Faithful Seek to Understand the Awesome

JAMIE PILARCZYK

Issue 02 | March & April 2009

Deep emotion comes over Eileen Brock when she shares in the Eucharist at Mass or in the homes of the frail parishioners she visits, and she sought to better understand what she and others feel.

“I have grown in awe at how important the Eucharist is to the people I bring it to,” said Brock, an extraordinary minister of holy Communion and minister to the sick and homebound at her parish, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Citrus Springs. “When I go to Mass and into their homes, I feel transformed.”

That spiritual quest brought Brock from her Dunnellon home to the Tampa Convention Center in late February to join more than 3,000 others in a daylong opportunity to learn and grow. The occasion was the Diocese of St. Petersburg’s second Living Eucharist conference, which drew its theme, “Nourished,” from the second phase of Bishop Robert N. Lynch’s three-year initiative to deepen the understanding of the sacrament. The diocesewide effort to form faith is guided by the bishop’s November 2007 pastoral letter, “Living Eucharist: Gathered, Nourished, Sent.”

Jesus Gives Strength to Face Hectic Times

MARY MANCHESS

Issue 01 | January & February 2009

“This is it, this is the time of your life” was the phrase every one of my elders told me when I started college. Some people define college as the hiatus between childhood and the real world. I would have to disagree. While college is an amazing experience, there is no hiatus from stress, obstacles and letdowns. At least for me there isn’t.