Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

As I did in my homily last Sunday, I invite all of us to look at the season of Lent this year a little differently.  Along with all of the "unprecedented" realities which we have confronted, I would like to include the radical way in which God includes us in his plan and enters into our lives, even when that plan doesn't look attractive.  It all has to do with accepting the sacrifice, knowing it is worth it.  

This year I challenge you not just to give up something that you would normally find pleasant or comforting, but to embrace the desert we are already living in.  Lent, as far as I am concerned, has been going on for a year already with this pandemic.  We have never stopped giving things up.  It has been a continual desert with its own challenges and limitations.  The challenge this year is to embrace it.  Even in the desert can be incredible beauty.  Can you embrace it?

You might think that is an odd question, but consider this.  We don’t fast for the sake of fasting, just to be able to say we did.  We don’t fast and pray and share what we have, in order to be recognized for it, or to feel good about ourselves – I hope.  As Jesus says, if that is the case, then we trade our true reward for the momentary pride of fasting, or praying.  We don't fast and pray and give alms for their own sake, but in order to ready ourselves to respond to the mission to which God calls us.  There is a wider vision of the horizon to be discovered.

The purpose of Christ’s mission is the restoration of all creation and we, as parts of his Body, contribute to the whole.  There is a humility to this truth, as well as an exaltation which comes by the nature of our work.  Our sacrifices here in the desert help the entire community arrive to the promised land.  Everything we do is oriented not to ourselves, or our kids, or our friends:  our work is the work of salvation lived out in us as baptized members of Christ to bring forward, through us, all who still are in darkness, or despair, or confusion.  We reach out Jesus’ hand to them, and Jesus lifts them up.

This is the role of community.  Feeling like we belong is a wonderful benefit of community, but not the goal.  Real belonging only is realized when we begin to do what we say we believe.  It is when we embrace the leper, welcome and eat dinner with sinners, endure temptation, and pick people up out of the dust of poverty and addiction that Jesus is made known to them – and to us – and we truly live as he lives in us.  The result is pure healing, something our world needs desperately.

Each year we are reminded of how we have not fully lived out our baptism as members of Jesus’ body.  God gives us yet another chance to enter into the mystery of the work at hand.  We have 40 days in this little desert of Lent to prepare to join at the celebration of Easter when we will renew our promises of baptism and reclaim our mission in Christ.

God bless you.

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Lent is here!  We are two weeks in the liturgical year cycle from the start of the pandemic in 2020.  Unreal.  The good news is that we will be able to schedule our liturgies more normally as we have in past years for our Parish Mission, Stations of the Cross and Holy Week / Triduum liturgies.  The only difficulty is that we will be limited to 250 persons for each event and undoubtedly in many instances reservations will be required in advance.  If you want to attend, please make reservations.

Our Parish Mission (what has been 40 Hours of adoration) will be quite abbreviated.  We will begin following the regular 5pm Mass on Feb. 28, as well as a special 6:30pm Mass on Monday, Mar. 1, with a holy hour of adoration, including talks by Fr. Cedric Wilson, "Spirituality and Sanity."  Masses and talks will be live-streamed.  One year into the pandemic we have a real need to integrate our spirituality in helping one another to cope with the privations and isolation of the pandemic.  Fr. Cedric is a seasoned professional with 20 years of experience within the mental health profession.  He has specialized in the area of supporting at-risk children and their families, and has served in numerous capacities as a mental health clinician with Johns Hopkins Hospital.  He currently provides outpatient mental health services to children and adolescents with a primary focus on significant social, emotional and behavioral problems.  His caseload consists of twenty-five students ranging from six to thirteen years of age, their families, and their school staff.  He received his Masters of Divinity from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, an M.S. in Mental Health Counseling (Univ. of St. Thomas, Miami), and M.S. and Ph.D. in Psychology (both at Howard University).

Stations of the Cross will be Fridays at 7:30pm. That will mean that Confessions will need to end a little before Stations begin, since we are hearing Confessions openly in the church.  Please be patient as we navigate this.  We will not be live-streaming Stations, but a recording of Stations from last year is available on our website.

Additional Confessions will be on most Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the church (watch the bulletin calendar on p.2 for exceptions).  Here is how it is going to work:  we will form a line in the church vestibule, socially distanced, at the center doors of the main aisle, and down to the halfway break in the aisle.  The person waits there until the priest at the handicap door to the left or the St. Bernadette shrine to the right is free.  There will not be screens or kneelers as we will not be able to sanitize in between each Confession.  Then people leave up the side aisles to exit the church.  We ask that people do not line up seated in the pews, as everyone in line will be sharing the same spaces over and over.  Saturday Confessions will continue to be in the gym as we will need to sanitize the church on some days prior to the 5pm Mass.

The Holy Week schedule will look like other years, again, but with limits on the size of the assembly.  Some things will be a little different, but essentially the same.  We'll talk about Holy Week in the near future, as I am hoping that some restrictions might be lifted since we are all being so good about following the guidelines and case numbers are dropping. 

God bless you.