Category: From the Pastor’s Desk (Page 48 of 76)

Dear Parishioners and Visitors,

As you sit down to your Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, be sure to give thanks to President Abraham Lincoln, and even more so to Sarah Josepha Hale.  A prominent 19th-century journalist, Hale campaigned tirelessly for a national Thanksgiving holiday.  In the midst of the Civil War and prompted by Hale’s editorials and letters, Lincoln called the nation to pause in thanksgiving in 1863. His proclamation read in part:

“The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.  Many other blessings have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”

In that same spirit of thanksgiving – and thanks to the generosity of St. Joseph’s parishioners and visitors – the members of our Parish Outreach Committee agreed at their November 12 meeting to donate a portion of the proceeds from the church’s poor box to the Lincoln-Woodstock Community Chest.  The Community Chest will help provide area residents with Thanksgiving meals in two ways:  1) by providing food baskets to families in Lincoln, Woodstock, and Thornton, packaged with turkeys and dinner ingredients, and 2) by providing individually-prepared hot turkey dinners on Thursday morning to residents of the same area who otherwise would not have Thanksgiving dinner.

God bless you for thinking of the needs of others!

Happy Thanksgiving,

Fr. John Mahoney

Dear Parishioners and Visitors, 

Thank you for your many compliments about the reconstruction of the rectory front porch!  We are ever grateful to Mike Iarocci and Gene Duquette for the thorough job they did of reinforcing the entire infrastructure, replacing many of the water-damaged and insect-eaten boards, cementing the support columns, and restoring the spindles and railings to their original architectural design.  We are grateful, too, for their significant generosity of time and talent that brought the project to completion way, way under budget.  God bless you both!

With prayerful best wishes,

Fr. John Mahoney 

Dear Parishioners and Visitors,

In last week’s bulletin, I was happy to announce that the Holy Spirit had called forth thirteen parishioners from the community to exercise liturgical ministry for St. Joseph Parish.  During their training and workshop last Saturday, it was my honor to install and to commission them in their vocations as Lectors and as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.

This coming week, parishes everywhere are praying for another type of calling forth from parish communities.  During the week of November 7^th, the nation and the Diocese of Manchester will celebrate Vocation Awareness Week.  The theme this year is “Finish the Race.”  As Bishop Libasci’s office reminds us, “A vocation is not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and we need the Lord’s strength every day of our lives to persevere in our discernment, our prayer, our calling, and our service to God and others … so that we can say with St. Paul, ‘I have fought the good fight.  I have finished the race.  I have kept the faith.’”

Please ask Our Lord for additional holy and dedicated priests, deacons, and consecrated men and women to serve the Church.  May they be inspired by Jesus Christ, supported by our faith community, and respond generously to God’s gift of vocation.

Finally, as a veteran of the U.S. Navy, I wish to extend to military veterans of all branches of the armed forces a Happy Veterans Day on Thursday.  Thank you for answering the call to serve God and country.  God bless America!

With prayerful best wishes,

Fr. John Mahoney

Dear Parishioners,

The power of the Holy Spirit at St. Joseph Parish was quite evident last Saturday when the parish’s appointed liturgical ministers, old and new, gathered in the church to learn more about the ministries of Lector and of Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion.  Our guest speaker was Mary Jane Silvia, Director of Adult Faith Formation for the Diocese of Manchester.  She taught us about the historical and theological foundations of these ministries in the Church, and the importance of each minister’s spiritual preparation for and adherence to the practical rubrics of proclaiming Sacred Scripture and for the distribution of Holy Communion when the Catholic faithful assemble for Holy Mass.

At the gathering, it was my honor to install as Lector and to commission as Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion the following new ministers:

Steven Babin
Bill Burdin
Jessica Burdin
Jo-Ann Burdin
Fran Chevalier-Smith
Michael Cummings
Anthony Fitzherbert
Paula King
Pauline Labrecque
Steven Labrecque
JoAnn McCarthy
Delia Sullivan
Bill Waterhouse

We are grateful, indeed, for the gift of these new ministers, but even more to the Holy Spirit for breathing forth these charisms into the community here at St. Joseph Parish.

With prayerful best wishes,
Fr. John Mahoney

Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him … ‘They will be Mine,’ says the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 3:16–18)

Praying for the dead is an ancient practice. The Jewish community was doing it two centuries before Christ, as evidenced in the Second Book of Maccabees.  Inscriptions in the catacombs of the first five centuries – not to mention ancient funerary liturgies of the Church – attest that early Christians fervently followed this practice. Those who have gone before us need our prayers.  And someday we will likely need prayers ourselves.

Our belief in the communion of saints is an acknowledgment that death doesn’t break the bonds of our relationship with God or one another. The holy ones are praying for us, and we are praying for those still working out the details of their journey toward total union with God.  Because God is love, anything unloving must be left behind for that union to take place.  In the “economy of salvation,” the currency we use to assist our friends is prayer.

Throughout the month of November, a “Book of Remembrance” will be available in the church.  There, the names of our deceased loved ones may be inscribed and our prayers on their behalf, we implore, might be received by Almighty God in a special way during celebrations of Holy Mass.

With prayerful best wishes,

Fr. John Mahoney