Religious Education - Children
Catechist BlogFarewell Message from Our Pastor
Dear Parishioners, The time has come to say farewell. This is my last weekend at the parish. I leave for St. Bonaventure University next weekend and will begin my ministry on campus. I have already been involved in Zoom meetings with the President of the University...
Feast of St. Bonaventure
Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Bonaventure (July 15). In many ways St. Bonaventure is a Saint for the times in which we live - when divisions are ripe and the unity of a nation is being sorely tested. In the years while St. Francis was alive, the Franciscan Order...
Evangelization
Evangelization is a word we often hear today in the church. We are called to evangelize. The word “evangelization” comes from the Greek word for Gospel (Greek: euangelion, Latin: evangelium). In today’s Gospel Jesus sends the apostles out to evangelize, to proclaim...
Joseph’s Revenge
In the sequence of first readings for weekday Masses, we have just made a huge leap from Jacob (Gen 28) to the end of the story of Joseph and his brothers (Gen 41). A quick synopsis of the story would include: his brothers, all older, were jealous of Joseph and...
Renouncing Everything and Evangelization
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Benedict who really put into practice Jesus’ call in today’s Gospel to abandon everything and center our lives on him. Benedict is the founder of monasticism in the Western church. He wrote a simple rule of life for communities of...
Repurposing
In the first reading, Jacob, having fled from his brother Esau’s wrath, finds himself at a shrine, where he rests for the night, using a stone for a pillow. It is here that a divine revelation comes to Jacob in a dream. Jacob sees a stairway going from earth to the...
The Dog Days
The expression the “dog days” gives rise to the humid, hot days of summer when we are all just looking for a cool, shaded spot to wait out the sweltering day. I assumed that our canine friends got singled out and tagged with the expression. Turns out it was something...
Dog Days of Summer
The expression the "dog days" gives rise to the humid, hot days of summer when we are all just looking for a cool, shaded spot to wait out the sweltering day. I assumed that our canine friends got singled out and tagged with the expression. Turns out it was something...
Mercy, Not Sacrifice
What is your favorite book of the Bible? What is your favorite Bible verse? If we asked Jesus this question, he might well answer that Hosea is his favorite book of the Bible and Hosea 6:6 is his favorite passage: “For I desire goodness, not sacrifice; Obedience to...
Healing Encounter and Rejection
You probably have noticed a dramatic shift in the Matthew’s Gospel over the last week. We have passed a turning point in Matthew’s Gospel. We have moved from the proclamation of the Sermon on the Mount to action - theoretical teaching to visible reality. We see...