March 17, 2024
Fifth Sunday of Lent
by Fr. Boniface Endorf, OP
Dear St. Joseph Parish Family,
Our Parish Mission is this Monday through Wednesday, 7pm each night! Fr. Gabriel Torretta OP will preach it. He’s a great preacher and it should be a wonderful mission. The topic is “Call Me Jonah: Coward. Bigot. Curmudgeon. Image of Christ.” Fr. Gabriel comments on the topic: “The prophet Jonah isn’t what we think a saint should look like—he’s too mediocre, too petty, too normal. But his story is the story of Lent, the story of redemption, the story of reality. It’s our story.”
Next week is Holy Week, the most important week of the year. There are many special liturgies this week—please see the Triduum and Easter schedule in the bulletin and on the website for times. Triduum means three days—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, the three days of Our Lord’s Passion and Death. Afterwards we celebrate His Resurrection at Easter! These days are the center of our Faith and the special liturgies allow us to be present to Christ during those pivotal days and receive the graces Christ won for us. Attend as many of the liturgies as you can—you certainly won’t regret it, but rather find the joy and peace that Christ invites us to.
God Bless,
Fr. Boniface
Mass Tidbit:
After the “Lamb of God” the priest prays quietly “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, through your Death gave life to the world, free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood, from all my sins and from every evil; keep me always faithful to your commandments, and never let me be parted from you.”
Here the priest prays that the graces of Christ’s Body and Blood, the Eucharist, will free him from all sin and evil and that he may never be separated from Christ. The same should be the desire of all who partake of Christ’s Body and Blood: that we be healed from all spiritual ailments, of all sin and guilt, and be united to Christ and experience the joy and peace that entails. Here we are preparing ourselves with union with God, which is about to literally take place when receiving the Eucharist, and in which we find the fulness of ourselves.
