Saint Thérèse will have her feast day this week! Hopefully you received our mailing about how we will honor God’s “little flower." If you did not, the letter and novena prayer can be found on our
website. Please join us, whether in person or via YouTube livestream, at 7:00 PM on Thursday, October 1st, to celebrate our patroness with an evening of prayer. It will probably last about one hour (or a tad more). We will also have a bonfire afterwards, starting around 8:15 PM. Bring snacks for yourselves and we will have a socially-responsible evening of joyful fellowship with each other!
This evening will also begin a nine-day series (“novena”) of videos on our beloved sister in heaven. Different talks, pre -recorded, will be available for viewing and sharing our love for Thérèse and for praying the daily novena prayer together. These also will be available on our website, as well as our YouTube and Facebook pages. I hope you enjoy these videos and grow closer to our Lord through our spiritual friendship with Thérèse and with fellow parishioners!
Next Sunday we will also pray the prayers for St. Thérèse so the we can celebrate her more during our novena. God is very good to us to give us such a lovely friend in heaven who wishes to spend her time doing good on earth, strewing a shower of roses for us.
On another note, this is of course a trying year to be celebrating together. While the U.S. makes 5% of the world’s population, we have accounted for about 20% of all the COVID-related deaths throughout the globe. While we grieve the lives cut short for the human family as people are brought home to the Lord, we are reminded through this feast that heaven is very close. The veil that is between us and heaven is very thin. The saints are here, and we will soon be there. Finally, as we say in the the Order of Christian Burial at the vigil ceremony (usually at the “wake" the night before the funeral): My brothers and sisters, we believe that all the ties of friendship and affection which knit us as one throughout our lives do not unravel with death. This truth of our faith in Christ Jesus’ resurrection gives us hope even as we face the painful reality of so many lives lost.
As we continue to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet at 3pm as a parish staff (almost every day but not quite!), we entrust the souls of the faithful departed to the mercy of God, including our own parishioners who have succumbed to the lethal virus. May God’s mercy shower them and make them whole in the new life that Jesus won for us.
Let us remember this light of faith as the world continues to grow darker these next three months leading us toward the Christmas season. My, how the time flies!