Pastor's Message
Third Sunday of Easter, 18 April 2021
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HS
JMJ
Dear Fellow Saints-in-the-Making,
Greetings in Christ our Risen Lord!
As the Church continues to celebrate the Easter Season, She focuses on readings from the Acts of the Apostles, from the Beloved Disciple John’s First Letter, and from the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In other words, the Church reminds us that there were living witnesses of the Risen Savior whose encounters with Him so utterly transformed their hearts that they become bold enough, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim to those who crucified Jesus that Jesus is Lord, that He is the Christ and that He and He alone is expiation for our sins.
Just as Christ has called living witnesses in the days and centuries since His Resurrection, so He continues to call living witnesses today: you and me. We can be faithful witnesses by harvesting the Paschal spiritual fruit that has grown from our Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Have my Lenten prayers blossomed into sharing the prayers of Alleluia, He is risen! with others I meet?
Has my fasting made me more aware of the spiritual hunger that many suffer from, because they do not believe in Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life?
Has my almsgiving sparked an on-going love in my heart for the needs of those who go without the joy of being in the Presence of our Eucharistic Lord, risen and glorified?
What we sacrificed in Lent is intended to bear fruit that may be shared with many for their holiness and for God’s glory, just as Peter’s words share the Good News of the Mercy of Christ with those who crucified Him, and just as our Deacons’ ministry to our parish bears abundant fruit for the good of all.
On the weekend of the Fifth Sunday of Easter, (this year May 2), we will institute a new celebration at St. Jude the Apostle Parish: Diaconate Sunday, where we will honor and celebrate the many contributions that our seven Deacons make to our parish. Please consider writing them a note or a card including an intention to pray for them, perhaps in a Rosary or a Divine Mercy Chaplet. They faithfully live two vocations—husband and clergy—and are living witnesses of Christ Jesus in the two corresponding Sacraments of Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders. Please take the time after the Masses on the weekend of May 2 to stop by the parish hall to personally thank them for being the living witnesses Jesus calls them to be for our parish. I do not know where we would be without them.
May God be praised for His generosity to us and may we all of us be the living witnesses of Jesus the Risen Savior.
God love you!
I do.
Fr. Lewis
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Jesus must increase; I must decrease. John 3:30