Dear brothers and sisters,

Happy Easter! Alleluia, He is risen! I hope everyone had a very holy and happy Easter. I am so thankful for the many people who assisted in making our Triduum and Easter celebrations so special. A special thank you to our Director of Music Michael Taylor, Janet our organist and our wonderful Holy Innocents Choir. We also brought Ashley, Bernadette, Andrew, and Tia into the faith! A special thank you for that, to Sr. Bernadette and her RCIA Team for their dedication and hard work. Also, a special thank you to Ed Sawicki and Ed Fletcher, and their team of volunteers for making the Church look so beautiful.

This week we continue the Easter celebration and recall in a special way the work our Lord accomplished through His passion, death and resurrection. Saint John Paul II instituted this weekend as Divine Mercy Sunday. Saint John Paul II once explained, “In this way, in Christ and through Christ, God also becomes especially visible in His mercy; that is to say, there is emphasized that attribute of the divinity which the Old Testament, using various concepts and terms, already defined as “mercy.” Christ confers on the whole of the Old Testament tradition about God’s mercy a definitive meaning. Not only does He speak of it and explain it by the use of comparisons and parables, but above all He Himself makes it incarnate and personifies it. He Himself, in a certain sense, is mercy. To the person who sees it in Him – and finds it in Him – God becomes “visible” in a particular way as the Father who is rich in mercy.”

We call upon the never-ending mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. This Divine Mercy Sunday will have a special prayer service at 3:00pm in the Church with Eucharistic Adoration and confessions and praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Let us continue our Easter celebration by honoring this great feast of the love of our Lord through calling on the great mercy He offers us. Let us take advantage of this great gift of mercy found in the sacrament of confession. Christ’s mercy comes to us through His wounds. And when we bring Him our wounds in the sacrament of confession, our very wounds become an entrance point for His merciful love, and we experience the peace and the joy that Christ wants to give each of us.

Peace,

Fr. Mike