Religious Education - Children
Catechist BlogElections 2021 – A Message from Fr. John
A Message from Fr. John Dear parishioners, Very recently we published a message called Faithful Citizenship: Pro-Life. Please take a moment to read this important message as it forms the background to this message. It contains excerpts from the US Bishops document on...
Saints of God
Today we begin reading Paul’s letter to the Romans. This letter is probably the last letter he wrote sometime in the late 50’s. It is a difficult and challenging letter to read but also one of the most important writings in the Bible outside of the Gospels. In this...
End of Life Care
It’s natural to be a little hesitant to talk about the end of life. No one wants to talk about death, not our own or that of a loved one. We are doing all we can to promote life to its full length. We want our loved ones to have full and happy lives; but faced with...
Demons
People today cannot just disagree they feel they have to demonize their adversary as being in “league with Satan” as they caricature their stance. Often these ad hominem attacks reflect more the insecurity of the attacker or the flimsiness of their own position. In...
Prayer
“Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Is this really our experience? I am sure that all of us have had the experience of asking for something in prayer and not receiving it. We prayed for an answer on an exam...
When Anger is not Helpful
A priest, on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, saw a rusty iron nail on the ground, next to one of the sacred monuments. He picked it up and decided to keep it because it would remind him of the nails that pinned Jesus to the Cross. Because he had a weakness for losing...
Comes the Spirit
Today’s first reading is from one of my favorite books: The Book of Jonah. The book is only four chapters long and we are in Chapter 3. The whole Jonah and the “whale” have already happened, Jonah has traveled to Nineveh as a very reluctant prophet. Frankly Jonah...
Mission and Belonging
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” It is a great passage, a great image, but… I suspect when we hear that word “yoked” a particular image comes...
Assisted Death
Known by many names - Physician-Assisted Death/Suicide, Euthanasia, Dignity with Death - by whatever name, it is the planned termination of a life with the assistance (direct or indirect) of a doctor. It is not a question of end-of-life-care, decisions to stop medical...
The Rosary – did you know?
Some history: Prayers with beads like the rosary may have begun as a practice by the laity to imitate the Christian monasticism of the Liturgy of the Hours, during the course of which the monks prayed the 150 Psalms daily. As many of the laity and even lay monastics...