Next week we begin Holy Week. In Holy Week, we enter into the holiest week of the Church. Our Lenten journey culminates in the events that we celebrate & remember this week, the passion, death, & resurrection of our Lord. I invite & encourage all of us to make this week a holy week in both name & action.
How has your Lent been so far? As we celebrate the 4th Sunday of Lent this week, roughly the halfway point of our Lenten journey, it’s a good time for us to pause and reflect on how much we have dared to be different. Have we been faithful to our promises of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving? Or have we faltered? If we have, there’s still time to pick up and begin again so that when we get to Easter we might renew our Baptismal Promises with great vigor.
One of the major questions that we get and issues that we deal with at the Parish Office centers around requests for Sponsor Certificates. People who have been asked to be godmothers or godfathers for Baptism call up to the office requesting the Sponsor Certificate. While sometimes these are pretty easy to take care of, there are also times and situations where challenges arise. So, I wanted to take a moment to discuss the requirements to be a godparent and what makes someone a good godparent.
DARE TO BE DIFFERENT! That’s the call that Jesus placed upon my heart as we enter into this Lenten season. DARE TO BE DIFFERENT! Being different really is something we have to dare to do because being different can often be one of the most costliest things that we do in our lives. More costly than buying a house or a car, more costly than any other purchase that we might make, being different costs us, and oftentimes being different costs us dearly.
As I went about scheduling that appointment, I thought that it might be a very beneficial process to look at doing something similar in terms of our parish. So, I’d like to invite you to consider joining me for our parish “physical.” These “physicals” won’t involve blood pressure cuffs & there won’t be any needles involved (I promise).
“Repent & believe in the Gospel.” This Wednesday we’ll be invited to God’s continuous call to conversion & change as we enter into the season of Lent. Our Masses on Ash Wednesday will be celebrated at 9:00 am & 7:00 pm . Join us as we are signed with the sign of the cross, an outward sign of our call & hopefully our desire for an inward conversion more & more towards Christ. In case you’re wondering, we’re back, this year, to inscribing the ashes in the way we’ve been used to, on the forehead.
This is somewhat of a shorter column as this past Tuesday (the day bulletin articles are due) I returned from a very restful & relaxing week away. I didn’t really do anything fancy while I was away…no work was done, including writing bulletin columns ahead of time ;). I just spent some time relaxing, reading (you may remember the homily I gave about my challenge to read 50 books this year…
The 2021-2022 Budget Report for St. Patrick Parish is now available online. Simply click the article title above to view the report, along with a letter from Fr. John.
Have you ever found yourself getting distracted when you pray? For me, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes, & I would assume that it’s the same answer for you. Prayer is an essential & necessary part of our lives as Catholics & with that prayer often comes distractions.
There’s a good chance that as we hear/heard (depending upon when you’re reading this), our 2nd Reading this weekend at Mass we felt like we were at a Wedding. Though it is certainly not the ONLY 2nd reading that I’ve ever heard proclaimed at a Wedding, it is, by far, the most common. St. Paul presents to us, in this reading, a wonderful description of love, a quality that is so needed in our world today.
In 2019, on the memorial of St. Jerome, September 30th, Pope Francis called the Church to celebrate the Sunday of the Word of God on the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time. In the Preamble of the Introduction to the Lectionary for Mass we are reminded, “the word of God proclaimed in the celebration of God’s mysteries does not only address present conditions but looks back to past events and forward to what is yet to come.
In our second reading today, St. Paul writes to the people of Corinth, “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” (1 Cor. 12:7). The Spirit is given, not to some, not to a few, not to a majority, but to each individual, but to each & every individual for the benefit, not just of the individual themselves, but for the benefit of all. The manifestation of the Spirit is not the same in each individual & our call, our challenge, is to put that manifestation to use.
“You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” Those words, which make up the last line of our gospel this weekend as we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord & enter into Ordinary Time, are words that are spoken, not just to Jesus, but to each & every one of us. Maybe there wasn’t a booming voice from the heavens on the day that we were baptized, but in that moment, God spoke those same words into our hearts, “You are my beloved son/daughter, with you I am well pleased.”
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! On January 1st, though due to its falling on a Saturday it was not a Holy Day of Obligation this year, we celebrated the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God. How is Mary the Mother of God, we might ask? After all, if God has existed since the very beginning & will always exist, how can we say that Mary is His mother?
Just a reminder that the Parish Office will be closed this week from Monday, December 27, 2021 through Sunday, January 2, 2022. The Parish Office will reopen on Monday, January 3, 2022. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
"Heavenly Father, you have given us the model of life in the Holy Family of Nazareth. Help us, O Loving Father, to make our family another Nazareth where love, peace and joy reign. May it be deeply contemplative, intensely Eucharistic, and revived with joy..."
"Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from the store, maybe Christmas means just a little bit more." Those are words from the story of the Grinch & they’re also words that kept jumping into my mind as in the months & weeks leading up to Christmas. We heard all kinds of warnings about getting everything that we needed for Christmas early because of all the supply chain issues.
What is the 300 Club you ask, well it's a chance to support St. Patrick West Park and win $100.00 each month. The cost of the ticket is $50.00 and then your names goes into the drawing each month for a chance to win. There are 3 winners each month, so that gives you 33 chances to win. Then in December, we hold a dinner and have our final month's drawing where you could win up to $1000.00. Tickets can be purchased any time! The 300 Club hold up to 300 members and is open to all until all 300 tickets are sold. So who wants to be part of the fun? If you are interested in purchasing tickets, please contact the rectory...
As we continue through this Advent season & draw closer to our celebration of Christmas, we’re probably all at different points in our Christmas shopping. Maybe we’ve got it all done, maybe we’ve still got a few things left to get, or maybe we haven't even started yet. Maybe we’ve ordered something & are still waiting for it to arrive, maybe we weren’t able to find the gift that we wanted to get for someone, maybe all we’ve got left to do is wrap & bag the gifts that we bought for our loved ones.
This week, we celebrate on Wednesday, the great Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We celebrate the Immaculate Conception on December 8th each year & then we celebrate Mary’s birthday on September 8th of the following year, 9 months to the day since we celebrated her conception.
