Please subscribe to receive email notifications of announcements and other parish events.
STREAMING SUNDAY AND WEEKDAY MASSES
Today's Live-Streamed Mass
Worship Aid for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
We have changed our parish office hours to the summer schedule. We will not be open weekday evenings or on Sundays until after Labor Day.
Also, please make a note on your calendars: There will be no 7am daily Mass from July 4-12. Please join us daily at 9am.
Mark your calendars for these upcoming dates!
Parish Life Weekend – September 17-18
La Gran Pollada (Parish Super Peruvian Chicken
Dinner) – Saturday afternoon, September 17
Anniversary Mass for the Dedication of our church, Friday, October 14
El Senor de los Milagros/Lord of the Miracles Mass and Procession – Saturday, October 15
Parish Family Picnic, Saturday, October 22
Echo Yard Sale, Saturday, October 29
TestSTREAMING SUNDAY AND WEEKDAY MASSES
Today's Live-Streamed Mass
Worship Aid for Corpus Christi
The Lord be with you,
STREAMING SUNDAY AND WEEKDAY MASSES
Today's Live-Streamed Mass
Worship Aid for Pentecost Sunday
Come join us as we celebrate the end of Easter Season with Solemn Vespers (Evening Prayer II) of Pentecost at 6:15pm on Sunday, June 5. It’s a fully sung Vespers with beautiful musical settings of the psalms and antiphons chosen for easy participation for all. It will last about 25 minutes. The great Paschal cycle that we began with the Eucharist of Ash Wednesday concludes now with this joyful liturgy.
Religious Education Registration is now open for our summer classes for students who have missed a year (or years) in Religious Education and those who were unable to attend regularly this year. This “catch-up” opportunity will be a one week, full day class held June 27-July 1. If you would like more information about this class, please contact Lynn Jones.
Mark your calendars for these upcoming dates!
Parish Life Weekend – September 17-18
La Gran Pollada – Saturday afternoon, September 17
Anniversary Mass for the Dedication of our church, Friday, October 14
El Senor de los Milagros/Lord of the Miracles Mass and Procession – Saturday, October 15
Parish Family Picnic, Saturday, October 22
Echo Yard Sale, Saturday, October 29
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
What if you were told that you already have been given everything you need to change the world? In this time of Easter Peace and Pentecost Promise, isn't that exactly what Jesus has been saying? The first disciples and new believers took his words literally and there were manifestations of the Holy Spirit and healings that filled the Church. With the passing of time, I guess, memories faded. Self doubt and judgment overshadowed the childlike joy and acceptance of everything that Jesus received from the Father and passed on to us in the Holy Spirit.
We knew better.
As I reflect on these things, I believe that this has been the greatest disservice of the Church, and our greatest failing. We were taught to doubt the certainty of God's indwelling in our humanity because we are weak and sinful. Especially in this country, Christianity with its Calvinist roots, this "sinners in the hands of an angry God" perspective has made our starting point in faith a handicap, and not a superpower. Focusing on our lack, we are trained to always beg for more. Because somehow you have to earn all of this, right? We look through a lens that we will never be enough, and that is not okay.
I claim this failure also for myself. How many years I have taught people "God loves you," without being really convinced that "God loves me?"
None of it is earned, or merited, or bought by us. The great price was paid by none other than the Son of God himself, who came and gave himself up for us and our salvation while we were still sinners. Thank him that he didn't wait for our moment of personal perfection; we would still be waiting.
Is it any wonder, then, in an institutional system understood as predicated on judgment, that we find ourselves at odds at most, if not every, turn? But isn't it precisely that we will never be enough that this unlikely love of God fills us, and it is in our weakness that we see his strength? Perfection in virtue, thankfully, is not a gift that arrives fully developed for the few. We are all of us works in progress, no exceptions, so we must not reject any who are still on the path.
We celebrate Pentecost because it is the final act of God in what one theologian has called "The Great Theodrama," when God's living interaction with his beloved continues, now, to unfold in time through the work of the Holy Spirit. You have already received everything from God: life and humanity, divinized and united in the Body of Christ, filled with grace, poised at the starting block to run like the wind. It is the Holy Spirit now who is our partner to finish the race—the Spirit of Christ proceeding from the Father and the Son.
Let us beg God the Holy Spirit—not for more, but for ongoing enlightenment, transformation. Help us to know the power and beauty of our baptismal life in God. Some people refer this realization being "born again," an expression sadly doubted by many as sounding too "not-Catholic." Perhaps it isn't being born again but rather, finally, the realization of what it means, in God's love, to be truly born.
The Lord be with you,
STREAMING SUNDAY AND WEEKDAY MASSES
Today's Live-Streamed Mass
Worship Aid for the Ascension of the Lord
Parish Offices will be closed in observance of the Memorial Day Holiday on May 31. Please note there will be no 7am Mass that morning.
Come join us as we celebrate the end of Easter Season with Solemn Vespers (Evening Prayer II) of Pentecost at 6:15pm on Sunday, June 5. It’s a fully sung Vespers with beautiful musical settings of the psalms and antiphons chosen for easy participation for all. It will last about 25 minutes. The great Paschal cycle that we began with the Eucharist of Ash Wednesday concludes now with this joyful liturgy.
Religious Education Registration is now open for our summer classes for students who have missed a year (or years) in Religious Education and those who were unable to attend regularly this year. This “catch-up” opportunity will be a one week, full day class held June 27-July 1. If you would like more information about this class, please contact Lynn Jones.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
The deep divisions in our community, our Church and conflicts between nations will only be resolved under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in prayer and obedience to the Holy Spirit, and in dialogue that seeks the peace that only Christ can give. This time between his ascension and sending of the Spirit at Pentecost is a powerful time for us to call on the Holy Spirit to heal our world. Jesus has given us the solution.
At the heart of dialogue it is Christ’s peace, above all, that we seek. In Christ’s peace, people have to listen to each other with the recognition that neither party is completely right or wrong, consider the reasons for each others’ views and avoid making one’s own views absolute.
This peace isn’t knowable only by Catholics, or even exclusive to Christians. It is given to all who seek it, and all peacemakers who make it. “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will.” The song of the angels rang out into the night of Jesus’ birth, before anyone knew who he was, long before anyone had heard of Christianity.
His kingdom of peace is already present in him, but not yet perfect in us. Our job in history is to be bridges of what is, to what is to come. "Blessed are the peacemakers – theirs is the kingdom of God."
At first glance, our diversity can appear as the cause of our divisions, but convergence is also possible. Divergence, or splitting apart, is often the result of a lack of self-reflection or a lack of formation in values. It results in tribalism. Sometimes it happens by someone’s evil intention, but I think most of the time it happens when we choose to be ignorant or indifferent. Without intentionality and discipline humans tend to stray.
Jesus says, to anyone who follows the commandment of love, the Son and the Father come to dwell and the Holy Spirit, their bond of love, explains all the truth that Jesus has brought. The gift of the Holy Spirit who comes is not rationed, as we might be tempted to think, less to one or more to another. There is no partial gift of the Holy Spirit.
In our dialogue for Christian unity maybe we have been starting at the wrong place. Rather than convincing each other we are right, maybe we begin learning who each other are, focusing on that real presence of the Holy Spirit who does not deny himself to anyone who seeks him.
In our encountering one another, can we recognize one another as people of faith, hope and love? Since the greatest of these is love, perhaps if we do not find at first our unity in faith, we can begin by choosing to become people united in love. Maybe mutual hope will follow. As peacemakers we will know a genuine and lasting peace.
The Holy Spirit, who is the bond of love will enter into our diversity and transform our divergence to convergence, and our hearts' longing into peace.
Easter blessings. The Lord be with you,
STREAMING SUNDAY AND WEEKDAY MASSES
Today's Live-Streamed Mass
Worship Aid for Sixth Sunday of Easter
Parish Offices will be closed in observance of the Memorial Day Holiday on May 31. Please note there will be no 7am Mass that morning.
Come join us as we celebrate the end of Easter Season with Solemn Vespers (Evening Prayer II) of Pentecost at 6:15pm on Sunday, June 5. It’s a fully sung Vespers with beautiful musical settings of the psalms and antiphons chosen for easy participation for all. It will last about 25 minutes. The great Paschal cycle that we began with the Eucharist of Ash Wednesday concludes now with this joyful liturgy.
Religious Education Registration is now open for our summer classes for students who have missed a year (or years) in Religious Education and those who were unable to attend regularly this year. This “catch-up” opportunity will be a one week, full day class held June 27-July 1. If you would like more information about this class, please contact Lynn Jones.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
There are conflicting messages about the Mass and how we celebrate it in the Church today and often I hear peoples' frustration. I include today Cindy Wooden's reporting on a recent teaching of Pope Francis (CNS).
The study and celebration of the liturgy should lead to a sense of awe before God, a commitment to mission and a growing unity within the church, not tensions and squabbles, Pope Francis said.
“When liturgical life is a bit of a banner of division, there is the odor of the devil, the deceiver. It is not possible to worship God and at the same time make the liturgy a battlefield,” the pope said May 7 during a meeting with students and professors from the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy at St. Anselm in Rome.
Pope Francis said the institute responded to “the growing need of the people of God to live and participate more intensely in the liturgical life of the church” by understanding it and experiencing “its mystery with an ever-new sense of wonder.” “One does not possess the liturgy,” he said. Rather, the liturgy is lived and celebrated.
However, the pope said, people must be aware of “the temptation of liturgical formalism: to focus on forms, formalities rather than reality, as we see today in those movements that try to go backwards and deny the Second Vatican Council. Then the celebration is recitation, it is something without life, without joy.”
The teaching of every church council has taken time to be accepted fully, he said, and it is no different with Vatican II, especially with its reform of the liturgy.
He told the students and professors that he remembers as a youngster how people were so upset—“they rent their garments”—by reforms that began even before the council, such as Pope XII ruling that drinking water did not violate the required fast before Mass or allowing people to fulfill their Sunday Mass obligation by attending a Saturday evening Mass or the restoration of the Easter vigil on Saturday night.
“All of these things scandalized closed-minded people,” he said, and “it still happens today. Indeed, those with closed mindsets use liturgical patterns to defend their own point of view. Using the liturgy: this is the drama we are experiencing in ecclesial groups that are distancing themselves from the church, questioning the council [and] the authority of the bishops” even as they claim “to preserve tradition.”
Celebrating the liturgy must increase communion within the church and unity with others, he said, because “the liturgical life opens us to each other, to those closest and furthest from the church, in our common belonging to Christ.”
“Giving glory to God in the liturgy finds its counterpart in love of neighbor, in the commitment to live as brothers and sisters in daily life, in the community in which I find myself, with its merits and its limitations.”
And, he said, every Mass or liturgy ends with sending members of the congregation out on mission.
Easter blessings. The Lord be with you,