Christ is Coming! Are You Ready?! Make Time to Stop, Pause, Pray and Reflect on Christmas

Dear Parishioners: Christmas is coming once again. Our Advent Season of prayerful and patient preparation, along with its sense of joyful expectation is drawing to a close this week. Soon we are to rejoice at the Good News that a Savior has been born! Christmas arrives this Friday! Let every heart prepare Him room!

One of the best ways to make room for Christ’s coming is to cleanse our hearts. Making a good Confession before Christmas is the greatest gift you might receive this year! So to help you “prepare Him room” we are adding an extra hour this week to our regular Monday Night Confessions. Confessions will be heard this Monday, December 20th, from 6:00PM until 8:00PM. Fr. Connors and I are to be joined by visiting priests for Confessions.The recently begun Jubilee Year of Mercy calls us to seek out God’s mercy. Pope Francis speaks of this mercy in his homily for the Year of Mercy Mass, he states: “Yes, dear brothers and sisters, this Holy Year is offered to us to experience in our lives the sweet and gentle touch of God’s forgiveness.”

This week before Christmas Day is traditionally a busy time for many people. They hurry to finish up the last minute things like writing cards, baking cookies, shopping for special gifts, preparing foods, cleaning houses and trimming the tree! It is also a busy time at the parish as we prepare to celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. The Church is cleaned, sacred vessels are polished, linens are starched, plants and flowers arranged, the crèche set up and choirs and altar servers rehearse! Yes it is undoubtedly a busy week ahead of Christmas! We have been preparing during Advent for the great feast of our faith, Christmas!

So a midst the busyness and the frenzy of the final days before Christmas, let us stop, pause, pray and reflect. Stop to remember the reason of the season, God gave us His Only Son on Christmas. Pause to ponder Christ’s real presence here at Mass and in our lives today! Pray to the Lord for his coming especially for those who suffer because war and terror, violence and poverty, those who struggle with addiction and isolation, loneliness and grief. And finally let us truly reflect in our lives and in our words and deeds, the great gift of God’s love given to us on Christmas!

So before Christmas Day take some time to stop by Church to simply pause and pray, ponder and reflect. In a Christmas homily, Pope Francis reminds us: "The shepherds were first to receive the news of Jesus’ birth. They were the first because they were among the last, the outcast. Together with them, let us pause before the Child, let us pause in silence. Together with them, let us thank the Lord for having given Jesus to us, and with them let us raise from the depths of our hearts the praises of his fidelity: God loves us, he so loves us that he gave us his Son to be our brother, to be light in our darkness.”

We have five scheduled Masses for the Celebration of the Nativity of the Lord. Our celebration of Christmas begins with the 4PM Vigil Mass on Christmas Eve. Where we are joined by the angelic voices of our OLM Children's Choir. This is perhaps one of the most crowded Masses of the year at OLM. So to ensure yourself a seat you might consider attending one of the four other Mass times. We celebrate the Solemn Mass of Christmas Night at 12:00AM along with the OLM Adult Choir and a Brass and Timpani Ensemble. Midnight Mass is preceded by a Concert of Christmas Carols at 11:30PM. The celebration of the Solemn Mass of Christmas Day is at 7:30AM, 9:00AM and 10:30AM.

On behalf of Fr. Connors, Deacon Dowd and the OLM Parish Staff, I wish you and your family, a truly Happy and Holy Christmas! You remain in our prayers as we humbly ask for yours. If you are traveling at Christmas or away from the parish, know our prayers for your safe travel. May Christ, the Son of God, born on Christmas Day renew our hope, faith and love, and bring peace and joy to our world, our homes and our lives. Gloria in Excelsis Deo! A very Merry Christmas!

Open the Door to Mercy! A Jubilee Year for Mercy

Dear Parishioners: God have Mercy! How many times have we used or heard that phrase in our lives. We have just begun the Jubilee Year of Mercy which calls us to rejoice in the reality that God does have Mercy! The Year of Mercy began on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Tuesday. Across the world the Church is united in celebrating God’s Mercy. We celebrate in the Sacrament of Confession and we celebrate each time we take up a Spiritual or Corporal Work of Mercy.

On Monday night, the Vigil of the Holyday, some visiting priests, Fr. Connors, and I were all blessed to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation with the children of our RE Program and their parents. It was a fitting way to anticipate the great Jubilee of Mercy with the forgiveness of sins!

On Tuesday as we celebrated the great feast of the Immaculate Conception with Holyday Masses, we were joined by Bishop Tobin. He celebrated the 9AM OLM School Mass and officially opened the Year of Mercy for the Diocese of Providence. We thank him for his pastoral visit to our parish dedicated to mercy and we are grateful for his wonderful message of mercy offered at the Mass. The Year of Mercy is only beginning and so we continue to celebrate and acknowledge God’s mercy and also realize the great need of God’s mercy many people have across the globe.

I hope you are able to join us for one of the best events we have at OLM. On this Saturday we gather to “feed the hungry.” It is a truly terrific event sponsored by Catholic Relief Services and hosted by OLM. We anticipate packaging 20,000 meals for the hungry and poor in Africa. It is our first parish Work of Mercy as we kickoff the Year of Mercy.

On his recent Pastoral Visit to Africa, Pope Francis delivered a homily at a Mass at the University of Nairobi where some hundreds of thousands of Kenyans gathered to pray with the Holy Father. In his words he spoke of the need for mercy. He stated: "The health of any society depends on the health of its families. We are called to respect and encourage one another, and to reach out to all those in need. Always be concerned for the needs of the poor, and reject everything that leads to prejudice and discrimination, for these things are not of God. Men and women who are channels of God’s grace, who enable his mercy, kindness and truth to become the building blocks of a house that stands firm.”  The Holy Father urges us to always be concerned for the poor no matter who they are and no matter where they are from. As Catholics we serve all of God’s children not matter their race, religion or nation of origin.

At OLM we are doing this in many ways. We continue our winter coat drive for the homeless until December 18th. Also many of our RE students are adopting for Christmas the elderly residents of the Little Sisters of the Poor Jeanne Jugan Home, and many in our OLM School have recently adopted refugee families who are in need this Christmas. In addition to these acts of mercy and thanks to your generous support of the OLM Outreach collection, we are able to support some great charities.

Over the last weeks we have donated $1,000 to Mary’s Soup Kitchen at St. Patrick’s Church in Providence, $600 to the Whitmarsh Home for Boys, and $500 to the Assumption Parish Food Pantry in Providence. Also the OLM Outreach Office serves many local families in need on a daily basis. Thanks to your donated food and gift cards we are able to help the hungry. We are also able to help with rents, utilities and prescriptions. These are truly difficult financial times for many families and they truly need our mercy and our charity. Thank you for your support!

We can be truly proud as a Church of the many ministries of mercy across the globe helping the needy and also of the great ministry of mercy at our parish. So join the celebration of Mercy: go to confession, help the poor pray for the sick and reach out to the isolated! Be well. Do Good. Live Mercy! God Bless. Go Pats?!

Celebrating A Year of Mercy at OLM! Join Us!!

Dear Parishioners: Advent is here! We don purple vestments and sing the ancient hymns as we call out: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!” We acknowledge that Christ is indeed with us and at the same time we await His glorious return. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in an Advent homily stated: “In Advent, Christians relive a dual impulse of the spirit:  on the one hand, they raise their eyes towards the final destination of their pilgrimage through history, which is the glorious return of the Lord Jesus; on the other, remembering with emotion his birth in Bethlehem, they kneel before the Crib.” Yes, Advent is here! Prepare the way for Christ to come!

We can do that at OLM in many ways. First, by coming to Mass faithfully we deepen our relationship with the Eucharistic Lord. We can also cleanse our souls in Confession. It is truly a great way to prepare the way. This week the Church across the globe begins the Jubilee Year of Mercy called forth by Pope Francis. It is a time for the Church to celebrate God’s mercy. The Year of Mercy begins on Tuesday, December 8th on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This Jubilee Year of Mercy concludes on the Feast of Christ the King in November 2016.  Pope Francis declared this year and called upon the entire Church to reflect on God’s mercy—His love for those who are suffering, those who are in need, and those who are afflicted by sin. He has called for a renewed commitment to God’s Mercy in the Sacrament of Penance. He has also asked that we gain a deeper understanding of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.

On the Holyday on Tuesday Bishop Tobin celebrates the 9AM OLM School Mass and inaugurates the Year of Mercy for the entire Church of Providence. We will also have the regular schedule of Holyday Masses with a 5PM Vigil on Monday and Holyday Masses at 7:30AM, 9AM and 7PM on Tuesday. I hope you make it to Mass for the Holyday and if you can I invite you to join with Bishop Tobin at the 9AM Mass. It is as special time for our Church and for our Parish which is dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy.  I hope and pray it may strengthen our commitment to the Works of Mercy as a Church and as a Parish. It is an opportunity to encourage Christians to meet people’s “real needs” with concrete assistance, to experience a “true pilgrimage” on foot, and to send “missionaries of mercy” to forgive even the most serious of sins.

Next Saturday following the 4PM Mass we gather as a parish for a Work of Mercy, “Feeding the Hungry.” We are to pack 20,000 meals for the hungry in Africa as part of the Catholic Relief Services Helping Hands initiative. Last year was our first time with this project and it was a sterling success. I am grateful to Kathy Bennett for organizing it here at OLM. If you are interested in helping us and also having a fun and faith-filled evening please sign up. It is truly a great family event and open to every man, woman and child of any age in the parish. Help us take up the Year of Mercy by offering your helping hands to feed the hungry!

We have planned other Works of Mercy events throughout the upcoming year. Also there is to be an All-Day Confession event across the entire state in March during the Lenten Season. Pope Francishas said: “This Jubilee Year, may the Church echo the Word of God that resounds strong and clear as a message and a sign of pardon, strength, aid, and love .” Advent continues on and so should our preparation for the coming of Christ. As the Year of Mercy commences let us commit as individuals and as a parish family to making Mercy flourish in our community, our state and our nation. Let us seek out God’s mercy in Confession and let us put into action the Works of Mercy. I am away this weekend at a meeting of the National Association of State Catholic Conference Directors in Washington, DC. I am grateful to Vocation Director Fr. Fisette for covering in my absence. See you at Mass on the Holyday. Be well. Do Good. God Bless. Go Pats!

Come, Lord Jesus! Advent Arrives

Dear Parishioners: I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving with your family and friends. It is a great day to spend time with the ones we love and to stop and give thanks for the blessings God has bestowed upon us. We give thanks for much here at Our Lady of Mercy. We give thanks for the tremendous spirit of charity and mercy. It is this spirit that helped to support our OLM Outreach efforts this Thanksgiving. Thanks to your support we were able to provide many needy families and individuals a holiday basket. Thank you for your generosity!

We begin the New Church Year this week as we usher in the Holy Season of Advent. It is a season of prayerful preparation and joyful anticipation of the coming of Christ. We pray with patience and perseverance as we prepare the way for Christ to come into our lives and our world. Advent is a time to recall the cry of the early Christians: “Maranantha!” “Come, Lord Jesus!” We join the cry as we too call out: “Come, Lord Jesus!” Come into our lives, come into our homes, come into our hearts and come into our world! If the Lord Jesus is to truly come into our lives and hearts we must come to Him at Holy Mass, we must prepare ourselves with a good Confession and we must commit ourselves to prayer and devotion to the Lord. As Pope Francis reminds us: “The season of Advent, which we begin again today, restores this horizon of hope, a hope which does not disappoint for it is founded on God’s Word. A hope which does not disappoint, simply because the Lord never disappoints! He is faithful! He does not disappoint! Let us think about and feel this beauty. “

We look forward to the hope and joy of Christmas and Christ’s Second Coming but we also look back. Each year we send a report to Bishop Tobin with all the sacramental statistics of the parish. We reported to the Most Reverend Bishop the following: we are a parish of 2,120 registered families and 7, 150 people. There are over 400 children who attend Catholic School and over 400 who attend our Religious Education Program. Last year we welcomed 41 people into the Church with the Sacrament of Baptism. We had 81 young children receive their First Holy Communion last year and 111 received the Sacrament of Confirmation. We joyfully joined 24 couples in the Sacrament of Marriage last year! And sadly we had 64 parishioners laid to rest with a Mass of  Christian Burial.

Overall these statistics indicate that our parish is active and youthful! However, they also suggest that many of our 2,120 families are not joining us for Mass on Sundays and some are not bringing their children forward for the Sacraments. Let us pray for our parish that this Advent may be one of renewal for all our parish. May we renew ourselves by faithfully and worthily receiving Christ in Holy Communion at Sunday Mass, humbly seek God’s merciful forgiveness in Confession and seek out Christ’s real presence in the Sacraments.

We are holding a Winter Coat Drive this weekend thanks to our Junior Legion of Mary and our OLM Youth Group. We hope to collect new and gently used coats for the homeless and the needy. There is always great need for warm coats during the winter weather so often cold and snowy. If you cannot drop off your donated coat this weekend, please feel free to drop it off during the week at the OLM Outreach Office in Mercy House. Thank you for your generous support of this work of mercy as we seek to “clothe the naked.”

The Year of Mercy called forth by Pope Francis is to commence on the Holy Day of the Immaculate Conception, Tuesday, December 8, 2015. Bishop Tobin commences this Jubilee Year of Mercy here at Our Lady of Mercy as he celebrates the 9:00AM OLM School Holy Day Mass. He honors us and our parish by celebrating the inaugural Mass for the Year of Mercy here at our parish dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy. Happy Advent! Prepare the way! “Come, Lord Jesus!” Be well. Do Good. God Bless. Go Pats!

Responding to Terror, Giving Thanks, and Worshiping Christ the King

Dear Parishioners: The horror and tragedy of last week’s attacks in Paris still continue to shock the world. The innocent victims of the demented and depraved Islamist terrorists were killed indiscriminately and mercilessly by these fanatics. At his weekly Angelus Address Pope Francis expressed his sorrow and support for Paris, stating: “To the president of the Republic of France and all of its citizens, I express my deepest sorrow. Such barbarity leaves us stunned and makes us question how the heart of man could come up with and carry out such horrific acts, which have shattered not only France, but the whole world. I want to vigorously reaffirm that the path of violence and hate does not resolve the problems of humanity and that to use the name of God to justify this path is blasphemy.  We ask Our Lady to protect us and to watch over the beloved French nation, the eldest daughter of the Church, all of Europe and the whole world.”

On Thursday we celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Families and friends gather together to share a meal of turkey and the trimmings as they give thanks to God for the bounty of the earth and their own blessings. I invite you to join us on Thanksgiving for Mass. Bishop Evans is to celebrate the Mass and Fr. Eric Bennett, who grew up here at OLM and whose family are still parishioners, is to serve as our guest homilist. Start your Thanksgiving Day off the best way with Mass!

I thank our twelve new OLM Altar Servers who recently completed their training and have been serving for the first time over the last few weeks. They now join the sixty-four other Altar Servers currently serving God and OLM. We commend them all for their service to our parish.

Next weekend we are holding a Winter Coat Drive. We are collecting new and gently used winter coats for the homeless and needy. As the winter weather begins to get colder and wetter we are asking for your help in providing warm coats for the neediest among us. I thank our OLM Youth Group and the Junior Legion of Mary for coordinating this work of mercy for our parish. Thank you for your support of this OLM work of mercy.

I congratulate our OLM Outreach Director, Doug Green, who is to be inducted into the East Greenwich Wall of Honor for his many good works and his outreach to the poor and needy. The induction ceremony is to take place this spring. We are honored by this recognition for Doug and our parish. In the meantime, Doug’s good work continues this week with the preparation of Thanksgiving baskets for the needy. Your generous donations of non-perishable foods, gift cards and to the Outreach Collection make this possible. In the name of the poor and needy who benefit from your support and generosity of OLM Outreach I thank you.

We celebrate the end of the Church Year this weekend with Christ the King. Next Sunday we celebrate the First Sunday of Advent which begins the New Church Year and the season of prayerful preparation for Christ’s coming.

This week’s bulletin contains a copy of the Annual Financial Report for OLM for the Fiscal Year July 1, 2014-June 30, 2015. Our weekly budget revenue has increased by $70,000. In fact, we had a total increase of $127,000 in our income. We were able to reduce last year’s loss of $101,000 to $18,000 this year. We made many capital improvements in the Church, School and Cemetery. This includes a new truck and snow plow, renovating and upgrading classrooms in the school, general improvements to the physical plant and the purchase and installation of a new natural gas burner for the Church. I encourage you to read the report.

Of course this is not possible without your generous financial support in the Weekly Collection, the monthly Outreach Collection and the Annual Parish Collection. I thank you for your continued support of the mission and ministry of Our Lady of Mercy Church and School. A Happy Thanksgiving Day to you and your families. Let us all give thanks to God for our blessings! Pray for Paris! Be well. Do good. God Bless.

Welcoming An Archbishop to OLM and Grilling Priests at OLM!!

Dear Parishioners: Our Lady of Mercy was honored with a pastoral visit from Archbishop Diosdado Talamayan, Archbishop Emeritus of Tuguegarao in The Philippines. His Excellency was here to visit our Franciscan Apostolic Sisters whose congregation was founded in his Archdiocese. The now retired Archbishop is spending some time visiting with family and friends in the United States. While at OLM he led spiritual conferences for the Sisters in their Chapel and celebrated Saturday 8:30am morning Mass. We thank him for his episcopal presence in our parish and his concern for Sister Emma and Sister Lourdes and their fellow Sisters at Scalabrini Villa.

Two windows in the Franciscan Sisters’ Convent Chapel that rotted were recently fixed. The tree by the windows that caused the damage to the Convent Chapel was also cut down. I thank Paul Anderson for his hard work in attending to this project for our Sisters. The good Sisters are now able to pray before the Blessed Sacrament in their Convent Chapel without worry. We thank them for their continued prayers for our parish community.

This week Fr. Connors and Fr. Chris Murphy, the Chaplain at Bishop Hendricken High School, are taking a group of young men to St. John’s Seminary in Boston. The group gets a tour the seminary, attends evening prayer and dinner with the seminary community, and meets with the seminarians from the Diocese of Providence. Our own Seminarian Brian Morris and our Summer Seminarian, Eric Silva, help with this visit and answer questions about seminary life and the process of discerning a vocation to the priesthood. I am grateful for their participation in this Vocation Awareness Trip and also Fr. Connors and Fr. Murphy for organizing this opportunity.

Fr. Connors has also organized another great event this coming Thursday at OLM School. It’s called “Grill the Priests” and it is an opportunity for people to ask a panel of priests questions about the Catholic Faith. They can inquire about anything they find curious about the Church or the life of priests.

The panel consists of Fr. Connors, Fr. Murphy, Senior Priest Fr. John Kiley (Pastor Emeritus of St. Francis Church in Warwick), Dominican Friar Fr. Philip Neri Reese of Providence College, and myself. Monsignor Albert Kenny, the Vicar General of the Diocese of Providence, serves as the moderator of the lively conversation. Last year this event was very fun and informative with lots of great questions for the panel. The event is Thursday at 7:00pm and open to the entire OLM Community. Wine, beer and light refreshments are to be served so it is an adults only night. Some great door prizes are to be raffled off as well. Seating is limited and reservations are needed so please contact the Parish Office soon to reserve your spot.

In the name of the entire Parish I offer congratulations to OLM Parishioner Kevin McDevitt who is receiving the 2015 Proudly Pro-Life Award from the RI Right to Life Committee at their Annual Banquet this week. Kevin is to be honored for his unwavering pro-life commitment and conviction in defending all human life especially the life of the unborn. We thank him for being a truly outstanding example of what it means to be Proudly Pro-Life!

This weekend I am away attending the Winter Meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore where I serve as a consultant to the Sub-Committee on the Defense and Promotion of Marriage. I thank our Vocation Director Fr. Carl Fisette for filling in at Masses in my absence. We also warmly welcome our OLM native son, Dominican Fr. Francis Belanger, OP who is the Novice Master of the Dominicans. He is at OLM visiting his family this weekend. Be well. Do good. God Bless. Go Pats!!!