By John Rohlf, The Message assistant editor
Diocesan Catholics gathered at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery May 26 for the annual Memorial Day Mass.
Father Gene Schroeder, pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Vanderburgh County, celebrated the annual Mass, which was held inside the mausoleum at the cemetery. Those in attendance gathered on Memorial Day to honor and reflect, Father Gene said in his homily.
“We honor today all those people here in this cemetery, which has been around since the 1830s,” Father Schroeder said in his homily. “We honor probably people that have served in every war that the United States has been involved in up to our most recent conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think today we have to honor these young men and women…”
Father Schroeder said right now, “there are like 34 different wars” that are going on over all parts of the world.
During his homily, Father Schroeder stressed the need for us to learn to practice peace and be aware of the anger inside us and our desire for vengeance.
“It doesn’t take much to get all that stuff stirred up,” Father Gene said in his homily. “And so when that happens, I would say well what I’m going to try to do is to recognize that and to be very deliberate about letting go and making peace in our own heart…That’s a challenging thing.”
Father Schroeder said we all have to do everything we can to make peace possible. We can do that by trying to be a maker of peace in our own lives, he said.
“It’s a good day to honor the service of people who some of them have given their whole lives,” Father Schroeder said. “Some of them have carried the wounds of that. It’s good to honor them and to thank them for their service and commit ourselves again to being instruments of peace in our world.”