Dear Parishioners and Visitors,

He is risen! 

He is risen, indeed!

         We learned many lessons about covenants during the 40 days of Lent this year.  And now we exult in the most important covenant – that God so loved the world that He sent His only son so that we who follow him might have eternal life.  God loves us.  God is merciful toward us.  And God wants us to live forever with Him in His Kingdom.  This is the essential meaning of our Easter celebrations.   

     Throughout the Easter Season, we continue our works of charity and mercy.  Pope Francis called mercy the “beating heart of the gospel.”  Mercy and compassionate treatment of the distressed and undeserved is another term for God’s charity.  Consider showing devotion to it by reciting the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, a rosary-based prayer that was received by Saint Faustina, a Polish nun in the 1930s, through visions of Jesus.  Divine Mercy Sunday is celebrated the week after Easter, but many make the Chaplet part of their regular prayer and devotion by reciting it every day at 3 p.m. (the traditional hour of Christ’s death). 

     Wishing you all the blessings, charity, and mercy of the Holy Season of Easter,  

Fr. John Mahoney 

Dear Parishioners and Visitors,

“Now the Passover of the Jews was near.”  As Christians prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week, followers of the Jewish faith tradition prepare for the beginning of Passover at sundown on Friday, April 15.  There are many traditions that led to the Jewish use of unleavened bread, or matzah, during this feast.  One of the most interesting is the usage of the Hebrew term “the bread of poverty” for matzah.  This hard, flat bread is said to remind Jews of what it was like to be poor captives in Egypt and to promote humility and a greater appreciation of the gift of freedom.  Food for thought for one and all—and for gratitude!

Here is more food for thought:  Although the term, “the Jews” as it is used in the Gospels may be interpreted by some disparagingly, the Church’s unique relationship with the Jewish people is grounded in a shared heritage, making it unlike any other dialogue with another religious tradition.  It cannot be forgotten that Jesus himself, as well as the earliest apostles, were Jewish. The Second Vatican Council relied on the Apostle Paul’s imagery to describe the familial bond: “Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles” (Nostra Aetate, 4).  

The Church recognizes that God’s covenant with the Jewish people continues to be valid. Recently, the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews has even stated, “That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery” (“The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable”, 36).

Wishing you the blessings of Holy Week and a deeper understanding of our “shared heritage” with all of God’s children,

Fr. John Mahoney