Regional Lenten Reconciliation Celebration will be held at St. Mary Magdalene Parish (St. Dunstan’s Church) on Sunday, April 6th @ 3 pm. Everyone is welcome.

Jubilee 2025 Pilgrims of Hope – Jubilee Pilgrimage to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. There will be a Pilgrimage of Hope to the Cathedral on the first Saturdays in the month throughout the year. The next date is April 5th. Everyone is welcome to attend any Pilgrimages throughout the year including those designated for specific regions. The designated date for our Parish Group to participate in a Pilgrimage to the Cathedral has been scheduled for Saturday, July 5th. This group includes St. John the Baptist Parish (Woodstock/Nackawic); St. Barbara’s Parish (Minto/Chipman): Mother of Mercy Parish (Johnsville/Bath/Florenceville/Juniper); and St. John Paul II (Oromocto/Lincoln/Village of Gagetown). More information to follow.

Miramichi Region: The Annual Shrine Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel will be held Sunday, July 13th at 3pm. Why not add this pilgrimage to your Jubilee Year to do list. Any questions on this pilgrimage, please contact Cassie at goodshepherdparish92@yahoo.com or 506-843-2210.

The Jubilee happens every 25 years and you don’t want to miss out. A quote from Pope Francis, “In the course of the year, every effort should be made to enable the People of God to participate fully in its proclamation of hope in God’s grace and in the signs that attest to their efficacy.”

Journey Through Lent Video Series: Beginning on Ash Wednesday, March 5th and for each Sunday in Lent, up to and including Palm Sunday, a video will be uploaded to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops website. This series is designed for individuals, families, and communities, providing spiritual inspiration and guidance on how to prepare for the Easter Season. To access the videos, click on the following link : Journey Through Lent 2025.

Franciscan LEAD is for high-school aged youth who are passionate about their Catholic faith, active in their youth groups, and ready to step up to the next level of leadership through evangelization and discipleship training. https://steubenvilleconferences.com/franciscan-lead/
First round applications due April 1st, 2025. LEAD week is held prior to Steubenville Atlantic, (July 11-13, 2025) in Halifax, Before applying please contact Patricia at 506-627-6465 or by email: Catechesis@dioceseofsaintjohn.org

Spring Faith Formation Opportunities, first in a series offered on Zoom by Patricia Lee, Director of Catechesis and facilitated by Jim Anderson, Director of Missionary Discipleship Formation entitled: Called to Witness and Proclaim A Pastoral Letter on Evangelization and Catechesis in the Family. This is open to parish catechists, parents, and anyone interested in faith formation of young people. Join us on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. You can choose to attend either from 1:00 to 3:00 pm at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83533326016 or from 7pm to 9pm https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86396438396

The next formation opportunity will begin on April 24 for a 4-week online retreat based on the book Into His Likeness - Be Transformed as a Disciple of Christ by Edward Sri. The book can be ordered through Amazon or Sunrisemarian.com. No registration required. Watch for our third formation opportunity coming in May!

The next session is Thursday, March 27th @ 7pm: ‘Easter Triduum’. Session led by Fr. Bill. Triduum is taken from a Latin root that means “three days” and is celebrated as one great feast. It is a period that traces the final days of Jesus' life, his death, and his resurrection from the dead. Starting with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday evening, The Celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening or Easter Sunday Mass.

This is the fifth of six sessions to be presented. The Parish Survey (the Disciple Maker Index) results indicated a strong desire of adults in the parish for opportunities to learn about their faith, discuss their faith and connect with others on the faith journey. This is for newly inquiring about the Catholic faith or those who want to learn more and deepen their faith journey

Beginning on Ash Wednesday, March 5th and for each Sunday in Lent, up to and including Palm Sunday, a video will be uploaded to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops website featuring pastoral reflections based on the Reading for that Sunday. This series is designed for individuals, families, and communities, providing spiritual inspiration and guidance on how to prepare for the Easter Season.

The Parish Survey (the Disciple Maker Index) results indicated a strong desire of adults in the parish for opportunities to learn about their faith, discuss their faith and connect with others on the faith journey. In response, there will be six evening sessions for Adults scheduled between January 21st and into the Easter Season. These sessions will be 90 minutes in length and will each have a theme. You are welcome to attend any or all of these events. There will be input on a particular ‘theme’ or ‘aspect’ of our faith followed by an opportunity for small groups to have conversation. This is for those who are newly inquiring about the Catholic Faith or those who want to learn more and deepen their faith journey.

The Next Sessions on Thursday, February 27th will focus on Prayer. The Theme will be: “Praying With Our Life Experiences in Ways That Connects Us More Deeply to God and Others”. Input and facilitation of the process for the session will be with Pam Breau and Fr. Bill Brennan.

Future Dates: Thursday, February 27th and Wednesday March 12th – Time 7 pm.

Future Date: On Wednesday March 12th – Time 7 pm our focus will be on ‘Living the Gospel deeply through Action, Outreach and Right Relationship’. Our guest speaker will be Steve Patterson, Director of Community at 12-Neighbors ‘Tiny Home’ Community. Steve was formerly the Youth Pastor at Brunswick Street Baptist Church.

As Fr. Bill expressed in his homily last weekend, we are living in uncertain and worrisome times given the political unrest we are and will continue to experience. To help us in our prayer and our reflections, Fr. Ron Rolheiser provides us with the ‘Lord’s Prayer for Justice’. “God always stands on the side of the weak and it is there, among the weak, that we find God. Given the truth of that, let us pray the Lord’s Prayer for Justice:

Our Father who art in heaven … you always stand with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who suffer.

Hallowed be thy name … May the reverence we give your name pull us out of selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbour.

Your kingdom come, your will be done … help us to create a world where, we will act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with you and each other.

On earth as in heaven … may the work of our hands, reflect your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth on earth.

Give us this day our daily bread … so that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, and sufficient access to education so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus.

And forgive us our trespasses … forgive us our blindness towards our neighbour, our obsessive self-preoccupation, our racism, our sexism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it.

As we forgive those who trespass against us … help us to forgive those who victimize us. Help us to mellow out in spirit, to not grow bitter with age, to forgive the imperfect parents and systems that wounded and ignored us.

And do not put us to the test but deliver us from evil … do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before this gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems. Amen.”

The following is an excerpt from the diary of Sister Joyce Rupp, O.S.M on January 29, 2023: “Dare I believe in peace for a world caught in the snares of domination, greed, and disregard for human life? Dare I believe in big-hearted love, self-giving service, and a setting aside of conflict, hatred and hurtful indifference? Only if I remember the kindness, caring, and selfless compassion of people whose stories never make national news yet stay forever in the grateful hearts of those who’ve been recipients of that goodness.

One of those stories occurred several weeks ago when I learned of neighbors assisting an older couple in their mid-eighties, both elders using walkers in their home and no longer able to drive. Living in a rural area without public transportation they were increasingly concerned about finding a way to travel to scheduled medical appointments. Imagine their relief and joy when neighbors several miles away happened to stop by, detected their need, and eagerly volunteered to provide their transportation.

It is this type of compassionate attitude and quiet action that contributes to a foundation for peace desperately longed for in our world. We cannot stop believing in the possibility of a major change to move humankind from deadly violence to global peace. I’ve begun praying daily the following World Prayer for Peace that was written in 1981 with the intention that “people around the world would offer this prayer at midday everyday. …around the globe a continuous vigil.

Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth. Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace. Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.

Peace begins in the minds and hearts of individuals, and that includes my own where rancor and division have no place if my life is to make a positive difference. I believe that to be a person of peace is to be a person of compassion, one who unites rather than divides, who seeks to love rather than to vent animosity, one who gives wholeheartedly rather than grasps selfishly, a person at home with oneself, and consequently at home with others.

I have long felt a resonance with the verse from Isaiah 52:7: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace.” And so, I am trusting a Spirit of Enduring Peace to continue to reach into human hearts and I am planning to pray daily for people near and far, that we may respond in a way that leads to furthering harmony and well-being on our beloved planet.” Abundant Peace, Joyce Rupp.

Prayer of Peace

I want to be there at dawn’s arrival
when the last stars of night yawn,
and the morning’s first radiant smile
filters through the coming of daylight.

I want to be there at the sun’s setting
when birds chatter their evening prayers,
and darkness falls like a gentle cloak
over the planet’s beloved residents.

I want to be there in human history
when peace overtakes all violence,
and each unsettled heart leaves behind
whatever blocks the flow of kindness.

I want to be there when true kinship
unites me to people here and everywhere,
gathering the enduring thread of Spirit
into a strong bond that nothing can separate.

I want to be there.
(Joyce Rupp, OSM)

The White Candle of Christmas Reminds us that Emmanuel - God is with us. (read Matthew 1:2-3)

Living as God’s Beloved. “We have to dare to reclaim the truth that we are God’s chosen ones, even when our world does not choose us…The great spiritual battle begins—and never ends—with the reclaiming of our closeness." (Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved)

To be chosen is to be loved, treasured and valued. In Christ we are God’s chosen ones, we are God’s beloved. Will we, in turn, choose God? St. John wrote, “We love because God first loved us.” If we choose God, it is because God first chose us. If we love God, it is because God first loved us. Everything we do is a response to God’s love and care for us—even the breaths we take are a result of God’s creative love.

As the days of Christmas draw near, may we bask in this reality as we would bask in the warm sunshine of a quiet afternoon. We are chosen. We are loved.

God, I believe that you love me. May I be changed by this truth and know it in my heart this Christmas. Amen.
(The Fullness of Time, Henri J.M. Nouwen)

The Bethlehem Candle Reminds Us of God's Love for Us and for One Another. (read 1 John: 4-12)

God with Us. “Compassion and gratitude are the two words most helpful to understand this Ministry. Ministry happens when you participate in the mystery of being with. The whole incarnation, God-with-us, Emmanuel, if first of all, being with people.

If we really believe “Emmanuel”—that God is with us—we must be willing to turn around and be Emmanuel for others. For a faith that allows us to hide from others and places us only in self-imposed solitude is not a faith at all—at least not one that reflects the unconditional love and availability of the Incarnate Christ.

To be Emmanuel is to leave ourselves open to the homeless person next to us on the bus, it is to show up for the person in the hospital, it is to overcome our fear and nervousness and meet those in prison and hospice. To be Emmanuel is about feeding the hungry and quenching the thirst of the poor, all without stopping to count the cost.

It’s never enough to offer a prayer if we’re not willing to help be the answer to that prayer, to be that person’s experience of God in the world.

Emmanuel, be near me and in me. Be seen through me.  (Henri. J.M. Nouwen, The Father’s Love).

The Shepherd's Candle Reminds us of the Joy of the Shepherds in Hearing the Good News of Jesus' Birth. (read Psalm 136:1)

Good News of Great Joy (words from Sister Joan Chittister)

“The truth is that the Christmas Season is unabashed about the purpose of the Christian Life. “I am bringing you good news of great joy,” the angel says to the shepherds on the hillside outside of Bethlehem about the birth of a baby in a stable there. Good news of great joy, we learn at the beginning of the liturgical year, is what searching for the baby is all about and it’s how and where we’re searching that matters.

“Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times,” the Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote. But that’s wrong. Happiness does not require choice some of the time. Happiness requires choice all the time. It requires learning to choose between what is real and what is fleeting, what is worthless and what is worthwhile. It is the ability to choose between one good in life over another, that the liturgical year parades before our eyes over and over again, until we finally develop enough maturity of soul to tell what lasts from what pales, to discern what’s worth having from what isn’t, to know what happiness is rather than what satiety is.

Meaning we discover, has nothing to do with what is outside of us. It had to do with what we have to see within our souls. It has to do with the vision that is within us rather than the things we are heaping up around us as indicators of our success, our power, our station.

Joy is not about what happens to us, the Manger indicates. It is the meaning we give to what we do that determines the nature, the quality of the lives we live.”

Jesus, help me to be a person of reflection who seeks to follow you with a joyful heart. (Word Made Flesh)

The Angel's Candle Reminds us of the Peace Jesus Brings Us (read Isaiah 26:3-4)

The following is an excerpt from a letter from Mother Teresa to the Presidents of two countries at war with each other:

Choose the Way of Peace: “I come to you in the name of God, the God that we all love and share, to beg for the innocent ones, our poor of the world and those who will become poor because of war. They are the ones who will suffer most because they have no means of escape. I plead on bended knee for them. They will suffer and when they do, we will be the ones who are guilty for not having done all in our power to protect and love them.

I plead with you for those who will be left orphaned, widowed and left alone, because their parents, husbands, brothers and children have been killed. I beg you please to save them.

I plead for those who will be left with disability and disfigurement. They are God’s children. I plead for those who will be left with no home, no food, and no love. Please think of them as being your children.

Finally, I plead for those who will have the most precious thing that God can give us, life, taken away from them. I beg you to save our sisters and brothers, yours and ours, because they are given to us by God to love and to cherish. It is not for us to destroy what God has given to us. Please, please, let your mind and your will become the mind and will of God. You have the power to bring war into the world, or to build peace. Please choose the way of peace.”

Bless me, Jesus. Help me to remember that true peace begins with you, so I may share your peace and joy with all. (Word Made Flesh)

The Prophet's Candle Reminds us of the Prophets Who Foretold the Birth of Christ (read Isaiah 9:6)

It is the Advent Season, a time of waiting. In our world today it is not hard to feel the “waits” of our daily lives - waiting for peace, waiting for justice, waiting in hope of the return of good health for friends and family, job security, reconciliations, the list can at times feel endless. In the coming weeks as we light each candle on our Advent Wreath, let us allow time for quiet reflection and prayer preparing our hearts and minds for the coming of the light.

Prepare Your Heart, Advent Begins December 1st: “Advent is a season of waiting. It is a high spiritual season when we prepare to birth the Christ in our lives.

In the monastery we pay special attention to the vigil services that take place each Saturday during Advent. “Vigil” means to keep awake, to be watchful. The community gathers in prayer by candlelight to anticipate the Sunday feast, to spiritually prepare for Christmas. I love that the community prays the Advent vigils by candlelight as candles are prominent symbols in the monastery’s Advent services. Candles focus our minds on the light of Christ.” (Sister Joan Chittister)

During this first week of Advent consider spending some time reflecting on “Hope”.

There are so many in our communities and around the world living in hopelessness. How can you or your family bring hope to the hopeless? How can we find ways each day to share hope with others? What do I hope for?

Be with me, Holy Spirit, as I journey. Help me to be hopeful as I proclaim the Good News, believing that heaven has already come near.
(Word Made Flesh)

St. Francis of Assisi made the first Christmas nativity scene for Christmas Eve in 1223. It was a place where he could slow down and think about the presence of God in his life. Reflecting on the nativity scene can be a meaningful way for us to gather in prayer, mindful of the great joy in Christ that Advent points us toward.

Next weekend we will begin our Advent season with the lighting of the first candle on our Advent Wreath. As we move into Advent the Nativity scene will gradually be built beginning with an empty stable, followed by the shepherds and animals and as we enter the season of Christmas, the church wreaths and trees will appear, ready to be illuminated with the birth of Jesus, reminding us of the Light of Christ.

With Mary as our model, may we all experience Advent as a special time of waiting, hope and peace.

Advent Healing Mass – An Advent Healing Mass and Sacrament of Anointing for St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish will be held at St. Ann’s Church, Bilijk First Nation (Kingsclear) on Thursday, December 12th at 2pm.

This is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe now known as National Day of Prayer in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples and has special significance for Indigenous People. We hope you can join us; all are welcome!

Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!

We have tried so many times and over so many years to resolve our conflicts by our own powers and by the force of our arms. How many moments of hostility and darkness have we experienced; how much blood has been shed; how many lives have been shattered; how many hopes have been buried… But our efforts have been in vain.

Now, Lord, come to our aid! Grant us peace, teach us peace; guide our steps in the way of peace. Open our eyes and our hearts and give us the courage to say: "Never again war!"; "With war everything is lost". Instill in our hearts the courage to take concrete steps to achieve peace.

Lord, God of Abraham, God of the Prophets, God of Love, you created us, and you call us to live as sisters and brothers. Give us the strength daily to be instruments of peace; enable us to see everyone who crosses our path as our sister or brother. Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace, our trepidation into confident trust, and our quarreling into forgiveness.

Keep alive within us the flame of hope, so that with patience and perseverance we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation. In this way may peace triumph at last, and may the words "division", "hatred" and "war" be banished from the heart of everyone. Lord, defuse the violence of our tongues and our hands. Renew our hearts and minds, so that the word which always brings us together be "sister or brother", and our way of life will always be that of: Shalom, Peace, Salaam!

Amen.

Meet Sister Ines: Launching children into the world of solidarity and coexistence is among the priorities of the new Secretary General of the Pontifical Mission Society of Holy Childhood, Sister Ines Paulino Albino

Rethinking Pastoral Care: “I am very grateful, and I recognise that this appointment as Secretary General of the Pontifical Mission Society of Holy Childhood is pure grace from God. It is also an honour for my Congregation, the Sisters of Adorers of the Blood of Christ, and for our missionary Church in Guinea-Bissau, my homeland. I see it as a sign that we are also participating in the Church’s universal mission,” said Sister Ines.

Rethinking pastoral care and abandoning the comfortable pastoral criterion of “it has always been done this way” is, for Sister Ines, a crucial approach both for countries with an old Christian tradition and for the relatively newly evangelized. She calls on pastoral agents to be more creative and daring in their mission, investing in children and adolescents, so that these can be channels for revitalising the Church.

By evangelizing children, we are also evangelizing adults, explains Sister Ines. Children and young people, she says, take everything they have learned back to their families. And this process leads to a new society and a renewed Church.” (Pontifical Mission Societies)

Special offertory envelopes are available in the lobby of the Church.

As noted in the Bulletin last weekend, we are sharing stories of the important work of Missionaries throughout the world and how we can help them continue this vital ministry.

Meet Sister Priscia: Sister Priscia belongs to the order of the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary and is the director of a school for the deaf blind in Malawi. Sister Priscia notes that “Our journey is tough, and the resources scarce but in each child’s smile, we find the strength to continue. Our goal is to nurture these children into individuals who can confidently stand in society, not just as equals, but as symbols of hope and perseverance. This World Mission Sunday, you can help with that!

Meet Sister Genevieve - A Life Transformed by Missionary Animation: Sister Genevieve’s journey began as a young girl living in the mission Diocese of Loikaw, Myanmar when she began to experience a profound desire to become a religious sister. Witnessing the dedication and selflessness of these women in serving others and sharing their lives with the Church inspired her deeply. In Rome, where she is studying thanks to a scholarship from the Society of St. Peter the Apostle, Sister Genevieve speaks lovingly of her homeland's small yet vibrant Catholic community.

The faithful are nurtured through catechesis, the sacraments, and outreach programs for young people and married couples.

Sister Genevieve reminds us, “We need to pray for peace in the world, in the Church, in the family, and in every heart, because many times war begins because of the lack of peace in the hear of one…to build peace, we need to start with our own hearts.” “(Pontifical Mission Societies)

World Mission Sunday is next weekend, Sunday, October 20th. Special offertory envelopes are available in the lobby of the church.

posted October 5, 2024

October is Mission Month – Are you Ready?

The month of October is a special period of reflection and action for our Church's missionary efforts worldwide.

This year World Mission Sunday will be celebrated on Sunday, October 20th the second to last weekend in October as is the tradition. This year’s theme chosen by Pope Francis is "Go and Invite EVERYONE to the Banquet’" Inspired by the parable of the wedding banquet in the Gospel of Matthew 22:9 emphasizing our call to bring God’s love and message to all corners of the world. Our mission is to reflect this divine hospitality, bringing joy, compassion, and hope to everyone we encounter.

“In this year devoted to prayer in preparation for the Jubilee of 2025, I wish to encourage all to deepen their commitment to take part in the celebration of Mass and to pray for the Church’s mission of evangelization…she does not cease to pray, at every Eucharistic and liturgical celebration, the “Our Father”, with its petition, “Thy kingdom come”. In this way, daily prayer and the Eucharist in particular, make us pilgrims and missionaries of hope, journeying towards everlasting life in God, towards the nuptial banquet that God has prepared for all his children.

The contributions collected on World Mission Sunday are crucial for sustaining the Church's mission in over 1,150 territories where the Church is still young or struggling. Let us prepare our hearts and minds to engage fully in this mission throughout the month of October.”
-Pope Francis, The Pontifical Mission Societies

Over the next two weekends we will provide you with some short stories on the work of Missionaries around the world and how you can help.

As we continue our journey in the Season of Creation this may be a good opportunity to reconnect in a special way with nature and perhaps issue a challenge to ourselves on how we are using the earth’s resources.

Is what I’m doing a sustainable practice or is it for gain only? Will my actions diminish resources for future generations? What actions am I taking or could take to lessen the effects of climatic change and ecological devastations globally?

An African wisdom of Ubuntu teaches that the sense of self is shaped by relationships with others. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a cosmic family to care for Creation. I am because we are, the same goes with Creation. We are nature, nature is us, we are God’s hands for global and cosmic justice.

The Affirmation of Faith

We have faith in one God, one Source of all life, one ground of the whole earth, who created all things good. And we have faith in Christ, in whom we have been shown the special role of humanity to bear God’s likeness in working and caring for Creation, in seeking to understand her mysteries and powers, in working with these powers for the wellbeing of life on earth.

And we have faith in God’s Spirit who leads us to a meek, unselfish and compassionate lifestyle. So that the earth is inherited in peace, her life is transformed for all creatures and her bounty shared justly.

So, be it. Amen.

(Source: Adapted from India and reproduced by ECEN (European Christian Environmental Network) for Creation Time 2003)

The month of September is dedicated to Care of Creation. The theme for this year is “To Hope & Act With Creation”.

During this Season of Creation, we are all invited to pray on how we are called to hope and act together with creation. The following reflections may help guide us on our journey of caring for creation:

To hope and act together with Creation we must truly listen to how and why Creation is groaning. We need to push for more action, we’re more aware than ever of the problems.

Creation is groaning. Creation is part of God’s revelation; we must learn from and with creation to know how to hope and act for a better future.

Although the testimony of Indigenous Christians and their spiritualties are respected, they are not listened to. Usually, Christian churches find resistance to speaking about Earth or Creation as a being, while for Indigenous and original peoples this is an intrinsic part of their cosmic worldview and way of living.

Creation groans as fossil fuel industries create greenwashing campaigns for clean energy. They are expanding their energy businesses instead of actually phasing out of fossil fuels. They talk about energy transition, but they are only doing an energy expansion to keep their profits high.

We must acknowledge the damages caused by selfish and foolish decisions that disregard the cries of the most marginalized, including refugees, or those displaced by climate change, mining, and ecological devastation. The presence of big oil companies at COP28 we saw last year is a clear example of this.

As resources diminish and access to them diminishes, there is more war. The inevitable result of the climate crisis will be more violence. You can’t have peace without an equitable sharing of resources.

The African wisdom of Ubuntu teaches us that the sense of self is shaped by relationships with others. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a cosmic family to care for Creation. I am because we are, the same goes with Creation. We are nature, nature is us, we are God’s hands for global and cosmic justice.

"Let us weep with the anguished plea of creation. Let us hear that plea and respond to it with deeds, so that we and future generations can continue to rejoice in the creation’s sweet song of life and hope." (Pope Francis)

Due to an increase in requests for Mass Intentions for the same day and Mass time to celebrate special anniversaries and birth dates of deceased loved ones, you will notice at times that we have more than one Mass Intention for the same Mass. Since Church Law allows for this to happen we will continue this practice into the future. We are grateful to be able to provide this blessing as we live and celebrate all of the gifts of Christ’s resurrection that we share in through the Eucharist

“I was walking out a great loneliness in my life one night. As I moved along the wooded path, I saw a bright light in the distance. I quietly drew closer and saw that it was only one tiny firefly. It was just a small fragile frame that was giving forth such brightness! The lone firefly then joined the dance of a hundred fireflies as I walked in the late dusk. All across the vast meadow, far into the woods, their little lights danced and brought me a sense of bondedness. They were like a silent symphony, a gift to my lonely spirit. Like Christmas tree lights without the strings to mar their freedom, the fireflies held vigil with me. They danced for the earth, giving light to its darkness, and I thought they danced for me, a pure and simple gift of beauty in the night.

In our darkest hour, it is often the smallest spark that brings us the gift of light, be it ever so frail a flicker. It is the moment of simple grace in a softly spoken word, a letter from a friend, an unexpected phone call, a warm touch from a loved one, or even, a glance at the earth in its moment of hope. God has blessed our spirits with his own fireflies. They are small and fragile, but they fly in our dark woods and their little, beaming lights seem brilliant in our need.”

This article was written by Joyce Rupp O.S.M. Well known for her work as a retreat and conference speaker and writer. She is a member of the Servite (Servants of Mary) community. She has written a number of books including: The Cup of Life, Your Sorrow is my Sorrow and Dear Heart Come Home.

There are times when it seems that so much has been written about love there is no more to be said about it. And, worse, sometimes it seems that so much that has been written about love that is pure drivel—unattained and unattainable. Or pure theory of a theological kind talks about “loving” God when I have yet to understand human love, let alone the divine. But love is none of those things, alone and entirely. Love is far more meaningful than that.

Love is something learned only by the long, hard labor of life. It is sometimes over before we’ve even known we ever had it. We sometimes

destroy it before we appreciate it. We often have it and simply take it for granted.

But sometimes, if we’re lucky, we live long enough to grow into it in such a way that because of it we come to recognize the value of life. As the years go by, we come to love flowers and cats and small infants and old ladies and life on the dock and the one person who knows how hot we like our coffee. We learn enough about love to allow things to slip away and ourselves to melt into the God whose love made all of it possible. Sometimes we even find a love deep enough, tender enough to detach us from the foam and frills of life, all of which hold us captive to things that cannot satisfy.

Sometimes we live long enough to see the face of God in another. Then, in that case, we have loved. The poets and storytellers across time have told us about the dimensions of love that last.

The poet Rumi wrote: “From myself I am copper, through You, friend, I am gold. From myself I’m a stone, but through You I am a gem!”

And in the course of World War I, the story was told that a young sergeant begged his commanding officer to allow him to go back onto the battlefield to rescue his fallen friend. “If you do that, we’ll lose you both,” the officer said. But the sergeant begged, and the officer relented. After the battle, when the battalion was finally able to retrieve both bodies, the sergeant was still alive but losing ground rapidly. “Now do you see how useless it was to go out there?” the officer demanded. “Oh no, sir, it was all worth it,” the sergeant whispered as he breathed his last. “You see, when I finally got to him, he said to me, ‘Jack, I knew you’d come.’

Real love enables everything we are. Real love knows no costs

There are two books by Sister Joan Chittister that are available for reading and can be found in the lobby of the church: ‘Following the Path’ and ‘The Monastery of the Heart’.

In Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s book “Our One Great Act of Fidelity – Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist” he shares some of his very personal reflections on the Eucharist in addition to offering other denominations’ traditions around the Eucharist. These are some quotes from his book.

“When John wrote his Gospel, he did not include a Christmas story. In place of the birth of Jesus, he simply wrote, The word was made flesh and it lives among us.”

“So, on the night before his death, having exhausted what he could with the words, Jesus went beyond them. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart.”

“The Eucharist is meant to be God’s regular nourishment for us, daily manna to keep us alive within the desert of our lives.”

“…the Eucharist is meant simply to be a family meal, a community celebration, a place like our kitchen tables and living rooms, where we come together to be with each other, to share ordinary life, to celebrate special events with each other, to console and cry with each other when life if full of heartaches, and to be together simply for the sake of being together.”

“These words wonderfully describe one of the central meanings of the Eucharist. We should be on our knees washing each other’s feet because that is precisely what Jesus did at the first Eucharist, and he did it to teach us that the Eucharist is not a private act of devotion, meant to square our debts with God, but a call to, and a grace for, service.”

“One of the deep meanings of the Eucharist is that it invites us to realize that, like Jesus, we, too, have come from God and are going back to God and that therefore all things are possible for us, including a stripping off of the outer garments that so divide us, so that we can begin to wash each other’s feet across all lines of difference and division.”

“Share! The Eucharist, as a spirituality, invites us into community and family. To live out the Eucharist in daily life is to share our everyday lives with each other.”

“We can’t always be clear-headed or warm-hearted; we can’t always be sure that we know the exact path of God; and we won’t always measure up morally and humanly to what faith asks of us. But we can be faithful in this one deep way: we can go to the Eucharist regularly.”

The final chapter of the book includes the three famous sermons on the Eucharist by Saint Augustine (AD 354-430). Fr. Rolheiser notes “Saint Augustine is perhaps the most influential and important theologian in Christian history. Each of the three sermons were delivered at a Eucharist on an Easter Sunday morning and was intended for those who had been baptized the night before at the Easter Vigil and were receiving communion for just the second time. These persons, the newly baptized, would not yet ever have heard a sermon on the Eucharist, even though they had received communion the night before.”

(A copy of this book is available for reading on the bookshelf in the lobby of the church.)

“Have mercy on us, Son of David!” (Matthew 9.27)

“When I try to pray, words fail me. I have no idea how to “pray constantly.” Methods of prayer and meditation are too complicated for me. I want to pray in a way that keeps me focused on the basics.

Can you relate to any of these statements? If so, you might also relate to one of the oldest, simplest, and deepest of Christian spiritual traditions: the Jesus prayer.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The prayer appears for the first time in the Gospels, where some version of it is prayed by a collection of needy people—blind beggars, a desperate mother, a despised public official (see Matthew 9:27; 15.22; 20.30; Mark 10.47; Luke 17.13; 18.13,38).

With a sense of kinship and self-recognition, Christians mediating on the Gospels seize on the prayer as an apt description of our ongoing need for divine mercy. The early spiritual writers recommended this prayer as a way of centering our hearts on God and fulfilling the command to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5.17).

This simple prayer derives its power from “the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2.9) and is often compressed into the single word “Jesus.” This says it all. To pray “Jesus” with our lips or in our hearts is to open ourselves to God’s mercy. It invites the risen Lord to make his home in us. Gradually, his transforming presence fills us with joy and burning love.

“When I arise in the morning,” says one woman who has made the Jesus prayer a part of her life, “it starts me joyfully on a new day. When I travel by air, land or sea, it sings within my breast…When I gather my children around me, it murmurs a blessing, and at the end of a weary day, when I lay me down to rest,

I give my heart over to Jesus…I sleep—but my heart as it beats prays on: ‘JESUS’.”

The Tradition is a reflection from the Catholic Women’s Devotional Bible

“As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” John 15:9-10

“NOBODY LOVES ME! She cried, hot tears spilling from her little girl heart.

Of course, her words weren’t true, but feeling trounced reality, and her perception became what she believed. I know this has been true of me and probably true for so many of you. We’re hungry for love and acceptance, approval and admiration. Our feelings often lie, telling us we’re unloved and unlovable, but the truth never changes—you and I are loved by God.

How deeply are you loved? You are loved with the same intensity and consistency that God loves Jesus. No matter how you feel, the truth is that you are loved completely, profoundly, unwaveringly! Nothing can separate you from his love! But here lies the crux. After telling us how much we are loved, Jesus instructs us to “remain” in His love, which he says is done by keeping his commandments. Will we? To keep his commandments is to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

This isn’t a list of doing more or trying harder. As we draw near to the heart of God, we can live out of his immense love for us. Jesus doesn’t ask us to do anything he hasn’t already done. Jesus’ life is characterized by serving, humbling, giving,

obeying—even unto death. Are we willing to live like Jesus? To obey, to follow when it means denying ourselves? In this age of indulgence, can we abstain? In a culture of right now, can we wait? When others get, can we give? Instead of others looking at us, can we point them to Him? Will we surrender, serve, give?

May we remain in his love, resting our lives on the love of Christ, so we can authentically give our lives away to love God and love others well.

A Moment to Breathe…

Feelings don’t always reflect reality. Remind your heart that God is truth and God is love. And His love for you is steadfast and sure.

As I have mentioned before, I have found much inspiration in the writings of Fr. Ron Rolheiser. In his weekly article, “In Exile”, he quotes many contemporary writers in the area of spirituality. In May 2015 he gave a list of spiritual writers that he believes are highly influential today in the English-speaking world and their names and quotes frequently find their place in his writings. I am sharing this list with you bit by bit. One of the people on the list is Parker Palmer who is described by Ron Rolheiser as “a Quaker, layman, American, much-respected across denominational lines. Has written brilliantly on the spirituality of education and on achieving a Christian balance in life.” Here are some Parker Plamer quotes:

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
-Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
–Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

“Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough and tenacious soul.”
–Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

“Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”
–Parker J. Palmer, Let Your life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.”
–Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

“Humility is the only lens through which great things can be seen-and once we have seen them, humility is the only posture possible.”
–Parker J. Palmer

“Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive.”
–Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

Some spiritual writers recommended by Fr. Ron Rolheiser:

National Indigenous History Month in Canada. To help support our journey of becoming better allies, through the month of June, we will be highlighting three books by Indigenous authors and other related books and activities to undertake throughout the next several weeks and in the months to come.

Book 3 -Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Robin Wall Kimmerer – mother, scientist, professor. She is enrolled as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and has received the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. The following are some reflections from her book, Braiding Sweetgrass. A copy of this book is available in the church lobby.

“An Invitation to Remember: I invite you to remember another way of being in the world, in kinship…in many Indigenous worldviews, kinship includes plants and animals.”

“In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling. The storytellers begin by calling upon those who came before, who passed the stories down to us. For we are only messengers.”

“Sweetgrass: Our Potawatomi stories say that of all plants, Wiingaaskk was the very first to grow. Our Elders say that ceremonies are the way we “remember to remember,” and so sweetgrass is a powerful ceremonial plant cherished by many Indigenous Nations.”

“Gift Economy of Nature: When we speak of berries or apples or beans as gifts and not as goods or services or commodities, the whole relationship changes. Gratitude is much more than thank you. It is a thread that fosters relationships.”

“When foods dwindle and game is scarce…the maples carried the people through, providing food when they needed it most. In return, ceremonies of thanksgiving are held at the start of the sap run. Our people call this time, the Maple Sugar Moon, Zizibaskwet Giizis.”

“The Honorable Harvest and some of its principles:
• Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
• Never take the first. Never take the last.
• Share.
• Take only what you need.
• Give thanks for what you have been given.
• Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.”

Other books available for reading:

• Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

• Call Me Indian by Fred Sasakamoose

• Thunder in My Soul – A Mohawk Woman Speaks by Patricia Monture-Angus

National Indigenous History Month in Canada. To help support our journey of becoming better allies, through the month of June, we will be highlighting three books by Indigenous authors and other related books and activities to undertake throughout the next several weeks and in the months to come.

Book 2: “21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act” by Bob Joseph. In addition to being an author, Bob Joseph is founder of Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., a Master Trainer on Indigenous relations, manages a blog called Working Effectively with Indigenous Peoples, is a member of the Gwawaenuk Nation and is the son of a hereditary chief. The following excerpts are from his book, ’21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act’.

“The roots of the Indian Act lie in the Bagot Report of 1844 that recommended that control over Indian matters be centralized, that the children be sent to boarding schools away from the influence of their communities and culture, that the Indians be encouraged to assume the European concept of free enterprise, and that land be individually owned under an Indian land registry system in which they could sell to each other but not to non-Indians.”

“The roots of the Indian Act lie in the Bagot Report of 1844 that recommended that control over Indian matters be centralized, that the children be sent to boarding schools away from the influence of their communities and culture, that the Indians be encouraged to assume the European concept of free enterprise, and that land be individually owned under an Indian land registry system in which they could sell to each other but not to non-Indians.”

“The Indian Act subjected generations of Indigenous women and their children to a legacy of discrimination when it was first enacted in 1876…. not all, but many, women have faced difficulty in being recognized as both Indians and women in Canada.”

“In 1985, the Indian Act was amended by the passage of Bill C-31, to remove discrimination against women, to be consistent with Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but gender discrimination remains.”

“Created Reserves (1876): Reserves were regarded for much of the 19th century as places for Indians to be confined until they became “civilized.”

“In the early days of the Indian Act, one intent behind the alcohol ban was the belief that if Indians were able to access alcohol, they wouldn’t be diligently working their “farmland”. They were expected to farm with rudimentary hand tools because they were denied access to modern farm tools, and if they did manage to grow anything, they weren’t allowed to sell it without a permit to leave the reserve or the permit required to sell their produce.”

“The federal government believed that true assimilation could be attained only by legally abolishing all cultural practices. Hence, under the Indian Act, the government created the potlatch law in 1884, making the potlatch and other cultural ceremonies, such as the Sun Dance, illegal.”

Residential Schools – “The goal of the schools was to “kill the Indian in the child, but tragically it was the children themselves who died in overwhelming numbers at these schools. Children died at the schools from disease, malnourishment, and broken hearts.”

“In the period from 1896 to 1911, 21 percent of reserve land in the Prairie provinces was surrendered to accommodate western expansion.”  

Through these few excerpts we have only touched the surface of all that can be learned by reading this book, a copy of which is available in the church lobby at Holy Family and in Bob Joseph’s words,  “Deep gratitude to every Canadian who reads this book and takes to heart a commitment of reconciliation.”

Other books available for reading:

• Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

• Call Me Indian by Fred Sasakamoose

• Thunder in My Soul – A Mohawk Woman Speaks by Patricia Monture-Angus

This week we are highlighting a couple of activities for National Indigenous Peoples Day (this coming Friday) as we continue to seek opportunities to learn more about First Nations history and culture and supporting our journey as we strive to become better allies.

Sitansisk 21st Annual Powwow (St. Mary’s First Nation). This weekend is Sitansisk Annual Powwow. Come hear the drum beat of Mother Earth on June 14, 15, & 16 at St. Mary's Old Reserve (534 Union Street). Click on the following link for more information on the schedule of events: https://www.facebook.com/groups/239686049557017

Activities for June 21st

‘Hello Crows’ will be at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (703 Queen Street) this coming Friday from 12 noon to 1pm. Formed in 2022, this group of highly talented Wabanaki songwriters and storytellers, also represent a collective voice both for their people and their generation. Through their performances they hope to educate audiences about their history and beautiful culture while sharing the social obstacles their community continues to face today.

The Joint Economic Development Initiative (JEDI), the Wolastoqey Tribunal Council Inc. (WTCI) and the MAWIW Council (Elsipogtog, Neqotkuk and Esgenoôpetitj First Nation communities) will once again be hosting a family day filled with festivities, activities for kids and onsite vendors on the grounds of the NB Legislature Building this coming Friday from 12:30pm to 3:30pm. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn and celebrate Indigenous culture!

Other Activities:

Wabanaki Healing Garden. The entrance is situated in the Fredericton Botanic Garden (Prospect Street entrance). The Healing Garden is the brainchild of Cecelia Brooks, a Knowledge Keeper from St. Mary’s First Nation, and her son, Anthony Brooks. "One of the things that Anthony and I talked about was the reconciliation process here in Canada, and that we truly believe that it's the grassroots people that will initiate that and carry that," said Cecelia Brooks. “Since time immemorial the Wabanaki People have lived in gratitude and nurtured reciprocity with plants and all other beings on this earth we know to be our mother. Sharing this harmonious approach to life and living beings is reflected in the Wabanaki worldview through our ancient languages, culture, dance, and song. The garden is an expression of our love and hope for the healing and nurturing of the earth and all her people.” For more information on the Healing Garden and guided tours click on the following link: https://www.wabanakitreespirit.ca/new-page-1

CBC Gem Documentaries: Last February our Parish presented two watch and learn documentaries on Indigenous Spiritual Ceremony. This event also supports the Truth and Reconciliation 94 Calls to Action, “Recognizing that all Canadians, as treaty peoples, share responsibility in establishing and maintaining respectful relationships”. Both these documentaries ‘Telling Our Story’ and ‘My Name is Wolastoq’ can be found online at CBC Gem.

National Indigenous History Month: During the month of June, you are encouraged to take opportunities to learn more about First Nations history and culture. It is a time to honor the stories, achievements, and resilience of Indigenous Peoples. To help support our journey of becoming better allies, this week we are highlighting information on upcoming Powwows in our region. Traditionally Powwows are a time of celebration and gratitude. A full schedule of the 2024 Powwows is available in the lobby of the church. Additional resources that can be found on our Parish website – stkateri.ca. Deepening Our Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation

June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada with June 21st designated as National Indigenous Peoples Day. During the month of June, you are encouraged to take opportunities to learn more about First Nations history and culture. It is a time to honor the stories, achievements, and resilience of Indigenous Peoples.

To help support our journey of becoming better allies, through the month of June, we will be highlighting three books by Indigenous authors and other related books and activities to undertake throughout the next several weeks and in the months to come.

Book 1: “Out of the Depths” by Isabelle Knockwood. Isabelle Knockwood is an elder of the Mi’Kmaq Nation, author, and survivor of the Shubenacadie Residential School. She attended St. Mary’s University and in 2013, was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law by Saint Mary’s University. Her booked is dedicated to all former students of the Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. The following are some reflections from her book, Out of the Depths. See selection of books in the church lobby at Holy Family.

“I am holding the Talking Stick. I have been talking about the Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie for many years, and I still don’t understand why the hurt and shame of seeing and hearing the cries of abused Mi’kmaw children, many of them orphans, does not go away or heal. I hope that the act of writing it down will help me and others to come up with some answers.”

“Often we were silenced and repressed not so much by physical violence but by psychological intimidation.”

“As children, the residential school students were warrior children—we stood on the front line alone, unprotected and unarmed trying to defend our culture, identity and heritage.”

“Our elders were the most respected members of the Mi’kmaw community. They were the mental storehouse for the genealogy of every member of the tribe. The custom of consulting elders is called Weji-kluluemk. Elders also had a vast knowledge of survival skills.”

“Our home clothes were stripped off…we were given new clothes with wide black and white vertical stripes. Much later I discovered that this was almost identical to the prison garb of the time.”

“As a child, I lived in perpetual fear of saying and doing anything…I knew if my work was too good, it would bring the response, “Who do you think you are?”

“Why, I wondered, had we put up with the Indian residential school system for so long, what made us so powerless? For me one of the keys lies in the way our parents were deceived into giving up their children to become little hostages of a state whose goal was to stifle and destroy their cultural identity and inheritance.”

“Did the two groups understand the nature of an apology differently? The Merriam Webster Dictionary, for instance, defines the term apology as, “an expression of regret for a mistake or wrong with implied admission of guilt or fault. The Mi’kmaw word for “apology” has a more complete definition. “Apiksiktuaqn” includes both “apology” and “forgiveness”. Apiksiktu, therefore, means, “I am saying to you that I am taking it back.” It also has a second meaning, “Apologize and forgive her/him.” Elizabeth Paul and Phyllis Googoo explained that apiksiktuaqn combines both an act of apology and an act of forgiveness.”

The following are three other books suggested by Open Space published by the Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice. Click on the following link to learn more: https://jesuitforum.ca/resources/dialogue-guides/

  • Listening to Indigenous Voices: A Dialogue Guide on Justice and Right Relationships

  • On Care for Our Common Home: A Dialogue Guide for Laudato Si’

  • Living with Limits, Living Well!: Hints for Neighbours on an Endangered Planet

Development and Peace (The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace) is the official international development organization of the Catholic Church in Canada and the Canadian member of Caritas Internationalis. Development and Peace has an account at the Foodgrains Bank that they draw from to provide food assistance during emergencies around the world and to fund programs that support families and communities in their efforts to access more and better food in the long term.

On October 7, 2023, after an attack by Hamas militants on Israel, Israeli forces responded with a sustained aerial bombardment, a military siege and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. To date, more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 85% of the population have been internally displaced and have lost their homes, livelihoods, and belongings. Large-scale damage to residences, business, infrastructure, and restrictions on the availability of water, food and fuel have largely halted all economic and agricultural activities. Communications are cut regularly, and a lack of fuel has resulted in insufficient fuel for electricity generators, water treatment plants, and sewage pumping stations to operate. The ongoing war and border restrictions have hampered the delivery of consistent and sufficient humanitarian assistance to affected populations.

Even before the crisis, many families in Gaza faced acute food insecurity: In 2022, 65% of the Gaza population was either severely or moderately food insecure.

Since the start of the war, these households have increasingly been forced to adopt negative coping strategies such as reducing the number of meals and portion sizes and cutting adults’ consumption to allow children to eat. The Food Security Sector currently estimates that 2.3 million people, the entire population of Gaza, is food insecure.

Catholic Relief Services is preparing for a 12-month, Emergency Food Response in Gaza to serve 1,485 internally displaced families (approximately 8,910 people), with a focus on IDPs living within non-UN collective centers and IDPs staying with host families, in the southern governorates in Gaza. CRS will work with the El-Amal Rehabilitation Society (El-Amal) and Palestinian Organization for Development (POD) to implement the project. The current plan is to provide an initial round of in-kind ready to eat food assistance (equivalent to CAD$356 / household / month), followed by two additional rounds of either multipurpose cash assistance (MPCA) or in-kind food assistance (equivalent to CAD$279 / household / month), depending on assessed market functionality and access.

Food is essential. Your gift will help provide relief to the people who know the pain and fear of hunger and will help support Development and Peace’s work to end global hunger through the Foodgrains Bank. To donate click on the following link: https://foodgrainsbank.ca/donate/

“If you’re someone who’s at all concerned about community, family, church, justice, education, culture, or civic issues, you will, no doubt, find yourself at a lot of meetings. A colleague of mine likes to quip: “When they write our history, they’ll simply say, `They met a lot!'”

Indeed, we do. We meet a lot. There are an endless variety of issues that call for our participation in group discussion and community discernment: church issues, education issues, justice issues, moral issues, political issues, social issues, economic issues, and cultural issues. It’s a bottomless well and all those meetings can seem like a huge waste of time and energy, a distraction to real work. Moreover, at a point, we can’t help wondering too: “Are all these meetings changing anything? Would life be any different (other than more leisured and pleasant) if we stopped having all these meetings?” It’s easy to grow tired, discouraged, and cynical about all the meetings we’re asked to attend.

But we should keep something in mind: Pentecost happened at a meeting! One of the central events that shaped Christian history and history in general, happened not to an individual off praying alone or to a monk on a mountain-top or to a solitary Buddha meditating under a tree. None of these. Pentecost happened at meeting, and it happened to a community, to a church congregation assembled for prayer, to a family of faith gathered to wait for God’s guidance. Moreover, it happened in a common room, a meeting room, in one of those humble, church- basement, type of rooms. It can be helpful to remember that. Our search for God should take us not just into private places of quiet and contemplation but, equally, into meeting rooms.

Where Christianity is different from most other world religions is partly on this very point. In Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, spirit and revelation break into the world very much through an individual, particularly an individual who is deeply immersed in private prayer. God speaks deeply to those who pray deeply.

Christian spirituality and Judaism have no argument with that. We agree. There’s a privileged experience of God that can be had only in private, alone, in silence. To find God, to receive God’s spirit, it’s important that, at times, we pull away from the group, that we set off to the desert,

to the chapel, to the lonely place, the quiet, to be alone with God. We see Jesus do exactly that. Mark’s gospel tells us that when his ministry was most intense, when it was “too busy even to eat”, Jesus pulled away, to be alone for a while. There are times that call for withdrawal and silence. Meister Eckhart once wrote: “There is nothing in the world that resembles God as much as silence.” All good spirituality shares this view.

However, where Christianity and Judaism differ somewhat from some of the other world religions is in our belief that there is an equally privileged experience of God that can be had only in a group, in community, in family, at a meeting. We don’t just meet God in the desert or in the deep quiet parts of our souls. We meet God there, surely, but we also meet God in the group, the community, the family, at the church gathering, at the meeting: “For where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them!” In Christian and Jewish spirituality there are two non-negotiable places where we meet God, alone and in the family. These are not in opposition, but complementary, relying on each other to keep our experience of God both deep and pure.

Pentecost, it is important to note, happened to a group at a meeting, not to an individual alone in the desert. That can be helpful to keep in mind when we tire of meetings, despair of their effectiveness, or resent that they pull us away from important private endeavours. The fact that Pentecost happened at a meeting can also be helpful in keeping us focused on why we are going to all these meetings in the first place.

Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day’s initial mentor, used to say: “When you don’t know what else to do, keep going to meetings!” Sound advice! Meetings are the “Upper room”, the place where we wait for Pentecost. And what are we waiting for? Why are we in the upper room, at a meeting? Because we are waiting there, with others, for God to do something in us and through us that we can’t do all by ourselves, namely, create community with each other and bring justice, love, peace, and joy to our world.

And so, we need to go to continue to go to meetings. We need to spend time together waiting for God, waiting for a new outflow of heavenly fire that will give us the courage, language, and power we need to make happen in the world what our faith and love envision.

See you at the meeting!”

On this Mother’s Day weekend, take time to give thanks and show gratitude to all the mothers in our lives whether it be our mother, mother-in-law, grandmother or great grandmother, sister, aunt or other mentor. Thanks for the nurturing, the sacrifices, the wisdom, the love and joy they bring each day. For your reflection this weekend, we offer the following prayer:

A Psalm for Women

Divine Wisdom, out of love and compassion you created me and called me “woman” bone of bones and flesh of flesh companion and partner with man.

You created me in your own image to be fruitful and to fill the earth with life, leading, ordering and empowering the created universe, together with the holy women and men, created and infused with your spirit of love.

You have drawn me into a web of woven threads with the ancient ones: Eve and Esther, Ruth and Naomi, Sarah and Rebecca. You have drawn me into a sisterhood of pieces and patterns designed by holy women: Mary and Elizabeth, Martha of Bethany and Mary of Magdala, Pricilla and Lydia.

You have drawn me into a kinship with the wild, daring, holy women whose lives flavor my own: Therese of Lisieux and Catherine of Siena, Clare of Assisi and Teresa of Avila, Margaret of Hungary and Briget of Kildare.

You have drawn me into a union with the wise women of my own time and culture: Dorothy Day and Thea Bowman, Mother Teresa and Edith Stein, Simone Weil and Catherine de Hueck Doherty.

In their company I will spring up, blossom, and grow into the woman of wisdom you have molded and formed from the beginning of time.

Carol Gura, Catholic Women’s Devotional Bible

Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada concluded its 2023 mobilization campaign, Stand for the Land, on Wednesday, April 24, by handing over to Her Excellency Beatriz Valle, Ambassador of Honduras to Canada, a letter signed by 52,629 Canadians that draws the attention of the Government of Honduras to the struggles of people in Guapinol and the San Pedro sector. Since 2015, these communities have been protesting an open-pit iron mine that was irregularly set up in Carlos Escaleras National Park.

Her Excellency said she was “touched by the solidarity expressed by the Canadian population towards the community of Guapinol, which is so far away.” She promised to pass on the message to her Minister of Foreign Affairs and to ask people in Congress to take up the Guapinol case with her government.

The initial goal of the campaign was to collect 32,000 signatures (1,000 for each of the 32 unjustly imprisoned Guapinol defenders), but Canadians responded with such exceptional solidarity that this goal was well surpassed. The handover of the letter was done by a five-person delegation that was supported by several members of the organization.

During the meeting, Carl Hétu, executive director of Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada, highlighted that on March 22, Her Excellency Elizabeth Williams, Ambassador of Canada to Honduras, had visited the Guapinol community, accompanied by our campaign partner, ERIC-Radio Progreso, to express solidarity with the victims of the conflict and their families. Hétu said he hoped that the campaign would support the Honduran government in implementing concrete action to help the Guapinol and San Pedro communities.

Gabrielle Dupuis, vice-president of the national council, left the meeting proud “to have been able to bring the voices of more than 52,000 Canadians to the table,” and hoping these voices would encourage the Honduran government to continue implementing reforms that favour vulnerable communities.

Elvin Hernández, a human rights investigator with ERIC-Radio Progreso, said, “I hope this information will be passed on to the President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, and that from there, the three fundamental demands you have so confidently made [in the letter] can be addressed or expedited.”

For the communities of Guapinol and San Pedro, this meeting is a major step toward the recognition of their rights. It sends a strong message to the Honduran government, telling it that over 52,600 people in Canada Stand for the Land and support the communities’ struggle to obtain protection for Carlos Escaleras National Park; an end to persecution of environmentalists; and just compensation for the Guapinol Eight, who remained unfairly incarcerated for over two years.

Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada would like to thank our members and the Canadian public for their important role in the success of this campaign.

This coming week we once again mark Earth Day and as people of faith, we have a responsibility to protect our common home and a commitment to care for creation. Laudato Si' teaches us that “everything is connected and concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of Society (LS 91). Each community can take from the bounty of the earth…but it also has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations. (LS67).”

The following is an excerpt from A Passion for Life by Sr. Joan Chittister entitled, “I Believe in God, Creator of the Earth” offering some reflections on caring for creation as taught to her at a young age by her parents and which remains with her still.

“Never, ever, throw anything in the water, my father taught me when we were out fishing, pop bottles and sandwich wrappers all over the bottom of the little skiff. Never, ever, throw cans out a car window, my mother warned us. These other messages were the anthem by which I lived my young life: Don’t ever hurt an animal. Don’t ever keep more fish than you can eat. Don’t ever use more of anything than you need. Don’t waste anything. Don’t ever dig up flower gardens. Don’t ever trample down small trees. Don’t ever hurt a baby bird.

Why? Because making a garbage heap out of the water and the woods, my property or nobody’s property, destroyed the beauty and goodness of creation. Because destroying another being just for the sake of destroying it took life in vain. Because creation was good and each part of it had its own purpose that’s why. Because we were to walk through life on tiptoe, as part of creation, not as predators with swollen bellies and bloated souls. We were to learn from animals and care for flowers, to have enough and never too much. We were meant to leave the world better than we found it.

This was a way of life that held more than humanity sacred. Those lessons ring in my heart this day, more loudly than ever before.

God, the Creed insists, created the earth. The earth, like us, in other words, breathes the breath of God. The simplicity of the statement overwhelms. What is it that has been created by God that does not reflect the presence of God? What is it, created by God, that can cavalierly be destroyed without remorse, without awareness of the divine life within it?”

A Prayer for our Earth

O God, you embrace with your tenderness all that exists.

Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction. Touch the hearts of those who look only for gain at the expense of the poor and the earth.

Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are profoundly united with very creature as we journey towards your infinite light. Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace.

Pope Francis

This coming Wednesday, April 17th is the feast day of St. Kateri Tekakwitha. During Lent she was a featured Saint in one of our Bulletins. Ahead of her feast day we offer insights on the journey of a little girl who listened to her mother’s stories about Jesus and combined with the spirituality of her community lead her to grow into a young woman who chose to be baptized and devote her life to Jesus.

The story begins…  Born in 1656, she most likely lived in a bark-covered longhouse within the Turtle Clan community. As a toddler she would play near her mother, Kahenta, and the other women while they planted corn, squash, and beans.

At a young age her mother told her stories about Jesus but since this was all done in secret it was likely told to Tekakwitha in whispers. At the age of four, a smallpox epidemic killed her family, and she was then for a time cared for by her mother’s Christian friend, Anastasia.

Tranquility and solitude…  As she grew up her eyesight worsened from the effects of smallpox and bright sunshine hurt her eyes. Despite poor eyesight she was a child of nature. Tekakwitha and the other children in her community gathered to listen to elders’ stories. She heard stories of the sun, thunder, and stars and of the spirit of plants and animals. Stories of the world being made by the Creator filled her with joy. She also would think of the stories her mother and Anastasia had told her about Jesus and treasured them in her heart.

A child of the woods…   Because the woods provided shelter from the bright sunlight, Tekakwitha would often wander and gather blueberries, strawberries, and woodland flowers. In the fall, she would return to the woods this time gathering hickory nuts and walnuts. Tekakwitha noticed how squirrels gathered food for the winter and how the evergreen boughs danced in the wind. She was surrounded by gifts of creation.

During her walks in the forest, she often spoke with the Creator God. She would make crosses out of two sticks and place them in many places in the forest. Returning the next day, she would kneel at each cross and pray, continuing to feel God’s calling and giving back to God her love and attention.

Baptism day…   Easter morning of 1676 was Tekakwitha’s baptismal day which took place in a rustic chapel. In honor of Easter the chapel was adorned with beaver and elk pelts, colorfully embroidered bear and buffalo rugs, blossoming branches and flowers. Her baptismal waters were drawn from a spring nearby which still flows more than 300 years later. She was given a new name, Catherine, after Saint Catherine of Siena. The Indigenous pronunciation being Kateri.

In honour of St. Kateri, let us all take time on April 17th to pray together in mind and spirit:

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, our elder sister in the Lord, discreetly, you watch over us; may your love for Jesus and Mary inspire in us words and deeds of friendship, of forgiveness and of reconciliation.

Pray that God will give us the courage, the boldness, and the strength to build a world of justice and peace among ourselves and among all nations.

Help us, as you did, to encounter the Creator God present in the very depths of nature, and so become witnesses of life, Amen

On several occasions this past week people have said to me, “I can’t believe that it is Easter again already.”

I certainly feel the same way. However, on deeper reflection, the truth is that it has been Easter over and over again every day of the past year thousands and millions and billions of times.

Whenever there has been new creation born into our world and universe, this is God’s creative love and life at work; be it a star, plant, fish, mosquito, lizard, moose or a human being. This is Easter Grace!

Whenever a kind, loving, or forgiving gesture has taken place, this too is Easter Grace!

Wherever a person or group speaks out against injustice and oppression and takes action to make ‘right relationship’, this is Easter Grace and Reconcili-action!

Wherever we pray and hope for God to break into circumstances in our lives in which we have no control to make much change or our efforts seem too small and inadequate, this is Easter Hope at work in us!

Wherever loved ones are making the passage through death, and we are with them from near or far away places through our prayer, support, care, and a faith that assures us and them that God’s promise of Resurrection and Eternal Life for them is real and to be trusted, this is Easter Presence!

Whenever groups with diverse backgrounds, beliefs, ways of expressing their faith, ideologies, and ways of being family and community can sit together with a deep commitment to listen in a way that brings peace through dropping our protective armor of prejudice and the dismantling of military arms, this indeed is an Easter Miracle!

As we celebrate Easter Sunday and the 50 days of the Easter Season this year, may we notice each day the reality of God’s presence through the Risen Christ among us through reflecting on the ‘litany’ above and anything you might add to this ‘litany’ as you experience and observe God’s abundant Easter presence always and forever!

Happy Easter!

This week we move into the celebration of Holy Week. This is considered the ‘Greatest Week’ of our liturgical year. It encompasses the end of Lent and the Easter Triduum. This week provides us with a graphic remembering of God’s love for us in Jesus’ total giving of himself in love through his dying and rising in glory. In our remembering, we are inspired by Jesus’ presence in our world and personal lives. We are touched deeply by his unwavering commitment to be with us in the delights, ordinary moments and suffering experiences of our lives and bringing all of us into the glory of Easter with Him.

The Easter Triduum, which is the three days from Holy Thursday evening to Easter Sunday evening, is celebrated as one great feast. This is why we are strongly encouraged to participate in the three main celebrations: Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday evening, The

Celebration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening or Easter Sunday Mass.

I would invite you to see these three days as a retreat time for yourselves and your families by attending these liturgies and taking some reflective time between these celebrations to let them speak more deeply into your lives.

Special note about Holy Saturday and the ‘Sacred Fire’ connected to the Easter Vigil
The Easter Vigil always begins with lighting a new fire recognizing the gift of God’s fire within the universe, the center of the earth, on the earth, within each of us and Christ as Light for the World. This year Wolastoqey Fire Keeper and Parishioner Mike Solomon will make and attend a ‘Sacred Fire’ in an area in front of Holy Family Church (parking area) for us to gather, be in a circle of community and prayer before the Vigil. The Fire will be there by 6 pm and the Easter Vigil begins at 8 pm with Fire being taken from this Sacred Fire to light our New Pascal Candle. You are invited to spend a bit or an extended period at the Sacred Fire during this time. Even if you gather there for a moment or two as you arrive for the Vigil will be a gift.

Saint Padre Pio was born Francesco Forgione on May 25 1887 in Pietrelcina, in the province of Benevento, Italy. A son of very devout peasant farm laborers Grazio Mario Forgione and Maria Giuseppa Di Nunzio. They were very devoted to the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was baptized in the nearby Santa Anna Chapel.

Around the age of five he had a desire to serve God and dedicated himself to Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was able to communicate with his guardian angel and had visions of the Blessed Mother quite regularly. At the age of ten he met a travelling bearded Capuchin friar who was asking around the countryside for provisions and he decided he wanted to be just like the bearded friar.

His parents looked into the possibility. The friars agreed but said he would need a better education. His parents were poor and so his father left for America to earn money so he could get the proper education. At fifteen, Francesco entered the noviciate of the Capuchin Friars Minor and received the name Pio.

As a novice he learned structure and discipline. At the Friary they gathered for prayer seven times a day, studied for long hours, lived in a very small and simple cell, went barefoot, did manual labour and much fasting. In 1907, at age nineteen he made his final vows, and in 1910 he was ordained a priest.

He was most often in poor health but he was very devout in prayer to the point of being in ecstasy and sometimes levitating, and at times losing track of time and place. In 1916, then twenty-nine years old he was sent to Our Lady of Grace Capuchin Friary in San Giovanni Rotondo where he would remain until his death.

On September 20, 1918, while praying after mass he had a vision and suddenly, he received the stigmata where he received the wounds of Jesus in his hands, feet, his side and his shoulder. His wounds which caused him pain, bled daily and smelled of flowers. He had these wounds for fifty years and of the many doctors who examined these wounds could find no scientific explanation for this.

He became known as a mystic and his masses were very devout. He heard confessions for hours on end and gave spiritual counsel to many. Padre Pio showed bilocation and levitation, the charisms of healing, prophecy, numerous miracles. He could read what was in people’s hearts and spent weeks at a time without eating, living only on the Holy Eucharist. He had a hospital built for those in need.

September 22, 1968, Padre Pio celebrated a solemn Mass to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his receiving of the stigmata. the next day, on September 23rd, at the age of 81 all his wounds disappeared with his death and hundreds of thousands of people attended his funeral. He was beatified May 2, 1999 and canonized June 16, 2002 by Pope John Paul II. His feast day is September 23rd.

Prayer
Saint Padre Pio, you loved God with all your heart and bore the wounds of Christ on your body. Through you, many lives were converted, hearts healed, and sins forgiven. Please pray for me, that I will receive the healing I need so that I will more fully devote myself to the will of God and serve Him with all my might. Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, pray for me. Jesus, I trust in You.

Fasting
Think of the small and simple cell each of the friars lived in. See if you can go without some of the comforts of home for the next week and try and live simply.

Almsgiving
Take the time to call or talk to a sick friend or someone you know is going through a hard time. Even just listening may be helpful to them, so they know someone cares

Saint Cecelia has for centuries remained one of the Church’s most beloved Saints. She was a follower of Christ and died a martyr. In a book called The Passion of Saint Cecilia, an inspiring legend from the fifth century is where we find the basis of reflections on the life of this holy martyr.

Cecilia was born in Rome to a wealthy and noble family. It was also a time when Roman Emperors often persecuted Christians. Her parents gave her the name Cecilia, which means “lily of heaven.” She is also known as “Cecilia of Rome”.

A Christian with a very deep faith, Saint Cecelia spent time fasting and performing other penitential acts and pledged her life to Christ and him alone as his bride. Against her wishes, her parents forced her to marry a pagan nobleman named Valerian. At the wedding she sat apart from him and sang in her heart to God. Because of this after her death she was declared the Saint of musicians.

After the wedding, to protect her vow of virginity, she told her husband, that an angel of the Lord was watching over her to see that her vow was respected. He wanted to see this angel so she said if he went to the third milestone on the Via Appia and receive catechetical instruction and was baptized by Pope Urban I, he would be able to see the angel. He followed her instructions and after his baptism he saw the angel standing beside her, crowning her with a chaplet of red roses and white lilies, symbols of her martyrdom and purity.

After becoming a Christian, Valerian shared his faith with his brother, Tiburtius, who also converted and was baptized. They then became very active with the underground Christian community. They started to do good works and buried those who were martyred for their faith. When they were ordered to offer sacrifices to the Roman god Jupiter, they refused. When Maximus, a Roman officer ordered by the Prefect Almachius to have them martyred and attempted to carry out the command, he had a heavenly vision and was instantly converted. When he professed his faith, all three were martyred and Cecilia ended up burying them.

When Cecilia also would not sacrifice to pagan gods she was arrested. Prefect Almachius, knowing she was loved by the people did not want them to know he planned to have her executed. After three tries to successfully carry out her execution, she was left alone to die, as Roman law forbade a fourth attempt.

She lived for three days and since she was well liked the whole community came to her house. She gave away all her money and left her house to Pope Urban I to use as a place of Christian worship. She was buried in the catacombs but centuries later, in 1599, Pope Paschal I moved her body to her former house that Pope Urban I had earlier converted to the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, Italy. At that time her body was found to be still incorrupt. It was as if she were just sleeping. Saint Cecilia is one of the most famous Roman martyrs. Her name was inserted into the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I), along with other saints and Roman martyrs.

The first music festival held in her honor was in Normandy in 1570. Musicians’ charity, Help Musicians annually hosts a celebration in her honor which usually takes place at Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Cathedral.

Prayer:
Dear Saint Cecelia, I come to you today seeking your guidance and support. As a musician, you dedicated your life and talents to the Lord, and I ask that you intercede on my behalf as I strive to do the same. Help me to use my gifts for the good of others and to bring joy to all those around me. Grant me the courage and determination to always strive for good in all that I do. Saint Cecelia, Virgin and Martyr, pray for me. Jesus, I trust in you.

Fasting
This week give up something you really like. For instance, go without that speciality coffee, following your favorite celebrity on TikTok or

Almsgiving
Try to spend 10-15 minutes in prayer or read a different passage from the Bible each day this week. Spend that time thinking about all those who have been persecuted because of their faith and how lucky you are to be free to follow yours.

Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born in Normandy, France on January 2, 1873 to a very pious family. She was the youngest of nine children. Her mother died when she was four years old and her father moved the family to Lisieux where she was raised by her father, her sisters and an aunt. Three of her sisters became Carmelite nuns. She herself had wished to become a Carmelite at a very young age.

After her mother died, Thérèse became prone to having fits and tantrums to the point of becoming physically ill. On May 13, 1883, after having a debilitating episode, she received a “manifestation of grace”. There was a statue of Mary next to her bed, which had been there for years, but on this day, “All of a sudden, the Blessed Mother appeared so beautiful that I had never seen anything like it before; her face radiated ineffable goodness and tenderness, but it was her ravishing smile that penetrated my soul to its very depth.”

After overcoming many obstacles, Thérèse finally received permission from the Bishop of Bayeux to enter the Carmelite convent as a postulant on April 9, 1888, at the age of fifteen. She embraced religious life and lived it with fervor and devotion, and made her final vows on September 24, 1890. Sister Thérèse lived the hidden and holy life of a Carmelite nun, never leaving the convent until her death.

She lived holiness by love and childlike trust and performed little sacrifices. She couldn’t make big sacrifices and do huge acts and deeds like many others could but she could make many little sacrifices. That is when she began her “Little Way” when she came to realize that “Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them”

When she was twenty-one years old, under obedience to her sister Pauline who had recently been elected as Mother Superior, Mother Agnes of Jesus, Sister Thérèse began to write her autobiography. This autobiography, The Story of a Soul, speaks of her family life, offers insights into her vocation as a Carmelite nun, and reveals how devoted she was to Jesus, wanting to be with Him forever in Heaven, even from the earliest moments of her childhood. She died three years later, as result of contracting tuberculosis at the age of twenty-three which had caused her great suffering. At one point when she felt her condition worsening, she said, “I feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making others love God as I love Him, my mission of teaching my little way to souls. If God answers my requests, my heaven will be spent on earth up until the end of the world. Yes, I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth.”

Sister Thérèse died on September 30, 1897, at the age of 24 surrounded by all of her religious sisters in the Carmelite convent of Lisieux. Her final words were, “Oh! I love Him! My God, I love Thee!”

Prayer
Saint Thérèse, as a child you fell in love with God while living within the school of love that was your family. Your love grew so intense that God took you to Himself at a young age, to be with Him forever. Please pray for me, that I will discover the same intensity of love that you did, so that I will also share in the glory in which you now share. Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, pray for me. Jesus, I trust in You.

Fasting
Fast from hurrying. Saint Thérèse, also known as “The Little Flower” lived the old saying: “Stop and smell the roses.” So, stop what you are doing for a few minutes to listen to, look at and take in the essence of the world around you, what God has created.

Almsgiving
Do some “little thing” to help out. Pay for a stranger’s drink at the coffee shop, shovel your elderly neighbour’s doorstep, give someone a lift to the store and back so they don’t have to pay for a taxi, pick up garbage on your next walk around the block. Gestures don’t need to be big to make a big difference. 

Mary Magdalen (Magdalene or Magdala) was said to have been born in the fishing community of Magdala on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. In the Bible she is known as a woman who embraced with courage and maturity the grace (power and love) of God which brought healing into her life and assisted her in facing the evils (biblically the seven evil spirits) that life challenges all of us with.

Without agreement, scripture scholars throughout history have identified Mary Magdalene with other’s named Mary who were friends and followers of Jesus. However, it is agreed among all that Mary Magdalene was a deeply committed follower of Jesus. She, along with several other women, travelled with Jesus and helped support his ministry with whatever means they had. As well, the Gospels record her as being one of the women who, with great courage, stayed at Jesus side throughout his crucifixion at great risk to their lives while others disciples fled. They faced with amazing love, faith and courage, the worst of humanity in the evil action of mob violence that brought Jesus to his death.

Of great significance is that she stayed hopeful, in her devastating grief, that ‘death cannot be the end’ and became the first witness of the Resurrection. The Gospels all describe Mary Magdalene as going to the tomb on Easter morning. When she saw that the tomb was empty, she stood outside, weeping. Jesus appeared to her and asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She did not recognize him and thought he was the gardener, until he called her by name, “Mary!” Upon hearing this, she realized He was Jesus! She went to the grieving disciples to announce to them the message of the Resurrection and is correctly known as the first to preach the Good News of Jesus’ Resurrection (John 20:11-18) and making her the Apostle to the Apostles as referred by Thomas Aquinas.

Pope Francis says the following in reflecting on the need for hope and transformation in our world: “Turning to Mary Magdalene, her example is one of hope, and her intercession helps us to live the experience of the Resurrection, because at the time of tears and abandonment, she hears the Risen Jesus who calls us by name, and with a heart full of joy goes to announce: I have seen the Lord!"

Prayer
Saint Mary Magdalene, woman of courage and discernment, when you encountered Jesus, you opened yourself to his power and love in accepting healing and assistance to face the violence and subtleties of evil that we all face within society and ourselves. In following Him, you were faithful to Him throughout His ministry and were a witness to His death and Resurrection. Please pray for me and our world, that I may always have the courage to stand with you against injustice and wrongdoing, even at the foot of the Cross so that I may also be a witness to the transforming effects of the Resurrection. Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for me. Jesus, I trust in You.

Fasting
Reflect upon your personal struggles and those of others in the world and the temptation to live in self-pity, hopelessness and/or constant anger at the injustices and harm done to you and others. By embracing the courage and hope of Mary Magdalene in these situations through her embrace of God’s grace, make an effort to fast from acting out in hurt or causing harm to yourself or others. This is one thing we should try to do every single everyday of our lives, and not just during Lent.

Reflecting on our personal struggles and hurts we carry, may we refrain from doing those things that may cause harm to ourselves or others such as fasting from gossip, ungratefulness and putting ourselves first.

Almsgiving
Pray for freedom, like Mary Magdalene did, to provide for the mission of Jesus by giving of her resources, time and personal presence. This Lent is an opportunity to continue and possibly increase the giving from your resources, time, and personal gifts such as your capacity to listen, work beside others, forgive, organize and participate in ‘goodness’. Your prayers can open the doors of Jesus’ example, assistance and grace in living a fuller discipleship.

Knowing that, through prayer all things are possible with Jesus, consider donating time at a soup kitchen, visiting the elderly or infirmed at a special care home or volunteering/supporting those organizations that assist refugees or asylum seekers.

Saint John Chrysostom was born in Antioch, he studied the Greek classics and was trained as an orator. He left his studies and began to study the ascetic live, prayer and scripture. He was baptized and underwent a profound conversion which led him to a life of great solitude and prayer.

He joined a community of hermits in 374 and began rigorous fasting, penance and a continual study of the Bible to the point of having memorized a good portion of it. Because of this he became well versed in the Bible. After several years his health began to deteriorate and he returned to Antioch to regain his health back.

Ordained in 386, he wrote many sermons and commentaries and was famous for his eloquent sermons. These contained dogmatic, moral and historical teachings from the early church. Appointed Archbishop of Constantinople in 398. Even though his position gave him power and wealth he lived a simple life and cared for the poor.

He preached on moral and spiritual guidance and against materialism of the imperial court and against pagan activities. Because of his preaching he made enemies in very high places and was exiled on more that one occasion. The last was complete banishment from the Roman Empire.

After his death because of his powerful preaching, he received the title “Chrysostomos” (golden mouth). He also left behind around 700 sermons, close to 250 letters, as well as commentaries on Scripture and important teachings on the Eucharist. His homilies, for the most part, held emphasis on care for the poor. His best-known homily, though quite short, was the Paschal Homily.

Prayer
Saint John Chrysostom, we pray for the strength to follow the example of your unwavering faith. Please intercede for us and guide us in our spiritual journeys and may we be filled with your compassion and your love. Saint John Chrysostom, pray for us. Jesus, we trust in you. Amen.

Fasting
Try giving up social media on Fridays in Lent or maybe make a point on Fridays to watch YouTube videos created by Fr. Mike Schmitz, Fr. Mark Goring, Fr. Columba Jordan and Catholic Women Preach. They are not long videos but are very informative about the Catholic faith in a relaxed manner.

Almsgiving
Saint John Chrysostom constantly preached about helping the poor and needy. Try donating food, clothing or time to organizations who help clothe feed and assist those in need and if that is beyond your ability at this time then say a special prayer that they will receive what they need to sustain them.

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was the first North American Indigenous woman to be canonized. She is often called the “Lily of the Mohawks”. She is the patron saint of ecology, those who have lost their parents and World Youth Day.

Born in the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, on the south side of the Mohawk River in present-day New York State, she contracted smallpox in an epidemic; her family died and her face was scarred. She converted to Catholicism at age nineteen, when she was baptized and given the Christian name Kateri in honor of Catherine of Siena. Refusing to marry, she left her village and moved for the remaining five years of her life to the Jesuit mission village of Kahnawake, south of Montreal on the St. Lawrence River in New France, now Canada.

Upon her death at the age of 24, witnesses said that her scars vanished minutes later, and her face appeared radiant and beautiful. She is the fourth Indigenous person of this land to be venerated in the Catholic Church and the first to be canonized. Under the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, she was beatified in 1980 and canonized by Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter’s Basilica on 21 October 2012. Various miracles and supernatural events are attributed to her intercession.

Prayer

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, our elder sister in the Lord, discreetly, you watch over us. May your love for Jesus and Mary inspire in us words and deeds of friendship, of forgiveness and of reconciliation. Pray that God will give us the courage, the boldness, and the strength to build a world of justice and peace among ourselves and among all nations. Help us, as you did, to encounter the Creator God present in the very depths of nature, and so become witnesses of Life. With you, we praise the Father, the Son and the Spirit, Amen.