A sincere welcome to those who are new among us. We hope you find a warm and welcoming faith-home with us. Please introduce yourself after Mass and call the Rectory to register.

COMMUNION UNDER BOTH BREAD AND WINE, MUCH PREFERRED:
With last Sunday’s feast of the Body and Blood of Christ it is inevitable that, among other things, we also look at our communion practice. It is true that, in our church, for centuries, communion was taken in the form of bread only. It is still done in many places. That does not make it right.

Everything in the Mass assumes that communion be taken under both forms of bread and wine. The action of presenting both bread and wine at the presentation of the gifts is not an option. Similarly, in the prayers of the Mas, the double form of communion is simply presupposed…

For example, in Eucharist Prayer 11: “May all of us who share in the body and blood of Christ be brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit.” And in the words of Christ that the priest proclaims it says: Take this, all of you and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you.”---- “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” Come to think of it, it is amazing how we have simply ignored words like this for a long time.

Of course, when we have good reasons to refrain from sharing the cup, that will be respected. But otherwise, we encourage everyone to take communion in the form that is self-evident and that the Mass itself calls for.

POPE BENEDICT XV1 - A GOOD EXAMPLE OF HOW CHRISTIANS PRAY WITH THE PSALMS:
On his recent trip to Poland Pope Benedict visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. On that occasion he gave a remarkable example of how the age-old psalms can serve as a source of authentic prayer. Here follows an extract from what he said:

     To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible – and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany. In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?
     In silence, then, we bow our heads before the endless line of those who suffered and were put to death here; yet our silence becomes in turn a plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, a plea to the living God never to let this happen again.
     I had to come. It is a duty before the truth and the just due of all who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor of Pope John Paul II and as a son of the German people — a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honour, prominence and prosperity but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power.
     How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?
     The words of Psalm 44 come to mind, Israel’s lament for its woes: “You have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness ... because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, 0 Lord? Awake; do not cast us off for ever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” (Psalm 44:19,22-26).
     This cry of anguish, which Israel raised to God in its suffering, at moments of deep distress, is also the cry for help raised by all those who in every age - yesterday, today and tomorrow — suffer for the love of God, for the love of truth and goodness. How many they are, even in our own day!
     We cannot peer into God’s mysterious plan - we see only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history. Then we would not be defending man, but only contributing to his downfall. No - when all is said and done, we must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: “Rouse yourself. Do not forget mankind, your creature!”
     And our cry to God must also be a cry that pierces our very heart, a cry that awakens within us God’s hidden presence — so that his power, the power he has planted in our hearts, will not be buried or choked within us by the mire of selfishness, pusillanimity, indifference or opportunism.
     Let us cry out to God, with all our hearts, at the present hour, when new misfortunes befall us, when all the forces of darkness seem to issue anew from human hearts: whether it is the abuse of God’s name as a means of justifying senseless violence against innocent persons, or the cynicism which refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in him.
     Let us cry out to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more violence - a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the loser.
     The God in whom we believe is a God of reason — a reason, to be sure, which is not a kind of cold mathematics of the universe, but is one with love and with goodness. We make our prayer to God and we appeal to humanity, that this reason, the logic of love and the recognition of the power of reconciliation and peace, may prevail over the threats arising from irrationalism or from a spurious and godless reason.
     The place where we are standing is a place of memory the past is never simply the past. It always has something to say to us; it tells – us the paths to take and the paths not to take. Like John Paul 11,1 have walked alongside the inscriptions in various languages erected in memory of those who died here: inscriptions in Belarusian, Czech, German, Wench, Greek, Hebrew, Croatian, Italian, Yiddish, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Romani, Romanian, Slovak, Serbian, Ukrainian, Judeo-Spanish and English.
     All these inscriptions speak of human grief, they give us a glimpse of the cynicism of that regime which treated men and women as material objects, and failed to see them as persons embodying the image of God.
     Some inscriptions are pointed reminders. There is one in Hebrew the rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm, “We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the slaughter” were fulfilled in a terrifying way.
     At Auschwitz-Birkenau, humanity walked through a “valley of darkness”. And so, here in this place, I would like to end with a prayer of trust — with one of the psalms of Israel which is also a prayer of Christians: “The Lord - is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff- they comfort me ... I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long” (Psalm 23:1-4,6).

SPECIAL EVENTS:
- Congratulations and Best Wishes to all Father Bill, will celebrate his birthday on July 05th.
- Roger and Carmel Gauthier will celebrate their 60th Wedding anniversary on June 29th.

IRISH DANCE LESSONS:
Please see poster at the entrance of the church.