This column brings you the prayers and Easter greetings of Father Rozman, Father Sahd, Deacon Paruso, Deacon Steve, our Seminarian Andrew, and the entire Saint Joseph Parish Staff. Be assured that our thoughts and prayers are with you, our Parish Family.
We still deal with the challenges of this pandemic. It continues to have its effects and restrictions, but hopefully with increasingly less intensity. We pray that we will be heading in the right direction, but still need to be mindful of what our responsibilities are for our own and others’ health and safety.
Our faith always assures us that we are not alone. Today we celebrate the event that changed human history. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead and has power over any evil, illness or disease, is with every one of us. Jesus’ promises remain until the end of time!
On Good Friday the Church once again began the Divine Mercy Novena. We are looking forward to continuing to experience this graced time through the Octave of Easter, culminating in Divine Mercy Sunday this coming weekend, the Second Sunday of Easter.
The message of The Divine Mercy is simple: God loves each and every one of us, and God wants us to recognize that His mercy is greater than our sins. We can call upon Him with trust, receive His mercy, and let it flow through us to others. Thus, all will come to share His joy. As we ask for God’s mercy, we also repent of our sins and beg that He pour His mercy upon us and upon the whole world. May we, then, also show mercy. God wants us to extend love and forgiveness to others just as He does to us. And, this calls for a complete trust in Jesus. The more we open the door of our hearts and lives to Him with trust, the more we can receive.
This message and devotion to Jesus as The Divine Mercy is based on the writings of Saint Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who wrote a diary about revelations she received about God’s mercy. Even before her death in 1938, the devotion to The Divine Mercy had begun to spread.
More information on the prayers and the devotion to The Divine Mercy can be found at
www.thedivinemercy.org.
We will have an afternoon devoted to Divine Mercy on Sunday, April 11 from 1 – 3 PM, concluding with the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and Benediction. Please join us for this wonderful celebration.
We are all blessed to call Saint Joseph’s our spiritual home and to be united spiritually as a family of faith, in good times and in bad. May God bless and protect you and your families, and may He send you His Peace, and His Mercy, this Easter and beyond.
CHRIST IS RISEN, ALLELUIA! HE RISEN INDEED, ALLELUIA!