Dear Friends, Many of us get a chance to see new sights during these summer days as we travel on vacations with family and friends. We go to National Parks or to foreign lands or pause for just a bit to look at some local natural beauty. I hope these moments of...

Dear Friends, This week we celebrate the Fourth of July and all the unique civic rituals that go with it. For disciples of Jesus it is a celebration that garners mixed feelings, for we acknowledge Christ as our ruler and king – not a government, no matter how...

Dear Friends, Thank you for responding to the request we made last week, in which we asked you to contact your representatives about the immigration dilemma. There was progress this week with the President deciding to issue an executive order to stop the separation of...

Dear Friends, Next Sunday, we will have a second collection to help pay for the costs of the work project in the village of San Miguel Acatan. The work of our mission project helps people to stay in their homeland with their loved ones rather than immigrate to foreign...

Dear Friends, Happy Santa Lucia festival weekend!! I hope you have a chance to enjoy the music and the food and the friendships. Please stay cool in the midst of the heat. I continue to be impressed during the festival by the willingness of so many folks to openly...

Dear Friends, When I open the outer tabernacle door to retrieve the reserved Eucharist, you may notice that there is a pelican painted on the door. The pelican mother in the painting is poking her chest with her bill to offer her own blood to her little chicks. The...

Dear Friends, Each year, on the Sunday following Pentecost, the church celebrates the feast of the Holy Trinity. A mystery. A concept that is difficult to understand. Yet, the Trinity is at the very heart of the Christian understanding of God. It is Jesus who reveals...

  Dear Friends, On this Sunday when we celebrate Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit into our midst and the beginning of the Church, I thought it would be good to continue some of Pope Francis recent letter to you about holiness and prayer. The following...

Dear Friends, You may have noticed that I have not been around the parish the last two weekends. I left shortly after the Spaghetti Dinner to take a vacation with a few friends to Israel. I am back – not rested of course – but I am back. The trip went very well except...

Dear Friends, We continue the second chapter of Pope Francis’ letter to you where he talks about the challenge of contemporary forms of the pelagian heresy: “The same power that the gnostics attributed to the intellect, others now began to attribute to the human will,...

Dear Friends, In Chapter Two of Pope Francis’ letter to you on holiness he mentions two false forms of holiness that have been condemned by the church over the centuries, but still exist today. Pope Francis sees these two heresies as causing problems for every day...

Dear Friends, I hope you enjoyed the introduction to Pope Francis’ letter on Holiness last week. Here is a little more from Chapter One: “A Christian cannot think of his or her mission on earth without seeing it as a path of holiness, for ‘this is the will of God,...