Dear Family,
Last Saturday, I had a first. It was the first time in my eleven years as your Pastor that no one came for 4:00 p.m. Saturday Reconciliation (good old confession). As I think about it, the people who do come are a few regulars. So, in reality the vast majority of you are not here.

Of course, we have been unable to do the communal Penance services for a while. Another thing we can blame on COVID.

So, I would like to correct that by inviting you to our Communal Celebration of Reconciliation on April 7th, the Thursday before Palm Sunday, at 6:30 p.m.

Dear Family,
By the second Sunday of Lent I am usually asking myself where did the first week go and how could I have missed doing the things I wanted to do, and “giving up” the things I wanted to give up.

Good news: that’s what the second week of Lent is for, to get it right.

In reality, isn’t that what our lives, especially our spiritual lives, are all about? Each day follows the previous with the hope that the direction of our journey is getting easier to see, if not always smoother to negotiate.

The following story is not told for sympathy. As some of you know, last week I got an attack of “flare arthritis” in my right wrist. Powerful throbbing unremitting pain. (Remember, I said no sympathy. Well, maybe a little...)

Dear Family,
Our hearts continue to ache with gnawing feelings of helplessness as we ponder and pray about the crises in Ukraine. We pray that the Lord will bind up and cast out the spirits of evil that chain hearts. We ask in our best sense of Catholic tradition that St. Michael the Archangel defend the good and just. How many pictures of children freezing in shelters will it take?

On this First Sunday of Lent, we bring out our banners with the special letters. PFA means we begin a time of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. These are the special challenges we accept as we journey through Lent.

Dear Family,
There are probably a few among us who remember the aftermath of WW II. I was four years old, standing on the front lawn of my grandmother’s house in Staten Island, overlooking the Kill Van Kull. It was V-J day. The waterway separated Staten Island and New Jersey where all the oil refineries in Bayonne were blowing their whistles. The boats were tooting their horns, the train that ran along the river whistled loudly, and every car running below me on Richmond Terrace was blowing its horn. I’ve told you this before, but it is a powerful memory for a four-year-old child.

So now, when I think of the current heart-wrenching issue of the Ukraine invasion, I mentally make a connection with the huge European/Asian war memory of my childhood.