From the Pastor's Desk | March 30, 2025

Candidates and Catechumens

As we enter into these final weeks of Lent, please pray intentionally for our Candidates and Catechumens as they inch all the closer to full communion with the Church.  They are a wonderful group of people! 

A HUGE thank you to Dcn. Jim, Ron and Joan Lenz, and everyone who helps with the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults and prepares our participants to receive the Sacraments.  Our Church is bigger and better because of them! 

May 17 and June 14

Please mark your calendars for May 17 and June 14.  Ryan Ferrigan will be ordained a deacon on May 17 at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, and Dcn. Jack will be ordained a priest on June 14 at St. Mary Cathedral.  

Everyone is invited to attend both ordination Masses.  Actually, everyone is strongly encouraged to attend, pray for, and support both Ryan and Dcn. Jack!  More information will be forthcoming as we get closer.  

Fish Frys

A HUGE thank you to the Knights of Columbus, the Council of Catholic Women, and all the volunteers who make the fish frys not only possible but exceptional!  I hope you saw Anne Readett on WILX 10 last week as St. Martha’s Fish Fry (and homemade doughnuts) were featured.  She did a great job.  Thank you, also, to Lloyd Kendall who took up the coveted job of chairman for the fish frys this year!   

Gospel Reflection

This weekend, we read the familiar parable of the Prodigal Son.  As an aside, if you have never read Henri Nouwen’s book The Return of the Prodigal Son, I strongly recommend that you read it.  

At the end of the parable, after the prodigal son returns and his father embraces him, slaughters the fattened calf, and begins to celebrate, his older brother inquires as to what all the commotion is about.  When he finds out that his brother has returned and his father is celebrating, he becomes angry.  The older son is often overlooked because the story’s main characters are the father and the younger son.  But, it is quite worth praying with the older brother, putting ourselves in the older brother’s shoes.    

Forgiveness is often difficult to understand.  Perhaps you’ve been in the older brother’s shoes, unable to understand how others could forgive so seemingly easily.  Perhaps you’ve been in the shoes of the father but have had extreme difficulty forgiving someone who hurt you so deeply.  Or, perhaps you have found it easy at times to forgive those who hurt you.  Perhaps you’ve been in the prodigal son’s shoes and have begged for forgiveness after having hurt someone so profoundly.  Perhaps you received the gift of forgiveness or perhaps you haven’t.  I have been in all three peoples’ shoes.  In many ways and for various reasons, I remain stuck in all three peoples’ shoes.    

Forgiveness is a profound mystery which requires both God’s grace and human effort or, rather, cooperation with God’s grace.  It is easy to hold on to emotions of anger, revenge, or retribution.  At times, it is so difficult to forgive.  I would argue that it is impossible to forgive without the grace afforded us from God.

Perhaps for us to understand the mystery of forgiveness, we should behold the Cross.  The Cross is the price of forgiveness.  Every time we ask and beg the Lord for forgiveness, we must enter into the realization that God’s forgiveness cost Him something.  His forgiveness cost Him the Incarnation, His Passion, His suffering, His death, His time spent in the tomb, His Resurrection.  Every time we cooperate with God’s grace to forgive, we enter into this profound mystery of the price paid for forgiveness - we unite ourselves all the more deeply to Christ’s blood shed for each one of us.  

As we pray today, let’s spend some time placing ourselves in the older brother’s shoes.  Take some time in silence throughout the week and imagine you are the older brother.  Who in your life has hurt you?  Who in your life are you angry at?  Who in your life are you holding on to anger, revenge, or retribution towards?  Who in your life have you not forgiven?  And, as you pray, ask yourself the question, are you willing to pay the price to forgive?  You might find that the answer is no because the pain of the offense already cost you so much.  Then ask the Lord for His grace - the grace given us through the price He paid to forgive.  The mystery of forgiveness is that it is both a death and a resurrection.   

Know of my prayers for you all!