My Dear Parishioners, An essential image from nature emerges from the Gospel of this First Sunday of Lent. In it we find the key for living the next six weeks fruitfully. It is that of the desert. After Jesus was baptized, but before he began his years of public ministry, St Mark tells us in today's Gospel that the Spirit "drove Jesus out into the desert," where he experienced temptation. Throughout the Bible, the desert is often referred to a place of testing, where we experience our weakness and dependence on God.
My Dear Parishioners, This Monday is the feast of our Patron Saint, St. Agatha. Here is her story that I have sourced from various places on the internet (reliable sources!)
My Dear Parishioners, Sometimes we don't believe in the transforming power of God's grace, because we have the wrong idea of how it works. We think it should work like magic. But God's work in our soul takes a lifetime. St. Paul's encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus was a real, powerful, and transforming experience, but it was only the beginning of a long spiritual journey. Only after many years in which he allowed God's grace to spread into every corner of his mind and heart did he receive his missionary call. And that's how God's grace usually works.
My Dear Parishioners, An essential image from nature emerges from the Gospel of this First Sunday of Lent. In it we find the key for living the next six weeks fruitfully. It is that of the desert. After Jesus was baptized, but before he began his years of public ministry, St Mark tells us in today's Gospel that the Spirit "drove Jesus out into the desert," where he experienced temptation. Throughout the Bible, the desert is often referred to a place of testing, where we experience our weakness and dependence on God.
My Dear Parishioners, St. Agatha was born in AD 235 at the foot of Mt. Etna, to a wealthy noble family. She is still an adolescent when she manifests the will to consecrate herself to God, and with the ritual of velatio (the “taking of the veil”) receives from her bishop the flammeum, the red veil then worn by consecrated virgins. In AD 250 the edict of Emperor Decius against Christians opened a long persecution, and in Catania, the ruthless proconsul Quintian, who was infatuated with Agatha, was given charge to carry out the edict.