Dear Parishioners, National Vocations Awareness Week for the Church in the United States was moved from January to this past week. The particular focus of this week is vocations to the priesthood and religious life. I would like to focus especially on the priesthood, given that the
Read more →Archive for the Pastor’s Corner Category
Dear Parishioners, When I received a totally unexpected call from the Diocesan Administrator this past Spring, asking me to leave the two parishes I was pastoring, and which I loved (I love Divine Mercy parishioners! Don’t mistake what I am saying here.) it took a very special
Read more →Dear Parishioners, +JMJ With this letter I would like to give you a quick synopsis of the most recent Financial Council meeting we had – almost 2 weeks ago now: -We reviewed our initial responses to each of the findings from the diocesan audit. Our responses were
Read more →Dear Parishioners, On Monday, October 13th the Vatican released its Relatio post disceptionem, its “report after discussion”; i.e., the final document weaving in all of the themes discussed thus far at the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Rome on the topic of the family. Because there has
Read more →Dear Parishioners, We finally received the audit report from the diocese; and we’re being asked to provide by the end of October an initial response to all the items raised. Many of the items–especially those regarding money handling–have already been dealt with. For example, tamperproof, sealing bags
Read more →Dear Parishioners, On Saturday, November 8, I will be teaching a diocesan course that catechists can attend for certification. The name of the course is Mysterium Christi. Actually, this will be one of five total sessions that make up the course. The session starts at 9 AM
Read more →Dear Parishioners, This weekend (October 5th) is the memorial of St. Faustina, the religious sister the Lord used to offer the Divine Mercy devotion to the world. So we are including a short biography of St. Faustina in the bulletin. I hope you get to know her
Read more →Dear Parishioners, For one of my first funerals as very new priest over 17 years ago, the adult children of their deceased father, in our planning meeting, asked me not to eulogize their father in the homily, because Father So-and-So a year earlier had done that for
Read more →Dear Parishioners, +JMJ I thought I should explain to you why I decided to have the altar servers carry torches at the reading of the Gospel, rather than having the torches lit by the ambo (pulpit) throughout the entire Mass. The main reason is to highlight the
Read more →Dear Parishioners, Last weekend we had our luncheon and devotional talk for lectors of the parish. For our discussion we focused on the first chapter of a section of Vatican II Council’s Constition on Divine Revelation, entitled “Sacred Scripture, Its Inspiration and Divine Interpretation”. In this paragraph
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