Dear Parish Family,
Today is the 5th and final Sunday of Lent. Next Sunday we begin the Season of Holy Week.
The readings for Fifth Sunday of Lent are about how God can take us from death to new life. Through the raising of Lazarus from the dead, Jesus demonstrates His power over death and foreshadows his own resurrection.
We hear this story of death, but Jesus came to give life, but most especially life eternal. He came to bring joy and happiness, but that which lasts forever, not just for a moment. This Gospel tells us this here in Lent to help us come to live life to the full.
John tells us that Jesus wept. Jesus wept and still weeps not just for Lazarus but also today for the death of faith, and the death of God in many hearts, homes, families and nations. He still weeps for the death of so many people due to hunger, poverty, treatable diseases and neglect by their government and society, of human suffering and the pain that comes with loss.
What we should bring with as we enter Holy Week is to love God, to be one with Him, and to be one with His world. Jesus asks us today to seek his help and that of the community around us to help loosen the chains that bind us up and come out of the tombs of our own creation. He does not want any one of us to be lost to Him through death.
Next weekend we will celebrate Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord. Blessed palms will be distributed.
God Bless you as we continue our journey to Easter.
Fr. Cyrus, Pastor
Dear Parish Family,
Today in the Gospel we here the story of the man born blind, a man born in darkness which stands for all humanity, but he is made new by the saving power of Christ. It is the story of a man who will come into the healing light of Jesus, the light of the world.
Our Lenten journey of faith is a journey of insights into who Jesus is. Jesus heals us spiritually. He does it frequently by his words in scripture. We need to allow that healing. We can be blind to the poverty, injustice, and pain of others. We need to ask Jesus to remove our blindness.
“The miracle of the healing of the blind man is a sign that Christ wants not only to give us sight, but also to open our interior vision, so that our Faith may become ever deeper and we may recognize Him as our only Savior. He illuminates all that is dark in life and leads men and women to live as “children of the light” (Pope Benedict XVI Lenten message-2011).
Lent is a good time to renew our vision and look to Jesus who came so that we can be forgiven for our blindness, and for the times when Jesus has come to us through his word and we have been too blind to see him, and too deaf to hear him calling us to action.
God Bless you as we journey through this Lenten Season,
Fr. Cyrus, Pastor
Dear Parish Family,
In the Gospel from John this weekend Jesus used water as an example to the Samaritan woman to show her how important it was to have Jesus in her life. Without Jesus, our souls are dead. He is the living water that makes our souls well and strong, just like physical water makes our bodies well and strong. Jesus not only satisfies our physical needs, but our spiritual needs: whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst.
Jesus breaks down the boundaries of religious and cultural prejudices. We are called to do the same so we can accept and learn from others who are different from us. Jesus cares for the outcasts of society and didn’t care about how the Jews of the time saw the Samaritan woman. We are called to spread the Gospel to our neighbors openly even those whom society sees as the lowest and unworthy.
We are called upon during this season of Lent, to rediscover who Jesus is to each of us, and like the Samaritan woman, to become transformed and with eagerness to tell everyone the Good News.
God Bless you as we journey through this Lenten Season,
Fr. Cyrus, Pastor
Dear Parish Family,
On this second Sunday of Lent the Gospel reading proclaims the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration
The Transfiguration gives us a vision of Christian living. It gives us a notion of ourselves transformed by the power of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection.
We need to remember what our Heavenly Father said to Peter up on the mountain of transfiguration when he was confused. He said to Peter, “This is my Son whom I have chosen, Listen to Him!”
It is most important that we listen to Jesus. God the Father was saying that Peter needed to slow down and listen to Jesus. I think that is also pretty good advice for us today. We can listen to Jesus by reading about the life of Jesus in the bible. We can read what he said and taught and we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand too.
God Bless you as we journey through this Lenten Season,
Fr. Cyrus, Pastor
Dear Parish Family,
This weekend we celebrate the First Sunday in Lent.
In the Gospel the Devil tempts Jesus during his forty days in the desert. Jesus rejects the Devil’s suggestions and chooses to love and obey God his Father.
Pope St. Leo the Great on Fasting
“Enter upon the celebration of the solemn fast, not with barren abstinence from food … but in bountiful benevolence. … Let works of piety, therefore, be our delight, and let us be filled with those kinds of food which feed us for eternity. Let us rejoice in the replenishment of the poor, whom our bounty has satisfied. Let us delight in the clothing of those whose nakedness we have covered with needful raiment. Let our humaneness be felt by the sick in their illnesses, by the weakly in their infirmities, by the exiles in their hardships, by the orphans in their destitution and by solitary widows in their sadness: in the helping of whom there is no one that cannot carry out some amount of benevolence. For no one’s income is small, whose heart is big. …” (Excerpt from Sermon 40)
These acts of self-denial help us to free ourselves from worldly distractions, to express our longing for Jesus. We pray that, following Jesus’ example, we may remain faithful to God.
God Bless you as we journey through this Lenten Season,
Fr. Cyrus
