My Dear Friends, As I write this column early in the week, our Holy Father, Pope Francis, is in the hospital in Rome with a respiratory infection. Every day at the Mass, we pray for the pope, but today we pray for his health and for a prompt recovery. During this Holy Year of jubilee, …
Continue reading “February 23rd – VII Sunday in Ordinary Time”
My Dear Friends, This year is a Jubilee Year. To better understand what a Jubilee means, it is useful to go back to the Jewish roots of our faith. A Jubilee is a special year of repentance, conversion, and forgiveness. Conversion as a remedy for sin was part of the providential plan of God since …
Continue reading “February 16th – VI Sunday in Ordinary Time”
My Dear Friends, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” (Luke 5:4) This is a story that I love to tell in relationship with this gospel: Ever since I can remember, my father has been taking me fishing. Now that I’m a priest, we usually do it in the summer …
My Dear Friends, As we gather this Sunday, we are presented with a special feast day that usually falls during the weeks, but this year providentially falls on a Sunday: The Presentation of the Lord. Believe it or not, it has been 40 days since we celebrated Christmas, and today we commemorate our Lord being …
Continue reading “February 2nd – Feast of the Presentation of the Lord”
My Dear Friends, I can’t thank you enough for the generosity you displayed last weekend during our ABCD annual appeal. We are still compiling the envelopes and pledges, but the response was, as always, overwhelming. As I mentioned during my homily, despite going through a parish capital campaign for our centennial, we still responded to the …
Continue reading “January 26th – III Sunday in Ordinary Time”
My Dear Brothers and Sisters, Hope is not always easy especially in a broken world, yet our faith calls us to be agents of hope to unite, heal and transform our world. In the most challenging times, when it is easy to lose heart, there is always an invitation to witness hope knowing that God …
Continue reading “January 19th – II Sunday in Ordinary Time”
My Dear Friends: As we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord today, I wanted to focus on one aspect of this sacrament in which we are called by name because it adds a personal dimension to this great mystery. At the very beginning of the rite of Baptism, the very first question the priest or …
Continue reading “January 12th – Feast of the Baptism of the Lord”
My Dear Friends: Happy New Year and Happy Epiphany! It is so wonderful to greet all of you in this new year which happens to be a jubilee year not only for the Universal Church, but this September we begin a year of jubilee for our parish centennial when our school turns 100 on September …
My Dear Friends: Merry Christmas! We welcome those who are visiting our beautiful church this Christmastime. We pray that you will find here the warmth, the peace, and the presence of the Christ Child born in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago. In the days leading up to this Feast of our Redemption, our Carmelite …
Continue reading “December 29th – Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph”