A HUGE thank you to Joe Vermeesch, Beth Buiocchi, Anne Readett, Chris Patton, Lloyd Kendall, and everyone who had a hand in putting together the best fish fries in North America. Each one takes a ton of work to pull off. It was amazing to get a peek at all the effort that goes into the weekly fish fries and to see so many happy people enjoying the tremendous food. Everything is homemade! So, again, a HUGE thank you to all of you who helped! My sincere apologies for not including this in the bulletin earlier. Due to Holy Week and Easter, there were a number of early bulletin deadlines. That’s not an excuse, just a poor explanation. Know of my prayers for you all!
Jack Jobst - Transitional Deacon
I received a phone call from the Vocations Director and Director of Seminarians, Fr. Michael Cassar, last week who asked if we would be willing to take a transitional deacon for the next year. A transitional deacon is a young man in seminary formation studying to be ordained a priest. During his year of diaconal ministry, he still resides full-time at the seminary to complete his degree and classwork but also spends time, particularly the summer and weekends, at an assigned parish. This is meant to help give him a better understanding of what parish life and ministry is like, what it entails, and to provide some real experience and training before he is ordained a priest a year later. Dcn. Jack Jobst has been assigned to St. Martha Parish and School. Dcn. Jack will begin living in the rectory sometime after the academic year has concluded (probably late April or early May). He will be assisting in various ministries in the parish throughout the summer. Beginning in the fall, he will be with us on the weekends (Friday afternoons through Sunday afternoons/evenings) and will be primarily focusing on getting practice preaching weekend Masses. Learn a little bit more about him on page 10, and he will introduce himself at the weekend Masses when he begins his time here at
St. Martha. His presence will be a blessing to us! In the meantime, please begin praying for him, for all our seminarians, for those discerning a call to ordained ministry, and that more young men will begin listening to the Lord. I’m confident there are young men in this parish and school being called to the priesthood.
Gospel Reflection
There are seven I am statements of Jesus in John’s Gospel: ·I am the bread of life (John 6:35-48) ·I am the light of the world (John 8:12, 9:5) ·I am the gate (John 10:7) ·I am the good shepherd (John 10:11-14) ·I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25) ·I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6) ·I am the true vine (John 15:1-5) Two words that should stand out to us when Jesus makes these statements - I AM. Recall, way back in the book of Exodus, when God appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush unconsumed by the fire. This is Moses’s call story, when God called Moses to present himself to the Israelites and plead to Pharaoh on behalf of his people. “But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?” God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you (Exodus 3:13-14). God’s name is simply I AM. In making these statements, Jesus is doing a couple of things that would certainly have caught the attention of the Jewish people. First, He is using the name of God (I AM) and attributing it to himself. Second, by using everyday Jewish experiences and referring back to Old Testament prophecies, Jesus is communicating who He is - the anointed one, the Messiah. In the Gospel today, we focus on Jesus as the good shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep; who doesn’t run away; who knows His flock; who leads His flock. Jesus doesn’t run away. Jesus doesn’t back down in the face of sin. The Cross proves that. On the Cross, Jesus takes the worst that humanity has to offer - sin, hate, greed, lust, jealousy, murder, theft, gluttony, all the evil in the world. There isn’t a nail that could have kept God affixed to the Cross. No. He had to want to stay there. Why? Because He is the good shepherd. In the first reading today, Peter is explaining the means by which the crippled man was healed. He explains that the man was healed in the name of Jesus. Jesus is the good shepherd who saves His people. Jesus’s own name means God saves. As we pray into our week, brothers and sisters, when faced with difficulty, frustration, suffering, or the like, perhaps we can simply call on the saving name of Jesus who has truly conquered this world. Know of my prayers for you all. Fr. Ryan