Happy Easter, everyone! Our Easter celebration continues for 50 days, you know! We baptized six people and received two more into Holy Communion with us on Easter Sunday! Thanks so much to John and Aimee Cave, Vicki Arndt, and their entire team of catechists for helping to form the newest members of the Church here! Thanks to Gloria Nussbaum and her team for decorating the church so beautifully. Thanks to Father Chance, our Deacons Chris Kennedy and John Kaufmann, our parish staff, our wonderful choir, our acolytes, servers, and hospitality ministers for their extraordinary service during Holy Week and Easter Sunday. Our parish is certainly growing and we could not have done it all without you!
Just an update. . . Deacon Ed DeMattee continues to recover from a stroke he suffered before Holy Week. He is undergoing intense rehabilitation. Your prayers are most needed and welcome for him. Deacon Tom Liotta is visiting his family in Spain. We miss him, but he will be back at the end of the month.
The risen Jesus appears to the disciples several times after his resurrection. He patiently consoles their discouraged hearts. In this way, you might say, he brings about the "resurrection of the disciples". And they, revived by Jesus, change their lives. Before, so many words and so many examples of the Lord had not succeeded in changing them. Now, at Easter, something new happens. And it takes place in the sign of mercy. Jesus lifts them up again with mercy, and they, having received it, become merciful. It is very difficult to be merciful if one has not received mercy!
Recalling Divine Mercy Sunday in 2021, Pope Francis wrote, “Do you want proof that God has touched your life? See if you bow to the wounds of others. Today is the day to ask ourselves: "I, who have so often received God's peace, who have so often received his forgiveness and mercy, am I merciful to others? I, who have so often been nourished by the
Body of Jesus, what am I doing to feed others? What do I do to feed the poor? Let us not remain indifferent. Let us not live a half-hearted faith that receives but does not give, that accepts the gift but does not become a gift. We have received mercy, let us be merciful. . . Let us allow ourselves to be resurrected by the peace, forgiveness and wounds of the merciful Jesus. And let us ask for the grace to become witnesses of mercy. Only then will faith be alive. And life will be unified.
Only then will we proclaim the Gospel of God, which is the Gospel of mercy.”
Fr. Mark Zacker
Missionary of Mercy appointed by Pope Francis in 2016
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