Dear Parishioners:
The Month of May is here! We begin this month dedicated to Our Blessed Mother Mary with May Devotions this Monday at 7:00PM. We gather together in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and pray the Rosary. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament will be offered. So please join us every Monday night at 7:00PM for May Devotions. It is a great chance to pray together, adore the Eucharistic Lord, and venerate the Blessed Mother.
Of course, the arrival of May also means that our OLM Religious Education Program ends after another fruitful year of formation
and education in the Catholic Faith for the children of our parish. We offer our thanks to Mickey St. Jean and Doug Green who lead our excellent program. We are grateful to our many volunteer teachers and aides who donate so much time and talent teaching our children. And we thank the many families who so faithfully participate in our excellent program.
Next week is one of the highlights of the year at Our Lady of Mercy. First Communion Mass is to be celebrated next Saturday.
The children of our RE Program celebrate Frist Communion at 10:00am and the OLM School First Communion Mass at Noon. On next Sunday, Mother’s Day, the entire Frist Communion Class celebrates the May Crowning at the 10:30am Mass. I ask you to please continue to pray for the First Communion Class as they celebrate this great occasion of faith and joy, receiving Jesus Christ for the very first time. First Communion is a great day for our children and their families but also for our Parish Family too. These 64 children will experience the power and the glory of the Eucharistic Lord in their lives for the very first time.
Pope Francis instructed a First Communion Class in Rome, suggesting: "The Eucharist is such a great gift. That's why going to Mass is so important. Going to Mass not just to pray, but to receive Communion, the Bread and Body of Christ. It saves us, forgives us and it makes us one with the Father. How beautiful!”
This week we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord on Thursday. It is a holyday of obligation and therefore all Catholics are obligated to attend Mass on the Ascension. We offer four 
Masses for the holyday. The Vigil of the Ascension is on Wednesday at 5:00pm and on the holyday itself there is a 7:30am Mass, 9:00am School Mass and 7:00pm. Certainly ample opportunity for us to get to Mass.
St. Leo the Great preaches on the Ancension: “Accordingly, dearly-beloved, throughout this time which elapsed between the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension, God's Providence had this in view, to teach and impress upon both the eyes and hearts of His own people that the Lord Jesus Christ might be acknowledged to have as truly risen, as He was truly born, suffered, and died. And hence the most blessed Apostles and all the disciples, who had been both bewildered at His death on the cross and backward in believing His Resurrection, were so strengthened by the clearness of the truth that when the Lord entered the heights of heaven, not only were they affected with no sadness, but were even filled with great joy. And truly great and unspeakable was their cause for joy, when in the sight of the holy multitude, above the dignity of all heavenly creatures, the Nature of mankind went up, to pass above the angels' ranks and to rise beyond the archangels' heights, and to have Its uplifting limited by no elevation until, received to sit with the Eternal Father .”
Father Connors and I are headed to New Jersey this week for the ordination of the
Most Reverend James Checchio as the Bishop of Meutchen. Bishop-elect Checchio served as the Rector of the North American College in Rome where Fr. Connors completed his seminary studies. He has been a friend of mine for many years. He is one of the youngest bishops in the country, having just turned 50. The ordination is on Tuesday and we return on Wednesday in time for the holy day! Please pray for the Bishop-elect. Remember May is for Mary! Be well. Do Good. God Bless. Go Sox!
pastoral care of the family. Marriage and family are such important topics for the Church today. I am so glad that our parish has a vibrant Young Families Group that meet monthly to discuss issues of marriage and Catholic parenting. The future of the Church depends on strong Catholic families! Weekly attendance at Holy Mass, regular Confession, and family prayer are the important building blocks of any Catholic family.
Later, the Pope says: “Love always gives life. Conjugal love “does not end with the couple... The couple, in giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of their conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother”. The family is the setting in which a new life is not only born but also welcomed as a gift of God. Each new life “allows us to appreciate the utterly gratuitous dimension of love, which never ceases to amaze us. It is the
beauty of being loved first: children are loved even before they arrive”. Here we see a reflection of the primacy of the love of God, who always takes the initiative, for children “are loved before having done anything to deserve it”
concentrated on invitations, clothes, the party and any number of other details that tend to drain not only the budget but energy and joy as well. The spouses come to the wedding ceremony exhausted and harried, rather than focused and ready for 
the great step that they are about to take. The same kind of preoccupation with a big celebration also affects certain de facto unions; because of the expenses involved, the couple, instead of being concerned above all with their love and solemnizing it in the presence of others, never get married. Here let me say a word to fiancés. Have the courage to be different. Don’t let yourselves get swallowed up by a society of consumption and empty appearances. What is important is the love you share, strengthened and sanctified by grace. You are capable of opting for a more modest and simple celebration in which love takes precedence over everything else. Pastoral workers and the entire community can help make this priority the norm rather than the exception.”
marriage, and more to reach out anyone who feels marginalized. No teaching of the Church has changed—contrary to many media reports and no pastoral practice has been altered. But the Pope wants us all to do more for families, more to support marriage and more to live our faith in the world today. One thing we can all do is to pray for our families and pray for strengthening of married and family life in our parish. Perhaps we might take up praying the Rosary as a family. As the late Father Peyton always said: “The family that prays together, stays together!” Join us every Monday in May as we pray the Rosary before the Eucharistic Lord. May Devotions are a great way to pray together, please join us. Be well. Do Good. God Bless. Go Sox!
This week April School Vacation begins for our students and teachers. These school vacations continue to be reexamined and some communities have opted out of February and April vacations for a longer break in March. East Greenwich continues the traditional vacation periods. So this week OLM School and public schools are closed.
A great event on the horizon is the Annual OLM School Play. If their past performances are any indication this should be another great event for our community. The last two shows, the Wizard of Oz and the Lion King, were spectacular and quite entertaining. This year the OLM School Drama Club is planning a production of the Little Mermaid, Jr. We are grateful to the RI Youth Theater program for producing the play. Our talented students from almost every grade participate in this great opportunity for fun and drama. I hope you might come out for a performance and watch the students display their talent for all to see. The Little Mermaid, Jr. is to have two showings. One on Saturday, June 11, at 7:00pm, and the second on Sunday, June 12, at 4:00pm. Both performances are to be held in the East Greenwich High School Auditorium. Mark you calendar to come watch a Broadway style show!
our school. We are grateful for his generous spirit in giving to OLM School these great devices from his company, ServPro of Providence. Our excellent Technology Teacher, Mrs. Bea Lukens, is already putting them to good educational use! Thank you Frank and family for your generous support of OLM School. Implementing the use of these IPads in our school’s curriculum is another step in moving forward technologically. OLM School now has complete Wi-Fi for our faculty and students and these IPads are an excellent addition to enhancing our technology at the school. Just another great thing about our excellent school to be proud of as a parish.
This weekend we mark Good Shepherd Sunday which is also the Annual World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Please take some time to pray for an increase of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life. Pope Francis suggests: “Dear young friends, how wonderful it is to be surprised by God’s call, to embrace his word, and to walk in the footsteps of Jesus in adoration of the divine mystery and in generous service to our neighbors! ” A continued Happy and Holy Easter Season! Be well. Do Good. God Bless. Go Sox!
One such occasion for rejoicing was on April 1st. Our oldest living parishioner, Mrs. Claire Sharpe, celebrated her 106th Birthday! Fr. Connors and I were privileged enough to celebrate Mass with Claire and her daughters at their home. We were joined by our soloist, Deirdre Donovan, and members of our Children’s Choir. It was a truly joyous occasion. Claire also received a very special visitor after the Mass. Bishop Tobin stopped in for a visit to celebrate
Claire’s birthday and also his own. They share April 1st as the date of their birthdays. We had beautiful and delicious cakes for them both. We listened as Claire shared her wisdom and faith with us. Happy Birthday to Claire, may God continue to grant His abundant blessings upon her.
celebrating our school and its mission of developing saints and scholars for the Church and world. Of course, the night included good food, good conversation and a lively auction. We are grateful to OLM”s own Gene Valicenti for serving as our Master of Ceremonies for the evening. There were lots of great auction items including Patriot’s box seats, golf outings at exclusive country clubs, sailing and fishing trips in Narragansett Bay, VIP tickets to Good Morning America complete with hotel and lunch, Gym Teacher for a day and Principal for a day. They all raised much needed funds for our school. Some of the other auction items included dinner the OLM Priests in the Rectory.
with Sister Jeanne, our former OLM School Principal, and our Franciscan Apostolic Sisters, Sister Emma and Sister Lourdes, in the Franciscan Convent. We look forward to some great evenings with our generous donors. We are grateful to our Spring Fling Committee for the hard work they did ensuring a truly great night and grand celebration. We thank our many generous donors who gave us such great auction items. Also we thank the many school parents who bid so generously on the auction items. We give thanks for our school, its excellent administration, faculty and staff and our biggest asset, the wonderful children who make up our school.
I received word from Bishop Tobin that we are to receive a Summer Seminarian again this year. Our Seminarian for the summer is Billy Burdier who is finishing his second year of theology at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He arrives to OLM in early June after completing his exams. I know you will give him your usual warm welcome when he arrives. Also I ask you to please mark your calendars for a very special event for our Diocese and our Parish.
Providence. Brian joins us the next day for 10:30AM Sunday Mass to preach for the first time as a newly ordained Deacon. It is a great day for his parents, John and Marybeth, and his family as well as for our OLM Parish Family. Keep Brian in your prayers as he continues to prepare for diaconate ordination.
“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!” So sings the Psalmist on Easter Sunday and so sang the large crowds at our Easter Masses. It was truly a day of rejoicing in our faith and hope in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ! Our Holy Week was truly a beautiful celebration here at OLM. Our Franciscan Apostolic Sisters, Sister Emma and Sister Lourdes, enjoyed their first OLM Holy Week. They offered our parish a compliment when they said it reminded them of the Philippines because it was “so solemn and so many people attended!”
gathered for the Sacred Triduum of Holy Week. It began with a beautiful performance of the
Living Stations by our OLM School Middle School students. If you have never made it to this moving event, please put it on your calendar for next Holy Week. The students did a terrific job offering a very prayerful and meditative Living Stations of the Cross.
We are grateful to Bishop Evans who baptized two people, received four baptized Christians into the Catholic Church and confirmed two adult Catholics on Holy Saturday at the Vigil Mass. It was a beautiful and joyful celebration of faith for our newly initiated and for our parish family. It was a solemn but joyous celebration of the Easter Resurrection alive in the Sacraments. We had large crowds at our Easter Sunday Masses and had the great celebration of a baptism at the 10:30am Mass. It truly was a day to rejoice and be glad!
Church look so spectacularly beautiful for Easter. We thank our team of Sacritisans for ensuring everything is set-up, cleaned, polished and starched. Also thanks to Paul Anderson and our hard working crew for all the work in cleaning, preparing, setting-up, taking-down and ensuring all things are spic and span for Holy Week and Easter. We thank our choirs and musicians, Henri St. Louis and Deirdre Donovan, for their great gift of music which contributed such joy, beauty and solemnity to our celebrations.
We also thank our Altar Servers, perhaps the best in the Diocese, for their reverent and solemn service at the Sacred Liturgies! We thank our ushers for their welcome and hospitality to our many parishioners and visitors. We thank our Lectors for their solemn proclamation of God’s Word. We thank our Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion for ensuring the reverent distribution of Holy Communion at Mass and to the many ill and shut-in of our parish.
A blessed Easter! It took us 40 days to prepare for Easter—that’s what Lent was all about—so now it takes us 40 days to celebrate Easter. That will bring us up to the Feast of the Ascension, when Jesus, risen from the dead, after spending 40 days with His disciples, returned to His Father in heaven. Actually, it doesn’t even end there, because then, on the Ascension, we’ll unite with Our Lady and the Apostles in a novena, nine days of prayer, bringing us to Pentecost Sunday and the gift of the Holy Spirit. So join with me in saying “Happy Easter” for the 50 days after the great Feast! And, of course, every Sunday is a “little Easter,” as we come together on the first day of the week at Mass to profess our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus.
family. Our young teens are finishing preparation for the wonderful sacrament of Confirmation and await the gift of the Holy Spirit as they enter high school. Couples approach the altar for the holy sacrament of matrimony, eager to seal their love and conform it to divine love: forever, faithful, and life-giving. Our young parishioners graduate from eighth grade at OLM School and from high schools and colleges, trusting in God for a future full of promise and hope. And, during these paschal days, candidates for Holy Orders kneel before a bishop to be ordained deacons and priests, and bind themselves to the Risen Jesus and His Church.
The earth itself is alive; winter is over; gardens are being planted; grass, flowers, trees growing; each day sees more light than darkness. Nature mirrors super-nature, as God’s life flourishes in our souls and in the Church. It’s all about the paschal mystery: the dying and rising of Jesus, and our share in it. Jesus invites us to die with Him to sin, selfishness, and Satan, and rise with Him to new life. That’s the sacred rhythm of Christian discipleship: at times we’re on the cross with Jesus; at other times we’re risen to new life with Him.
Pope Francis in his Easter homily last year reminds us: “We cannot live Easter without entering into the mystery. It is not something intellectual, something we only know or read about. It is more, much more! To enter into the mystery means the ability to wonder, to contemplate; the ability to listen to the silence and to hear the tiny whisper amid great silence by which God speaks to us. To enter into the mystery demands that we not be afraid of reality: that we not be locked into ourselves, that we not flee from what we fail to understand, that we not close our eyes to problems or deny them, that we not dismiss our questions, To enter into the mystery means going beyond our own comfort zone, beyond the laziness and indifference which hold us back, and going out in search of truth, beauty and love. It is seeking a deeper meaning, an answer, and not an easy one, to the questions which challenge our faith, our fidelity and our very existence.”