My Dear Friends:

I pray you are enjoying the long Presidents’ Day Weekend and are finding time to rest. Usually, we don’t mention rest until the summer or around the Christmas holidays, but it is always important to find times to rest in the Lord during the entire year. With that in mind, I want to bring to your attention three retreats that are coming up in the next month and a half in our parish. 

We are blessed this year that during the season of Lent, our parish will be hosting three Emmaus retreats: one for women in English, one for men in Spanish, and one for men in English. All will take place during the 40 days set aside by the Church to prepare for Easter and where we are called to genuine conversion. It is indeed a blessing that so many dedicated men and women of our parish are already actively preparing to serve these retreats and to help you get closer to our Risen Lord. The Women’s Retreat is just two weeks away on the weekend of March 4-6. What a beautiful way to begin the season of Lent! Our Emmaus Sisters have gone over two years without offering a retreat, so they are very much on fire to share this magnificent experience with the women of our parish. For the men preparing the Spanish retreat, it has been three years! So, expect an outpouring of the Holy Spirit! We already held an Emmaus retreat in English for men last fall, and it was indeed a transformative experience for so many who attended and those who served. 

Please accept my invitation as your pastor to attend one of these three retreats during the upcoming Lenten season. We seldom take time to rest. Consider this an invitation by our Lord to go away by yourself to these retreat houses and to find rest in him. I could fill this bulletin with testimonies and witness from
so many parishioners whose lives were transformed by the Emmaus experience and who are now active in the ministerial life of our parish as lectors, taking Communion to the sick, singing in our choir, helping with the homeless ministry, or simply diving deeper into our faith by joining one of our Bible Study groups or attending our Formation Wednesdays. They feel compelled to serve or participate in our ministries because they had an encounter with the Risen Lord on an Emmaus retreat. 

You can find more information on the details of each of these retreats on page 9 of this bulletin, and the women serving the upcoming Emmaus retreat for women will be standing outside the church to hand out registration forms and answer any questions you might have. 

Our Lord is calling you to retreat with him. Will you answer His call? 

God bless you all,