Parish Bulletin for Sunday, April 1, 2007

Palm Sunday

CELEBRATING THE TRIDUUM
At Holy Spirit Church

Our church year could be aptly described as a series of circles, each circle embracing the others. In the centre, at the heart of things, is the Vigil we keep in just a few days from now. Surrounding that centre, flowing to and from that centre, are the three days that we enter on Holy Thursday evening.

The three days of the Triduum are rightly called the Pascal Triduum, the Easter Three Days. Intense preparation brings us to the great Vigil feast, that night of all nights, filled with sound and light and the telling of our great story – the story of Salvation. Our circle widens to the preparation that brings us to Triduum because we do not get here without the period of Lent. Lent prepares us as we attempt to remake our church and ourselves: prayers, fasting and giving alms of time and money and whatever else we can do. Lent's work is to bring us back to the life we entered and promised at baptism. However and whatever we have done to prepare, Lent always sets us down into the Three Days of the Triduum. And if Lent is how we get to the Three Days, then the Easter Season is how we live it out.

The 50 days from Easter to Pentecost are like a rehearsal of God's time, God's reign, "thy kingdom come." The song, the smells, the readings, the actions and symbols of water, oil and bread and wine all make us want to be bold enough to do what we promised at the font. Circles within circles, over and over like a spiral in our lives; they are the way our church explores the gospel lives we want to live. AND WE DO SO THE ONLY WAY WE CAN: TOGETHER! So we come to Holy Thursday evening, leaving Lent and its disciplines behind, entering into the Triduum whose heart is the Vigil, two nights away. Three days – one Feast – the greatest Feast of our Church year. The Triduum. We the church do not go into these Three Days to escape for a little while. We go into these Three Days to find in them all there is to this world and its life. We are not looking for some other world, but for this one, for ourselves who are this world, ready to be washed and fashioned into a world that does justice, that does compassion, that does sharing so scary we can't even think about what will be left for us.

And lest we misunderstand and make this into something pretty and vague, Jesus showed us what this love looks like. What are we willing to learn? Put aside what you can of work, put aside everything of entertainment, put aside most eating and chatter, put aside distractions and go into the Three Days with all your heart and mind and soul.

Holy Thursday

Thursday, April 5, 2007 at 7:00 P.M.

And how do we enter into this great feast? Something so simple, something so outlandish – the washing of feet. John's gospel tells us about what Jesus did at the last supper and what he instructed his followers to do as well. And once a year, as our way into the Triduum, as a way to prepare for the Vigil, we do what Jesus asked. It is a wonderful and very simple deed. Someone is willing to bare their feet. Someone is willing to take a basin of water and wash the feet of another. It is an action that upsets all the expectations of how we act toward one another, a deed that turns the world upside down. We do it to find out what we mean, what being a Christian means.

Words tell us only so much; that is why we have basins and water and towels. This is a vision of how people might live together. We do it but once a year when we have finished with Lent and want to enter into the Three Days, want to get to that night of all nights, want to celebrate with new fire, new light, song, scripture and the font of Baptism, the oil of Confirmation and the bread and wine of Eucharist. We are church and we are forever trying to love the world the way God loves it, the way Jesus loved the world on that night before he died.

Good Friday

Friday, April 6, 2007 at 3:00 P.M.

The Mass of the Lord's Supper ends in silence and the gathering of the community for the Celebration of the Passion of the Lord begins in silence. The focus of this day is the saving death of the Lord Jesus and our participation in it. How do we live out the values of the reign of God so that we are able to stand as a stumbling block to the forces of darkness and evil? We need to be together often during these Three Days.

The Three Days are all, all the hours and minutes whether we are in church or not. All of today and all of tomorrow are for us to get ready for the Vigil on Saturday night, for our gathering in darkness, making the fire, listening to our story proclaimed in joy, calling on the saints to go with us to the font and there doing the baptizing with water, the anointing with oil, and together, going to the table where we do the work of every Sunday: the church giving praise and intercession, lament and thanks to God over the gifts of bread and wine. Yes, we need to be together on this day, this Good Friday.

We hold high the cross and proclaim that here, the cross is the shape of Christian life and prayer; here is life and here is truth and here is the way. We prepare, we worship, we adore, we pray. The Vigil comes!

Holy Saturday      Easter Vigil

Saturday April 7, 2007 at 7:00 P.M.

The Vigil begins in darkness and silence. As the third celebration in the Triduum, the Easter Vigil proclaims Christ's victory over sin and death and our sharing in this wondrous gift of salvation. The preparation is meant to bring us to this centre. We have something to do that is so mighty and awesome that it must needs steal away our agendas and our appetites and allow us to hunger and thirst for the once a year deeds we do this night. The church hungers and thirsts to light the fire, to spend precious time with words of scripture texts that we hold dear to our hearts, and, most of all, to go with our elect to the waters of baptism and there to embrace her and let her lead us to the table. This is the Vigil!

The great Paschal Triduum is meant to be celebrated as one. A solemn proclamation from the Lord God begins the liturgy of the word on Holy Thursday; the solemnity of solemnities has begun. From the original celebration of Passover, when the Lord liberated Israel from captivity, we progress over the next three days to the fulfilment of the Passover, when the risen Christ liberates us from sin and death.

Join your community of faith as we celebrate the Easter Triduum

TUESDAY, April 3

Holy Week

8:30 a.m. - † Amelia Couvinha

Requested by Helena Sousa

WEDNESDAY, April 4

Holy Week

8:30 a.m. - † John Chin

Requested by wife Lucy

THURSDAY, April 5

Holy Thursday

7:00 p.m.

FRIDAY, April 6

Good Friday

3:00 p.m.

Parish Bulletin for Sunday, April 8, 2007

Easter Sunday

"The Empty Tomb"

Luke 24:1-12

Two messengers greet the women who came to the tomb that long ago Sunday morning. They are told that the one they sought to anoint was not there. "He Has Been Raised." The angels have more to say. They charge the women to remember all that Jesus had told them when he was with them. Remembering brings hope and hope brings understanding; they become convinced that what they are seeing and hearing is true and hurry to share this news with the disciples.

Remembering in the biblical sense means realizing that Jesus' past words and actions live again and speak to the present reality. Though their original intent was to anoint and mourn, the remembering, the hope and the understanding open their hearts and minds to a belief in the risen Jesus and allow them to be filled with joy, a joy that needed to be shared so that others would believe as they believed. When the women announced the good news, others among them did not believe and thought that they were speaking nonsense. But Luke tells us that Peter was moved to see for himself, travelled to the tomb, and leaves amazed.

Scripture later tells us what happened to Peter as a result of this amazement. This is the same Peter who fell asleep when Jesus needed his support and denied the Lord three times. This same Peter became an avid proclaimer of the risen Christ. His journey of faith was dramatic, yet it is the same journey that all followers of the Christ travel. Peter's journey begins with hearing, to following, to believing, to questioning, to denying, to amazement, and finally to faith and is a mirror to hold to our own journey of faith. We learn from Peter that we are called to rely on the grace of God who is always there for us and who continues to offer, over and over, love and mercy and forgiveness and joy – and the good news is proclaimed once more – Jesus is Risen.

We, in turn, listen once more to the story and we also are called to remember. In the remembering, we strive to hear, to follow, to believe, to question, to deny, to be amazed and, just like Peter, to have faith. Let us pray, then, this day and all the days of Easter that we can be open to all that God desires for us and are moved to a deep and abiding rest in the Lord.

"They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. . . "

Risen One, Tomb Opener, you are the power I need. Roll away the stones of unloving. Push back the rocks of discontent. Shove aside the boulders of worry. Untomb me and set me free.

We Pray:

For those places where the Risen Jesus is proclaimed amidst violence. . . for those who celebrate Easter in nations at war. . . for those whose faith in the Risen Christ is a proclamation of light in their dark world. . .

For those places where the Risen Christ is proclaimed amidst suffering. . . for those who celebrate Easter in hospitals and nursing homes, in prison or in the grip of drug abuse, alcoholism and mental illness. . . for those whose faith in the Risen Christ proclaims light in their dark world . . .

For this community of faith where the Risen Christ is proclaimed amidst all cares, worries and anxiety. . . for each person who is confident in the light of Jesus. . .

HAPPY EASTER!

May the joy and peace of this Easter Season nurture and feed you. May His light shine upon you and illuminate all that you do and all that you say. May the new life that is Easter fill your life and bring you into deeper relationship with the Lord of all time. Happy Easter from the office staff, the pastoral staff, the priests who offer service in this community of faith and from myself.

TUESDAY, April 10

Easter Octave

8:30 a.m. - † Margaret LeBlanc

Requested by Theresa Macrae

WEDNESDAY, April 11

Easter Octave

8:30 a.m. - † Vicente Javier

Requested by family

THURSDAY, April 12

Easter Octave

8:30 a.m. - † Paz and Emilio Marin

Requested by Sylvia

FRIDAY, April 13

Easter Octave

8:30 a.m. - † Samuel Johns

Requested by wife Dorothy and family

Parish Bulletin for Sunday, April 15, 2007

2nd Sunday of Easter

We have entered into the Easter Season. The celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus will continue to inform these 50 days and will continue to inspire our worship during this period and, for that matter, the rest of our year as we come together as the people who "remember" every Sunday.

This period of our church year, the Easter Season, takes us from one period of our salvation history into another. We have turned the page from the time of Jesus of Nazareth, who came among us as one of us, who went about doing good, who suffered for this very goodness and for the truth and justice of his teaching, who, though innocent, died for our sake and who rose to live eternally in glory. We have turned the page and now enter into the time of the church. We remember the people of that time, whose experiences and beliefs and struggles led to the process of forming the church – the believers who follow in the footsteps of the Christ – the process that leads us to believe that the proclaimer of the good news became and continues to be the proclaimed.

Our entire New Testament, and that includes our readings this Sunday, reveals to us that Jesus both announced and lived out the reign of God in time and space. In the aftermath of Jesus' earthly ministry, the church appeared and with it the Christian Scriptures, writings that are at once an expression of faith in the Christ-event and an attempt to bring the redemptive consequences of that event to bear on every aspect of the human condition.

Luke tells us in the first reading from Acts about the works continued by the apostles, doing as Jesus had done, working signs and wonders, meeting in Solomon's Portico, healing the sick, casting out unclean spirits and welcoming newcomers to the Way. Luke is intent upon making sure his readers understand that the church is the legitimate successor of Jesus. His mission was to make sure the early church, as well as followers today, understands the mission that is church. During this Easter Season, we will continue to hear from Luke in Acts of the Apostles so that the paths travelled by those who have gone before us will encourage all of us following to continue the work begun so long ago.

The early believers had to be reminded, as we are reminded in today's gospel, that the living legacy of Jesus, the legacy of the Holy Spirit, continues to breathe life, purpose, and legitimacy into the community he left behind. Through the presence and by the power of the Spirit, the message of the good news continues to voice its truth to the ever evolving circumstances of the human community. Through the presence and power of the Spirit, we began to be and continue to be church. The church is a community of people called by the Spirit of Jesus to live as an alternative society in the world.

During the next several weeks, we will be reminded of our values, convictions and lifestyle; we shall also be renewed with grace so that we can continue speaking the words and doing the works of Jesus in the world.

What we are being called to today is a deliberate act of the will that will move beyond words in order to make those words come alive in us. Pulsing and breathing in us, those words will move us to be, as Jesus was and is, through us, a force for good to transform a dying, desperate, needy world. Jesus lives and we live to make him and his Resurrection known. This is the Good News! This is Easter!

TUESDAY, April 17

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Dympna Howley

Requested by the Hardy family

WEDNESDAY, April 18

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Samuel Johns

Requested by R. Dunst

THURSDAY, April 19

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Catherine Gildea

Requested by Mary Gert McCollam

FRIDAY, April 20

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Manoel DaSilva

Requested by wife Carmela and family

Parish Bulletin for Sunday, April 22, 2007

Third Sunday of Easter

John 21:1-19

Once again, we find the disciples returning to the life they knew so well: back to the Sea of Galilee and to the fishing vessels that were so much a part of their lives before the coming of Jesus. After fishing all night and coming up with empty nets, one imagines how tired and discouraged these erstwhile fishermen must have been. Yet this does not prevent Peter from jumping into the sea as soon as he recognized Jesus or from hauling in the great catch Jesus had provided.

Nor did Peter shrink from Jesus' questions about his love for him. Even though he must have been reminded of his triple denial of Jesus by the questions demanding a response not once, but three times, Peter answered the Lord every time. Peter is not only reaffirming his loyalty and fidelity, he is also acknowledging both his sin and his repentance. Peter, like us, is called to reflect on the nature of his actions. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, once said of sinners, "Many sins are committed by reason of pride but not at all proudly; some are committed from ignorance, others from weakness, and many with sighs and tears."

If we were honest with ourselves, we too would identify with Peter in the Gospel story. He is his own person and worthy of the name the Lord Jesus has bestowed upon him – Rock. He appears strong of will and of purpose; he was, after all, the leader who would serve in Jesus' stead. But then, an ominous word from Jesus suddenly makes what was an otherwise joyous occasion turn very sombre. There would, Jesus announced quite solemnly, come a time when Peter would no longer be his own person, strong of will and of purpose, fastening his own belt and going about as he pleased. Instead, someone else would tie Peter fast and carry him off against his will.

As the fourth evangelist has noted, these surprising words about Peter were indicative of the sort of death that awaited him. Of course, by the time the fourth gospel appeared near the end of the first Christian century, Peter had been gone for several decades and the manner of his dying was well known to John's readers. According to a long-held, but unverifiable tradition, Peter, like Jesus, was crucified but, feeling himself unworthy to bear such a striking resemblance to his Lord, Peter requested that he be hung upside down on his cross.

Most of us will not die as dramatically as did Jesus or Peter or others martyred for their faith. Nevertheless, most of us shall share in the experience of losing our independence and of having to surrender to a will other than our own. Through the natural process of aging, even the strongest and most purposeful among us will be required eventually to submit ourselves to the care of others. For some of us, aging, aging may also bring on the long goodbye that is Alzheimer's when even the faculties that helped us define us as a person slip away. Whatever the future may hold, the example of Peter and, of course, Jesus, will help us. Both lived by a faith strong enough to endure not only the struggle inherent in believing but also the surrender to God that will eventually and inevitably cost us no less than everything!

Jesus said to them: "Come and have breakfast."     (John 21:12)

Jesus invited the disciples to come and to be nourished with food that he had prepared. What food am I being offered for the nourishment of my spirit? What food do I accept and what do I reject?

What is Resurrection?       God's Love!

Resurrection speaks the last and absolute word of God upon the mission of Jesus. With a resounding and definitive Amen! the Resurrection invites believers not only to make sense of the suffering and dying of Jesus, but to accept these harsh realities as testimony to the illogical love of God for undeserving sinners. How great and foolish a love that would surrender a son for a sinner, an innocent for one burdened with the guilt of his/her own making? This great love becomes audible and visible and, yes, palpable in the Resurrection of Jesus; this great love takes hold of each believer in an embrace that never ends.

Resurrection speaks the word of life to a world that would otherwise be defeated by death. Resurrection means that death is not an end but a passage, and this reality calls each of us to live life with and underlying trust that cannot be wrenched from us at any cost. Such joy! Such Love! Such Life!

TUESDAY, April 24

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Fred Locicero

Requested by Sarah, Al, grandchildren and great grandchildren

WEDNESDAY, April 25

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Sir Knight Jean Guy Lantaigne

Requested by Knights of Columbus - Bishop Charles Greco Assembly 2113

THURSDAY, April 26

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. – Thanksgiving

Requested by Anne and Vasantha

FRIDAY, April 27

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Mr. And Mrs. M. Zeitoun

Requested by family

Parish Bulletin for Sunday, April 29, 2007

Fourth Sunday in Easter Season

"The Vision We Hold as Church"

The word vision is much used in our current culture. To build a house, we need blueprints – the vision of what we wish to create. For a life, it's called a mission. For a day, it's called a goal and a plan. For a parent, it's called a belief in the unseen potential of the child. For each one of us, it's the mental or spiritual creation which always precedes the physical creation of what is to be.

Vision helps us to see the present opportunities where others may not always recognize them and it points us towards the future while it questions – Who do I want to be in five years? What do I want to be doing? With whom and for whom do I want to be doing it? Why? Vision helps us to see the possibilities of tomorrow within the realities of today and motivates us to do what needs to be done to make those possibilities a reality.

As the community of believers in Jesus, we are called to determine and identify our vision as church. That vision of church is given expression in each of the readings today. In the first reading from Acts, Luke allows us to look in upon the unfolding mission of Paul and Barnabas. These two travel great distances together as they seek to make Jesus known to as many people as possible. They make their way from city to city, planting the seeds of faith into the hearts of all who are open to the good news they wish to share. In all they said and in all they did, the vision filled their words and deeds. That vision was voiced in Isaiah, repeated by Simeon and then by John the Baptist: "I have made you a light to the nations, a means of salvation to the ends of the earth."

This universal mission expresses God's great love and concern for all of his people. This vision came to live among us in the person and through the mission of Jesus, who reached out to embrace all, whether far or near, regardless of race or gender, ethnicity or worthiness. As church, we are still in the process of carrying this vision to fulfilment and therein rests the challenge. Though this vision is still far from being accomplished, it must still fuel our efforts.

We acknowledge those times when we have clouded or dimmed or outright prevented the vision from being realized – prejudice, bias, intolerance, disrespect, ignorance, and animosity are all weapons in the arsenal of destruction and apathy. This vision has suffered through the centuries and this is easily seen in the history of our own church.

Yet God remains faithful and patient and merciful! Why else are we still here, still being afforded the grace of beginning anew to be instruments of peace and salvation rather than hatred, violence and war . . . still being afforded the opportunity to open our hearts, our minds, our lives and whatever resources may be needed to recognize and acknowledge our relationship with and responsibility for all others in God and in Christ. When this responsibility seems too daunting, too large and impossible to achieve, we must remember that we take one step at a time, feed one hungry person at a time, reach out to another one person at a time and then we can fulfill this great mission and vision which is church.

It is very true that some refuse the challenge of the vision. We see this not only in today's gospel story, but also in our world today. Others though, choose to change, choose to reorient their lives toward Jesus, to leave one fold for another, to make him the reason for their radical conversion. These, we are told today, are the sheep who hear his voice, who follow him, who look forward to eternal life in him, who shall not perish, who will not be snatched from his hand.

Ultimately, the Shepherd has given his life to preserve His sheep and to save their lives. He knows his own; his own hear his voice and choose to follow him. This is church! This is the vision by which we are called to live! Alleluia, Alleluia.

TUESDAY, May 1

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Salvatorie and Elvira Beltrano

WEDNESDAY, May 2

St. Athanasius

8:30 a.m. - † Anthony Battaglia

THURSDAY, May 3

St. Philip and St. James (Apostles)

8:30 a.m. - † Anton Veerasinghan

FRIDAY, May 4

Easter Weekday

8:30 a.m. - † Amelia Couvinha