Happy Birthday Pope Benedict

Pope Benedict turned 85 years old today. His celebration today included dancers from his native Bavaria as well as meeting with Bishops from Bavaria as well. He is the oldest pope since Pope Leo XIII who lived to be 93, dying in 1903. Thursday will mark the 7th anniversary of his election as pope.

Today, in his reflection, he spoke of two saints who have inspired him: St. Bernadette of Lourdes and St. Benedict Joseph Labre.

Pope Benedict also said, “I don’t know what awaits me. The light of the Risen One, however, is stronger than all darkness and also helps the Pope to go forward with confidence.” For more on his day and his message, click here.

Divine Mercy Sunday

The message and devotion to Jesus as The Divine Mercy is based on the writings of Saint Faustina Kowalska, an uneducated Polish nun who, in obedience to her spiritual director, wrote a diary of about 600 pages recording the revelations she received about God’s mercy. Even before her death in 1938, the devotion to The Divine Mercy had begun to spread.

The message of mercy is that God loves us — all of us — no matter how great our sins. He wants us to recognize that His mercy is greater than our sins, so that we will call upon Him with trust, receive His mercy, and let it flow through us to others. Thus, all will come to share His joy. It is a message we can call to mind simply by remembering ABC.

A — Ask for His Mercy. God wants us to approach Him in prayer constantly, repenting of our sins and asking Him to pour His mercy out upon us and upon the whole world.

B — Be merciful. God wants us to receive His mercy and let it flow through us to others. He wants us to extend love and forgiveness to others just as He does to us.

C — Completely trust in Jesus. God wants us to know that the graces of His mercy are dependent upon our trust. The more we trust in Jesus, the more we will receive.

Your Flowers Are Growing

Flowers are busily growing at the nursery to be sold as part of HSA's fundraiser this spring for St. Columbkille Catholic School. But you only have until April 16th to order!

 

 

 

To get an order form,

click here

A Lot of Drama

Last night the Drama Club presented Scenes from a Middle School.

Middle School students portrayed a variety of scenes including detentions, fashions, future plans, manliness, trick or treating and the antics of imaginary pets.

 

 

Congratulations to the everyone who

was part of this great production!

40 Days for Life

Members of St. Columbkille Parish took one of the 40 Days for life praying in vigil for 24 hours outside the abortion site in Bellevue.

We thank everyone who put their faith in action.

A New Photo Directory

It's been six years since our last Photo Directory.

It's time for a new one!

Click on the link to make your appointment.

The directory doesn't cost the parish anything. The directory knows that about half of our parishioners will decide to purchase some additional pictures. They also know that the other half will be content with their free 8 x 10 picture and free copy of the directory.

Please get you picture taken.

The directory won't be complete without you!

Dogs providing Therapy

Students in our After School Care program

were recently visited by some Therapy Dogs.

These animals are trained to visit people in hospitals,

nursing homes and other places where they

can provide comfort simply by being there.

We can learn something from therapy dogs.



From Pope Benedict's Easter Homily

At the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word on Easter night, then, comes the account of the creation of the world. Two things are particularly important here in connection with this liturgy. On the one hand, creation is presented as a whole that includes the phenomenon of time. The seven days are an image of completeness, unfolding in time. They are ordered towards the seventh day, the day of the freedom of all creatures for God and for one another. Creation is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an encounter between love and freedom. On the other hand, what the Church hears on Easter night is above all the first element of the creation account: "God said, ‘let there be light!’" (Gen 1:3). The creation account begins symbolically with the creation of light. The sun and the moon are created only on the fourth day. The creation account calls them lights, set by God in the firmament of heaven. In this way he deliberately takes away the divine character that the great religions had assigned to them. No, they are not gods. They are shining bodies created by the one God. But they are preceded by the light through which God’s glory is reflected in the essence of the created being.

What is the creation account saying here? Light makes life possible. It makes encounter possible. It makes communication possible. It makes knowledge, access to reality and to truth, possible. And insofar as it makes knowledge possible, it makes freedom and progress possible. Evil hides. Light, then, is also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness. It is daylight, which makes it possible for us to act. To say that God created light means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love. Matter is fundamentally good, being itself is good. And evil does not come from God-made being, rather, it comes into existence only through denial. It is a "no".

At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: "Let there be light". The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. "Let there be light", says God, "and there was light": Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us.

Happy Easter

On the last day of preschool before the Easter

Break, we set out for an Easter Egg Hunt.

It was a beautiful day to be outside.

Once inside, we compared eggs.

We prepared to go home with an Easter surprise on our heads.

 We wish everyone a Happy Easter!

The Secret and Solution to Family Problems Lie in the Crucified Christ

Each year in Rome, The Way of the Cross is celebrated at the

Colosseum. Meditations for the 14 stations are written each year.

This year, at Pope Benedict XVI's request, Anna Maria and Danilo Zanzucchi wrote the reflections. It is the first time the reflections have been written by a married couple. Anna Maria and Danilo are an Italian couple with 5 children and 12 grandchildren.

“In the face of such an important task, our first reactions were of wonder and trepidation, for we did not feel equal to it,” Danilo said.

“In reflecting on the Cross," Anna said, "We felt that not only the Church but the whole of humanity is caught up in this mystery. It is also clear how much Christ must have suffered, like any human being but with the sensitivity of a God.

“In our meditations, we have sought to convey our impressions of what Jesus lived in those moments, seeking to actualize them in the light of our own experience. It was not of course easy because we stand before such a great mystery. Yet we firmly believe that the secret and the solution to family problems lie in the Crucified Jesus. Christ on the Cross gave meaning to the pain we must face.

“I would just like to tell families in difficulty that we too have had our problems. Our marriage was born from reciprocal love like the marriage of every husband and wife. It is this spark that nourishes marriage. However, this love is sometimes extinguished because of many factors, it remains hidden and is forgotten, but its initial impetus lives on although it is smothered by the worries, misunderstandings and dramas of daily life. It must be rediscovered in the light of the love of God which unites. Christianity, in fact, brings two people who seek to love God and to love each other to be at once united and nevertheless distinct."

For their meditations, see the Vatican website.

Here is one excerpt:

As with each individual Christian, so each family has its own way of the cross, marked by sickness, death, financial troubles, poverty, betrayal, wrongdoing, clashes with relatives, natural disasters.

Yet each Christian, each family, in walking this path of sorrows, can look resolutely to Jesus, man and God.