April 5, 2020 - Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! You have heard our plea and are responding to YOUR parish family and for that, as your Pastor, I thank you!

I was amazed this past week and by now perhaps I should not have been amazed. You always respond when there is a need. For that I thank you! When Madelyn Banti shared with me the numbers from our On-Line Offertory and the Mailed-In Offertory, I was blown away! Both On-Line and Mailed-In more than doubled from the previous week. Now we are still not where we need to be to meet our budgeted needs but your generosity is certainly closing the gap, and is truly remarkable. It is such a sign of your love and commitment to our parish family! Thank you also for easing the stress level I have been feeling lately.

Thank you for understanding that there are still bills to be paid—lights, gas, payroll, insurance, etc. If you have donated this past week I ask that you continue to do so as you are able. If you have yet to send in your donations or offertory please prayerfully consider helping your parish family out now! Here are ways you can give to your Parish:

1. Mail in your offertory! Thank you to the many who sent in their envelopes these past few days. Your generosity makes a real difference!

2. Give online—sign-up for our Online Giving Program by clicking the link on our website.

a. Donations can be made directly from your checking account or by using any major credit card - so you can earn "points" while giving!

b. Donations can be scheduled for whatever frequency (weekly or monthly) you prefer (and if monthly, on whatever day is most convenient), or can be made on a one-time basis.

c. You can designate donations for different purposes: weekly, monthly, and holy day collections, diocesan/national collections, Easter/Christmas flowers, and more!

d. Your bank or credit card information is stored on secure servers contained behind firewalls and other defense systems to prevent unauthorized access. Parish staff cannot access your account information.

Want to learn more about Online Giving? Visit our website www.stbridgetcheshire.org and click the Donate button in the menu on our homepage.

TODAY we celebrate PALM SUNDAY albeit a little differently than perhaps we had planned. Yet the celebration continues despite our not being able to physically be together for this beginning of Holy Week.

TODAY our celebration reminds us that we cannot get to Easter but by the way of Our Lord’s Passion and Cross. This is the week in which we remember and celebrate the foundations of our faith. These are the days of God’s grace and the days in which we are strengthened by the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This week’s liturgies bring out into the open that our hope of resurrection, our entrance into Heaven, which, as Christ so clearly revealed, depends not only on His dying and rising, but also on us taking up our own individual crosses and following Him.

These are the days, above any other day of the year, when we are reminded that:

· if there is no cross, then there is no conquering death;

· if there is no suffering, then there is no rejoicing;

· if there is no faithful following in His path, then there is no spending eternity with Him!

This is Holy Week when shouts of triumph and joy as we celebrate Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem quickly change to shouts of “Crucify him.”

We move today into the most solemn week, Holy Week, and prepare ourselves for the celebration of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection. We begin this week’s long journey with Christ, aware that each of us was in His mind and heart as He endured His suffering to be the sacrifice that takes away our sins. Through His wounds we are healed. Through His resurrection each of us has the hope and promise of sharing in that new life of the resurrection. The renewal of our Baptismal Promises on Easter Sunday will remind us of our hope of forgiveness and our hope in the resurrection!

We have many choices in life.The most important of these is our decision to accept Jesus Christ. But accepting the Lord means being united to him both in his glory and in his passion. Accepting the Lord means being united to him in the joyful times of our lives and through the challenges of our lives such as this pandemic we are in the midst of this very moment. Come! Follow Jesus! May this truly be a holy week for you and your families, and for our parish family as well.

Next Sunday, EASTER SUNDAY, we will hear proclaimed via livestreamed and televised Masses throughout the world, the message of Easter, He is not here, for He has been raised just as he said. This is a message of Hope for the world. This is a message that must be shared! And shared NOW!

THIS is our role in the Hope and Joy of Easter! We are not simply to walk this week with Jesus through His passion, death, and resurrection, nor are we simply to just celebrate these great mysteries of our faith, but we are called to be moved by them, to be motivated, to be empowered to then go out, when times permit it once again, and find ways to proclaim this Good News to all the world.

We are called to find ways to proclaim that Jesus is NOT found among the dead, nor in an empty tomb! No Jesus is alive: He is living, He has been raised from the dead, He is among you!

He is everywhere His people are, you will find Him where hope fights despair, where love battles injustice, where compassion dries the tears of the suffering. Jesus is here in our parish family. He is in each of our parishioners who desire to spread His light in the darkness of our world, who desire to be instruments of His love and mercy in the lives of those around them. He is present in each of us who desire to share in the glory of the Resurrection!

Come and join us this Holy Week! Come join us via Livestream! We are working with some parishioners who are very talented with technology to make these liturgies available on various formats. LINKS WILL BE POSTED ON THE PARISH WEBSITE at www.stbridgetcheshire.org.

Come join us on the walk with Jesus! Come join us as we journey with the Lord through His Passion and Death to the Glory of the Resurrection! This will be a different Holy Week that is for sure. It will be like none other we have ever experienced. For through this holy week we find ourselves in lock down, hunkered in our homes, trying to reduce the spread of this horrific virus. These are NOT the days we expected them to be. We may not be able to be together physically for these celebrations, but we can be together spiritually thanks to the efforts of so many and the tools of social media. Join us LIVESTREAM on Facebook, our Parish Website, and YouTube. See inset below for schedule of services.

As we have for the last couple of weeks, so again this week, you will find in the pages of this bulletin activities, prayers, and suggestions for you and your family during this time of unrest. I have asked the Pastoral Staff to offer you materials to assist you in growing together in faith. I hope you find these resources helpful. In this time without the usual rush to places to be and things to do, read together, pray together, and grow together in faith, hope, and love!

FINALLY, PLEASE BE SURE TO PRAY!Utilize this time, as individuals and as families, to pray for an end to the spreading of Coronavirus.We will get through this together!Please keep in your prayers those caring for others throughout this pandemic especially healthcare providers, nurses, doctors, firefighters, police personnel, and EMT’s that the Lord will bless them, protect them from harm, and keep them healthy!

As always, remember to pray for our parish family and ask God’s blessings upon us all in this time of pandemic. With the gracious intercession of Saint Bridget of Sweden, our Patroness, may we be united with one another in prayer! Please pray for me and know that I am praying for you!

Holy Week in Quarantine

This will certainly be a Holy Week that we remember for the rest of our lives. There is a lot of pain and sorrow in the fact that we will not be able to receive the Eucharist or gather as the Body of Christ in His house on Easter Sunday. I get it. I feel that, too. We are social beings, part of a universal Church that is intensely focused on the betterment of other people! I want to talk a little bit about what Holy Week really is, at its core, and how this one can be just as powerful (if not more so) than the traditional weeks we yearn for.

What do you usually do during Holy Week? A lot of families have traditions, things that they do together to commemorate Christ's passion and celebrate His resurrection. My family is no different! On Good Friday, we attend the Living Stations of the Cross at my home parish in Middletown. There's usually a light soup potluck afterwards, which is a big communal event for the parish. On Easter Sunday, we gather with family and do an Easter egg hunt in the backyard. I'd say about 50% of the time, we take the photos for our Christmas card when we're all dressed up for Easter!

None of that will happen this year. Sure, we will dress up to watch the livestreamed Easter mass, but there will be no Living Stations or family visits on Sunday. BUT (and this is a big but) Holy Week is not made or broken by traditions. Holy Week, at its most basic level, is about proclaiming and professing the Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing will ever change that; not coronavirus, not war, not famine, NOTHING!

I don't think anyone would deny that we are suffering right now. That's pretty obvious. My question is this: is that worse for Holy Week? I would argue that, in a way, it's better. I've been watching a weekly broadcast called ProjectYM Live every Sunday night with the NGD youth group. This week they had Fr. Mike Schmitz on to speak about the Passion of Jesus. If you don't know Fr. Mike, you've gotta check him out on Youtube! He's a Catholic rock star.

Fr. Mike spoke about the Lord's Passion, but in a different way than we're used to. He spoke about the Shroud of Turin and the actual, physical wounds that Jesus received during His Passion. We hear the story so often, it can become sanitized for us. But the Passion was not sanitized, soft, or painless. It was horrible, painful, messy, and gruesome. Jesus was brutally and repeatedly hurt by a number of people.

Another tradition I have is watching the Passion of the Christ film on Good Friday at 3:00, the day and time we associate with Jesus' crucifixion and death. It really affects me, and I'll sometimes find myself crying when I see Jesus being whipped, scorned, and crucified. That's an emotion that is central to Holy Week: sorrow. We should absolutely feel sorrow. Our brother, friend, savior, and Lord suffered tremendously, and we should mourn that pain the same way we would for our best friend here on earth.

That should resonate right now. We are all feeling sorrow, in one way or another. We cannot gather to commemorate the Lord's Last Supper, or be present for Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, or even to physically commemorate His resurrection at mass at the Easter Vigil or on Sunday. But that sorrow is inherently tied to Holy Week. Yes, Jesus rose, and we will be joyful and praise Him when the time comes. But maybe now is the time to unite our sorrow and suffering with that of He who gave His life for us.

I'm sure we've all been told to "offer it up" at one time or another. There is no greater time to offer up our suffering than right now, and perhaps no greater suffering that we can offer than being separated from the Eucharist. And yes, it hurts to not be able to celebrate together on Easter Sunday. But here's the thing: Easter is not a day. Easter is a season.

Easter is not just Sunday, April 12th. Easter is a liturgical season that lasts for 55 days! That's right, folks, Easter is even longer than Lent itself. That means it will STILL be Easter all the way until May 31st. Now, I don't know if this quarantine will be lifted by then. I don't think anyone does; we have to have faith that God will restore the world to some sense of normalcy in His time, not ours. But whether we are able to be together by May 31st or not, Easter is not just this one day. It is a season of rejoicing and praise for the King of the Universe.

Even if we can't gather together, we can still praise Him. Let's unite our Holy Week suffering with His, and then let's make our lives a living testament to His love and mercy during the Easter season. And yes, it will be difficult. But Jesus never said following Him would be easy! In fact, He promised just the opposite. Yes, this Easter will absolutely be different. But let's embrace it.

Make sacrifices for those you're living with. Pray a Divine Mercy Chaplet. Send a gift to a lonely friend. Call your grandmother. Start a prayer intention board. Do anything and everything you can to bring the resurrected Christ into your home and life during this time. He will notice, even if nobody else does. You will never regret calling on Him, and He will never let you down.

I wish you all a safe, blessed, and transformative Holy Week. May God bless you all!

Regis

Lazarus and Coronavirus

How's everybody doing? Okay I hope? It's important to keep checking in on each other, especially those who live alone, during times like this. Make sure you give grandma a call! Seriously, though, we're on week 3 of this now, and there's plenty to be sick of! Leftovers, siblings, boredom, just about anything can annoy us at a time like this. But there's plenty of stuff out there talking about how tough this is. I want to spend some time talking about some stuff that is undeniably, irrefutably, 100% awesome.

Did you catch this Sunday's Gospel? Sure, we can't physically go to mass right now, but that doesn't mean that God isn't around anymore! Fr. Romans and Fr. Federico are livestreaming mass at 1pm every Sunday during this time, and there are literally thousands of streamed masses happening every day around the world. That's one thing I want us to recognize and be grateful for: the extraordinary, revolutionary ministry of our clergy during these tough times.

I have been absolutely blown away by those whom God has chosen for the priesthood throughout all of this. Think about it, this cannot be an easy time to be a priest! How would you feel if you devoted your entire life to bringing people to Christ and the Sacraments and were then told that people wouldn't be around for over a month? That is incredibly difficult! But let's take a look at what some of the world's priests have been up to.

Touching on livestream masses, I personally know many priests who have had to quickly acclimate to technology that they've never used before to share in the mass with their flocks. I've also seen multiple priests and bishops get involved with ProjectYM, a weekly virtual youth group night that's drawn over 10,000 viewers. How amazing it is that our priests, some of them over 70, are working so hard to engage with the young Church and let them know they are not forgotten!

Finally, we have to touch on Pope Francis. If you have not yet seen the video of his Urbi et Orbi blessing from this past Friday, you should. There are few images that have touched me more during this crisis than that of an 83 year old man with sciatica standing in the rain blessing the entire Catholic Church with the Eucharist and kissing the feet of a miraculous Crucifix. Unbelievably powerful. Make sure you pray for our priests during this time. They need our prayers as much as anyone else!

If you did happen to catch a livestream mass this Sunday, or even just read the Gospel for yourself, you'll know that we heard the story of Lazarus. Man, was this timely or what? Gotta love those moments where God tells you exactly what you need to hear. If you remember back, the people are initially resistant to rolling away the stone from Lazarus' tomb. Why? "'But, Lord,' said Martha, the sister of the dead man, 'by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.'" In other words, tombs stink.

One could argue that we're in our own type of tomb right now, stuck inside with limited trips into the wide world. And you know what? It kind of stinks! My good friend, Fr. Erik Lenhart, mentioned something else that stinks in his homily this weekend: fertilizer. Fertilizer is messy, ugly, and smelly, but it brings about new life...just like the tomb of Lazarus.

When Lazarus died and Jesus wept for His friend, many people wondered why He hadn't simply spared Lazarus from death. After all, if Jesus was the Messiah as He claimed, couldn't He have stopped it from happening in the first place? The answer, of course, is yes. Jesus could have stopped Lazarus from dying. However, he chose to allow Lazarus' death so that He could raise him and show the world that He is the Son of God.

The tomb, the fertilizer, and our situation. They all stink! But God uses all things, even the stinky, for good. He is using this craziness for good. I don't know exactly how, but that's because I'm not God. We should take comfort in the fact that He knows why this is happening and the new life that's waiting on the other side of it. Let's look to that. Let's yearn for that. And let's embrace and appreciate it when it gets here.

One final thought before I go: the news can be SUPER scary and anxiety-inducing right now. America's sweetheart, John Krasinski (better known as Jim Halpert from The Office), has started a fantastic Youtube news program called Some Good News that only covers the good news happening right now. If you're down, need a pick-me-up, or just want to smile, check it out. You won't regret it!

Keep praying, keep trusting the Lord, and keep washing those hands. We'll get through this together.

God Bless you all,

Regis

Some Good News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5pgG1M_h_U

ProjectYM Live: https://live.projectym.com/

Pope Francis' Urbi et Orbi blessing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvE1ncKned8