Clergy Bulletin Articles

Dear graduates, as the father of five adult children, I have experienced what your parents are going through right now.  Let me shed some light on what you probably perceive as truly bizarre behavior!  You see, the part of their lives that you filled while living at home will now be empty.  As you prepare to move from under their roof, they are reflecting on your journey to adulthood – and with that reflection are surges of heartache, but also hope.  The heartache is the pain of loss – as you grew, they have tried to sacrifice heroically for you.

Instead of “Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh my!” as was said/sung by Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz, we have our own excitement here at Prince of Peace this weekend. I would sum it all up on the category of “vocation”. A vocation is a calling from God.

 

According to Wikipedia: The "mayday" procedure word was conceived as a distress call in the early 1920s by Frederick Stanley Mockford, officer-in-charge of radio at Croydon Airport, England. He had been asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the air traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the term "mayday", the phonetic equivalent of the French m'aidez ("help me") or m'aider (a short form of venez m'aider, "come [and] help me").

Happy Easter! This Sunday is the eighth day of the Octave of Easter, so it is still considered Easter Day itself. So keep celebrating. This Sunday is also known as Divine Mercy Sunday.

 

Happy Easter! Christ is risen…He is risen indeed! Since on Easter, Jesus rose from the dead and was seen by witnesses, and we decorate our church and often homes with bright colors and flowers, I thought I’d share a visual image for you to pray with and enjoy.

 

On this Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion and as we enter Holy Week, it is so good to reflect on the account of the crucifixion of Jesus and the words he spoke. Traditionally many reflect on the “Seven Last Words of Christ.” If you look between the four Gospels, you find seven sentences Jesus speaks—three are unique to the Gospel of Luke, three to John, and one to Matthew/Mark.

 

Since this year on Palm Sunday we get the Gospel of Luke, I include what Luke writes:

 

Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. (John 8:3-4) These are a couple lines of our Gospel for the 5th Sunday of Lent. In other words, her sin was uncovered (and yes, it is most definitely not fair that the man was not also brought out on charges). Likely, being caught in the act, she probably wasn’t afforded the chance to cover up much, and likely she felt very exposed, vulnerable, ashamed and afraid.

This weekend we get the gospel reading of Jesus telling us the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We have all been prodigal sons or daughters who sinned against our Father and distanced ourselves from God. But now is the time to come back, and going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation is THE way to do it. It truly is a Sacrament about God’s mercy and compassion that brings joy to us and to God. The Father is waiting for us just like the parable:

 

Mass is boring, isn’t it? Well, if we don’t understand what is going on it certainly seems to be. It’s not entertaining. We sit, stand, and kneel at various times, and half of it seems like we’re just watching the priest do his thing up there on the altar. But hey… we don’t want to go to hell, so we show up. Week-in and week-out. We punch our card, satisfy God, and move on with our lives. 

 

This Sunday, the 2nd Sunday of Lent, we always get the account of Jesus’ Transfiguration. An ancient tradition is that this occurred forty days before Good Friday. Jesus literally shines on the mountain as he prays: “While he was praying his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.” (Luke 9:29)