Dear Fellow Parishioners, This is one the most difficult letters I have ever had to write. I am a victim of identity theft, and I never want anyone else to become a victim of this horrific crime. In addition, the universal church mourns the loss of our beloved Pope Francis.

Dear Fellow Parishioners, I’m full of questions this first Day of the Easter Season. I say the first day of the Easter Season because we have fifty days of Easter. Maybe for the first time I am grasping why we need 50 days beyond Easter. Maybe it is because it is so difficult to get our heads around its true meaning.

Dear Fellow Parishioners, We are in the home stretch of our journey to Easter as the days of our Lenten pilgrimage come to a close. This is the week we call “Holy,” and I hope you are planning on making this a Holy Week, rather than a hectic, ordinary week in your life. This is a time for communal gathering and reflecting on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Dear Fellow Parishioners, “Remember not the events of the past. See, I am doing something new!” Isaiah. 43:16 The Lenten journey is moving along quickly, and several have spoken to me regarding their inability to focus on the inner journey due to the “noise” they are bombarded with through newscasts, social media, newspapers. There seems to be so much uncertainty, darkness, anxiety, doubt, powerlessness. So many things that are contrary to the Gospel message of welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, helping the least, the lost, the last.

Dear Fellow Parishioners, It is official, this Sunday the Fourth Sunday of Lent, which is called Laetare (Rejoice) Sunday, marks the halfway point of our Lenten Journey. Three weeks down and three weeks until Easter! In our busyness, we sometimes fail to plan ahead for Holy Week  - the events that help us to make sense of the whole sacred Lenten desert experience.