Please join us each Sunday after the 8:45 AM Mass in O'Connell Hall for coffee hour. Good coffee, good food and good fellowship!!
March 6th is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season. Join us for services at 9 AM and 7:30 PM that day.
We invite parishioners of all ages and levels of musical experience to join our regular and seasonal choirs. All voice parts are welcome. We have a particular need for sopranos and tenors. The choir sings at 11 AM Sunday Masses (September through June), and special liturgies including Christmas, Holy Wekk and Easter. Rehearsals are on Wednesday at 7:30 PM and on Sundays at 10:10 AM. To learn more about our choir, please contact our music director, Daesik Cha at dcha@olossharon.org .
Copies of the letter was added to the bulletin, however if you did not receive a copy here is the link to the letter published by the Archdiocese ot Boston, Dioceses of Fall River, Springfield and Worcester.
Click here.
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THE WONDER OF NEW LIFE
We are delighted to inform you that Esther Louise Murray, the new baby of our Faith Formation Director Theresa Coda and her husband Caleb Murray will be baptized at the 11:00 AM Mass on this Sunday February 24. We are looking forward to welcoming Esther to our faith community with great joy.
DEATH
This is such a stark word and such a stark reality that we like to avoid it if we can. Increasingly, we even avoid the word “died.” More and more people say that someone “passed.” For some reason, this year 2019 seems to have had more of death already. Last year, 2018, at this time we had one funeral in the parish and thirteen for the entire year. This year, 2019, we have already had five funerals and I seem to have added RIP to my personal address book too many times in the last year.
Thus we look forward eagerly to spring when nature and Easter remind us of the foundational reality of our faith that in death “life is changed not ended.” That is so because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and overcame death not only for himself but for us as well. I try to share this message with families understanding full well the intensity of their grief. When you officiate at multiple funerals you have to appreciate that for every family, theirs is the only one at the moment and enter into it with that in mind.
I have experienced my own loss in this season as well. Earlier this month, my friend Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Walter Edyvean died. I served Walter’s first Mass on December 17, 1964, the day after he was ordained in Rome.
Walter’s demeanor was reserved but he was kind, thoughtful and interesting with a delightful sense of humor. He was committed to the church, devoted to a life of prayer and took his obligation to know, present and teach the word of God very seriously. He prepared for every Eucharist as he did for his first. He was truly a great priest and a dear friend.
Let me mention before I go on too long that on this Saturday at 4:30 pm, Mass will be offered for my late wife, Janice on the fourth anniversary of her death. She was a dear wife, a loving mother and a wonderful teacher. In this unexpected twist that life has taken for me she has contributed much to the priesthood I’m blessed to share with you.
In the light of all this, the promise of Christ assures us that we are, in fact, a Resurrection people. As the opening prayer of the wake service begins: “…we believe that all the ties of friendship and affection which knit us as one throughout our lives do not unravel with death.”
So, as we look forward to, yearn for spring, let us be aware also, that the return of the green, the rising of the sun in the sky, the extension of daylight, the resurrection of nature points to the source of our hope, the foundation of our faith and the promise that gives meaning to it all, Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead.
~Fr. Frank