Please join us and mark your calendar for the last Friday of every month. Our next meeting will be July 27th at 10am in the church. No matter where you are in your journey, come join us as we focus on what we already have and all the ways God has already blessed us. You will be renewed, your attitude will be affected and JOY will overflow.
At the beginning of each Mass, right before the readings from Scripture, the priest prays a special prayer called the Collect. As the name suggests, it gathers together our prayers and focuses them on the central mystery highlighted in that liturgy...
A small but interesting detail in this Sunday’s Gospel is St. Mark’s mention of Jesus’ blood relatives: “Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3) That in turn raises a question for us: Who were these brothers and sisters of the Lord?
The readings this weekend deal with Jesus overcoming death. As the Gospel antiphon tells us, "Our savior Jesus Christ destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel." In the Gospel, we hear a story of a little girl who died. However, when Jesus approaches the girl He says that she is not dead but just asleep. Jesus was ridiculed for this. They probably thought: "Didn't Jesus know that death was just a natural part of life?" Yet according to the book of Wisdom read today: "God did not make death...He fashioned all things that they might have being...God formed man to be imperishable." Death was not part of the plan. Death was not supposed to be a natural part of human life. Death occurred because we chose to follow the devil and disobey God. To cure us from death, Jesus has taught us to reject the devil and obey God instead. If we stop obeying the devil and obey God, we start to live with Jesus. And if we start to live with Jesus, we begin the journey of overcoming death. If we start to live with Jesus, we will experience His same joys, sorrows, and sufferings in this life. However, we can also hope to experience a share of his glory that Jesus experienced after triumphing over the devil by being obedient to His Father on the cross. And if we are obedient to our Father in heaven, we too will rise with Jesus. God bless, Fr. Scott