Advance - Bishop's Message

A conversation with Bishop Michael O. Jackels

On May 28, four men – God willing – will be ordained priests to serve in the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, devoting their lives as servant leaders, teaching and forming the baptized.

This comes just a day after one more man takes a step closer to priesthood as he is ordained to the diaconate.

Here in the Diocese of Wichita we are truly blessed to have many young men pursuing priestly vocations with nearly 50 discerning a call to the priesthood each year.

We value these men trying to grow in their conviction that God is calling them to the priesthood. The glory of God is when we serve to benefit others, and a seminarian is a good reflection of that.

One minute, he’s a man seeking the ministrations of a priest for himself. The next minute others are calling him Father; offering him bread and wine and asking in return to be fed with the Holy Eucharist; confessing their sins to him in hopes of receiving absolution; looking to him for an example of how to imitate the mind and heart of Jesus so as to make progress on the pilgrimage to heaven.

Every Catholic benefits from the young men educated to serve as diocesan priests; indeed, we need priests to fully practice our faith.

Support, prayer and enthusiasm surround priesthood in general and seminarians in particular. Thanks to the generosity of the Catholic faithful, we have been able to pay the tuition, room and board for young men studying for the priesthood.

Our financial support gives a young man the freedom to go into the seminary (and to leave if he feels called to step out) without worrying about the costs. We sacrifice for these young men as they prepare for a lifetime of sacrifice for us.

Please continue to pray and support those young people who are discerning God’s will and pray for the men who will be ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood in the coming week.

Goals of the TOGETHER vision
• Strengthen the oneness between parish and diocese.
• Deepen our practice of stewardship as a way of life, sharing responsibility for the mission of the Church.
• Invite everyone to help fund seminarian education, Catholic formation programs and a renovation of the Cathedral campus.

A Conversation with Bishop Michael O. Jackels

Love Jesus.

It’s a simple message but an important one.
Love Jesus.

It’s a call to action that we sometimes forget or forget to embrace.

You can memorize everything in the catechist of the Church, each prayer and every aspect of Church law, but you must love Jesus or you are not really a catholic Christian.
Jesus taught us about love, and at Easter we celebrate His love for us. We were all lost, slaves to sin and death having no hope of heaven, but Jesus loved us so much that He sacrificed himself. He loved us so much that He died on the cross for our sins and rose from the grave in order to open the gates of heaven for us.

He loved us, and He commanded us to love one another as he loved us.

One aspect of the TOGETHER vision is to support Catholic formation programs by fostering love through knowledge. You can’t love what you don’t know.

The St. Maria De Mattias Endowment and the St. Katharine Drexel Catholic School Fund enable children and adults across our Diocese to grow in their faith by furthering their knowledge of Jesus, so that they may love Jesus – and in loving Jesus, love and serve others.

Throughout our lives (and not just during the Lenten season) we are challenged to deepen our relationship with God. Just as we make plans for our day, plans for our weekend or plans for our vacation, we can plan to further our knowledge of Jesus and share our love of Christ through our service to others.

So, love Jesus. Then measure your love for Jesus by your love and service for others.
Learn more about the St. De Mattias Endowment or the St. Drexel Fund at TOGETHERvision.org.

Goals of the TOGETHER vision
• Strengthen the oneness between parish and diocese.
• Deepen our practice of stewardship as a way of life, sharing responsibility for the mission of the Church.
• Invite everyone to help fund seminarian education, Catholic formation programs and a renovation of the Cathedral campus.

Where will Bishop Jackels visit next?
Bishop Michael O. Jackels continues his TOGETHER vision visits. Here is a schedule for the next few weekends.
April 30-May 1, St. Anne, Wichita
May 7-8, St. Joseph, Wichita
May 14-15, St. Margaret Mary, Wichita
Go to TOGETHERvision.org to see photos from the bishop’s parish visits.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We all have felt the powerful impact of the Celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday and of the Stations of the Cross devotion. These celebrations impact us powerfully because we know suffering, we acknowledge our sins, and we recognize that our sins are the cause of Jesus’ suffering and death.
The Resurrection of Jesus on the other hand does not, for most of us, for some reason capture our attention as much as his Passion and Death. Maybe it is because we have no human experience of resurrection; it is in fact referred to as a mystery of faith.
It would nevertheless be incomplete, even wrong for us to stop at the Passion of our Lord, to fix our gaze only there. Resurrection with Jesus is the promise of faith. “He is risen” is the message Jesus’ followers are sent to proclaim. St. Paul wrote that “if Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty, too, your faith” (1 Cor 15:14).
Both the Passion of Jesus and his Resurrection have significance for our practice of Catholic Faith, especially for sharing our faith with others.
Jesus charged all his followers to share our Catholic Faith with others. If we cannot personally do missionary work, we can do it vicariously by providing material support to those who do: “We ought to support such persons, so that we may be coworkers in the truth” (3 John, verse 8). The health of our faith is to a great extent measured by how well we share it with others, teaching them to know Jesus so they can make an informed choice to love him and to serve their neighbors.
In support of the Church’s mission to share our faith, you are invited on Easter Sunday to make an extraordinary gift, over and above your regular parish tithe. The money received from the special Easter envelopes will be sent to our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI for the Peter’s Pence fund and to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which provides direct assistance to those working in the mission fields.
With kind regards and prayerful best wishes for a blessed Easter, I am
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+Michael O. Jackels
Bishop of Wichita

A Conversation with Bishop Michael O. Jackels

If you look closely at the TOGETHER logo, you will see the words, “We gather. We learn. We serve.”

These words are a part of the TOGETHER vision because they are inherent in who we are and in what we do.

We gather in church for worship on Sunday as members of the Body of Christ, children in the family of God. That assembly of believers is the Church. And that gathering influences how we live when we are outside of church.

At the end of Mass when the priest says, “Go in peace,” he is not simply releasing you out into the world. He is giving a command, sending each parishioner forth to carry out the mission of the Church.

We go from that assembly to learn and to teach, forming ourselves – and others – into Disciples of Christ.

And we go from that assembly to serve the needs of others.

TOGETHER: We gather. We learn. We serve. And we do all of those things from our Cathedral campus.

Our Mother Church and the buildings that surround our Cathedral represent the mission of the Church in the Diocese of Wichita.

Whether they are service ministries or education, they are diocesan ministries. They are not just for the Cathedral parishioners or the people who live in Wichita. These ministries are designed to benefit anyone and everyone.

The ministries and services that take place throughout our Cathedral campus represent what the Church is and does in Baxter Springs, Zenda, Fort Scott and all points in between.

Caring for the buildings on our Cathedral campus allows us to further the mission of the Church for the glory of God and the benefit of others.

Goals of the TOGETHER vision
• Strengthen the oneness between parish and diocese.
• Deepen our practice of stewardship as a way of life, sharing responsibility for the mission of the Church.
• Invite everyone to help fund seminarian education, Catholic formation programs and a renovation of the Cathedral campus.

Where will Bishop Jackels visit next?
Bishop Michael O. Jackels continues his TOGETHER vision visits. Here is a schedule for the next few weekends.
March 19-20, St. Joseph, Andale
March 27, St. Paul - Newman Center, Wichita
April 2-3, Magdalen, Wichita
April 9-10, All Saints, Wichita