May 31, 2020 - Pentecost Sunday

Dear Friends in Christ:

Today we celebrate the great Feast of Pentecost…that moment when the Lord sent the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles which gave them the strength and courage to leave the Upper Room and fearlessly begin to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We celebrate this great Feast ending the Easter Season as we began it-under a time of lockdown and self-isolation. The limited reopening, including government guidelines on limiting the number of people that can gather together in large groups, prohibits us from gathering together at the altar of God to celebrate the birthday of the Church as we normally would.

We have many things that can cause us to live in fear in addition to the Coronavirus, don’t we? Perhaps the most common is the fear of the unknown which, of course, has been one of the side-effects of this pandemic. It is a very real fear. One common theme that comes up in many conversations with parishioners throughout the year is this fear of the unknown and how to deal with it. Most of us, if not all, at some point have had to deal with this fear in our own