, but it’s the quiet contributions of many individuals who ensure things run smoothly and that parishioners may worship in a distraction-free environment. Our ushers are one of the keys to keeping things clean and comfortable. They step up before, during, and after Mass to prepare, assist, and tidy up. Pat Hibbeler has served our parish as an usher for about four years and as the head usher for one of those years. He finds ushering a rewarding experience.
“I look forward to ushering,” Pat says. “I’m very aware of the Mass when I’m there. I’m very involved both as an usher and an individual. When you’re more aware of everything around you, it allows you to take it in to a greater degree.”
Pat hopes that the ushers’ quiet work allows parishioners to glean more from the Mass. The ushers assist those who need to leave the church during Mass
with their children or to use the restroom. If someone falls ill or has a problem during Mass, the ushers are there to help. They provide a welcoming experience and can help parishioners find seats or help those who need physical assistance. After Mass, the ushers put books away and tidy up to get ready for the next Mass. There is no real limit to what an usher is there to do — rather, they are on the alert for anyone who needs their help.
“We try to provide an environment that is as safe, comforting, and quiet as possible so that parishioners can listen to Father and get as much as they can out of each and every Mass,” Pat says.
It takes about five ushers to do the job at Mass. Each usher is stationed in a different wing or aisle to gather the collection. Ushers sign up for a month at a time and are assigned to serve at their preferred Mass. With plenty of ushers, the work is well divided. New ushers are
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“I look forward to ushering. I’m very aware of the Mass when I’m there. I’m very involved both as an usher and an individual. When you’re more of aware of everything around you, it allows you to take it in to a greater degree.”
— Pat HibbelerUsher Tim Oitker handing out bulletins Ushers Gary Zanger and Neal Cornwell preparing for the offertory
2600 Maine Street
Quincy, Illinois 62301
www.cospq.org
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offered a training session if they have questions before they are put on the schedule. Ushers can be identified by their nametags and parishioners are welcome to ask them for assistance when needed.
“I think any time you’re in the service of the Church and Our Lord, it gives you a more spiritual experience of the Mass,” Pat says. “It gives me a very good feeling in my heart that we are assisting Father in his duty and helping to provide a good experience so all parishioners can enjoy the Mass. The amount of time it takes is really negligible compared to what you get out of it.”
To learn more about becoming an usher, contact Mark Strieker at 217-316-0080 or marklyn2927@gmail.com
Weekend Masses
Saturday: 5:00 p.m., Sunday: 8:00, 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.
Weekday Masses
Mon-Sat: 8:00 a.m., except for Wednesdays: 8:30 a.m.
Reconciliation
Saturday: 7:30-7:50 a.m., 3:30-4:30 p.m. or by appointment
Ushers Dave Kuhl, Ernie Bain, and Tom Hellhake taking the gifts up to the altar
