January - 2022

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, March 26th

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, March 19th

Drawn to Repentance and Conversion -- Sermon for III Sunday in Lent

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, March 12th

Original sin, boredom, and the empire of empty desire (Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, 2023)

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, February 26th

Loving Our Enemies (Sermon for Sunday, February 19, 2023)

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, Februrary 19th

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, February 12th

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, January 29

Archive

Sermon: What do we do with anger? (IV Sunday through the Year, January 29th, 2022)

What is it that makes you really, really angry? Is it the car that cuts you off in traffic, the guy at the store who’s not wearing a mask, the lady who’s wearing two masks, your kid who just doesn’t get it, your parent who just doesn’t get it? Whatever it is that makes us collectively angry, people have been doing a lot more of it lately. Each year, the Gallup polling organization does an assessment of the world’s emotional state. In the last decade they noticed a disturbing

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, January 30th

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Today we kick off Catholic Schools Week! This week we celebrate Catholic education. It is a great blessing for our parish to support a Catholic school – one which this year now offers preschool through sixth grade! We are opening registration for our school early this year. If your children are not currently attending St. John’s school, this is the opportunity to consider whether Catholic education might be the right fit for your family. A

Pastor's Weekly Column: Sunday, January 23rd

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Thank you to everyone who came to the pro-life rally at St. Thomas parish on Saturday to support the right to life of unborn children. We must keep praying and fasting for this most important intention as we await the Supreme Court’s decision in the Mississippi abortion case. Whatever the outcome of that case, though, making abortion illegal is not going to solve the problem of our world’s lack of appreciation of the value of human life in

Sermon: The Love of the Bridegroom

“This day we keep a holiday in honour of three wonders, this day a star led the wise men to the manger; this day at the marriage, water was made wine; this day was Christ, for our salvation, pleased to be baptized of John in Jordan. Alleluia.” Two weeks ago, on the Solemnity of the Epiphany, the Church rejoiced to sing this antiphon at Vespers, the official evening prayer of the Church. We associate the Epiphany with the three wise men and the star they follow, but in fact al

Pastor's Weekly Column: Sunday, January 16th

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, We are back to the “green Sundays” of Ordinary Time today. It won’t be long until we are starting Lent, though! Ash Wednesday is less than two months away. Another milestone for the implementation of our Parish Priority Plan – this week our team meets for a communication training session. We look forward to learning better how to keep you informed about the great progress we are making as we work to implement this plan. Next weekend marks

Pastor's Weekly Update: Sunday, January 9th

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Today we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. This is the “official” end of the Christmas season, and when you come to church next Sunday or during the week this week you’ll notice that the Christmas decorations have been put away. In an extended sense, though, the Christmas season continues until the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas) on February 2nd. In Rome, all the nativity scenes stay out until February 2nd t