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Leading up to the Holy Father’s consecration of Russia and the Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25^th, the Ukrainian Catholic leaders will prepare with a novena that will start on 17 March 2022. They hope that all Catholic faithful from around the world will join them. In view of this appeal, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, united with the Holy Father, invite their faithful and all people of good will to participate in the novena with the following prayer:

God of peace and justice,

We pray for the people of Ukraine today.

We pray for peace and the laying down of weapons.

We pray for all those who fear for tomorrow,

That your Spirit of comfort would draw near to them.

We pray for those with power over war or peace,

For wisdom, discernment, and compassion to guide their decisions.

Above all, we pray for all your precious children, at-risk and in fear,

That you would hold and protect them.

We pray in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Amen.

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Fourteen years after Our Lord’s death, Saint Mary Magdalen, Saint Martha, Saint Lazarus, and the others of the little band of Christians who were piled into a boat without sails or oars and pushed out to sea to perish — in the persecution of the Christians …see more at Catholicism.org under the heading “Charlemagne and the Finding of the Body of St. Anne”

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A few things to note: The obligation to attend Sunday Mass is Dispensed by Bishop Joseph Nguyen for the entire Diocese of Kamloops.
-Social Distancing is in effect. Do not attend Mass if you are sick or at risk of becoming sick.
-Please follow the directional arrows. Exit to the double doors at the back of the church. Please be attentive to the ushers, who will direct you to your seats.

Please stay seated during Holy Communion until the ushers direct you.
-Holy Communion will be given in the hand only.

PLEASE CALL TO REGISTER. Registration is essential should an outbreak occur. If you are registered but cannot attend the Mass, please let us know asap so we can get a replacement since there are limited spots available.

ACT OF SPIRITUAL COMMUNION: My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the most Holy Sacrament. I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul. Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen.

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Every year the school undertakes several fundraising activities to assist with the operations of our school and keep tuition rates practical.

We are interested in hearing from you regarding your preferences in this regard. Please see the attached survey form for details.

Thank you for your continued support.

School Fundraiser Survey

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We have much to accomplish here in the parish. There are many souls who do not know and love Jesus and therefore need our witness and testimony. I got my hair cut for the last time here and I expected my regular barber but he had moved to Kamloops (maybe he has a bishop, too). The lady who cut my hair told me that she doesn’t really have much to do with religion, so we had a conversation. There are many souls like this here and they need our witness. The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few. Become a labourer.

How does one become a labourer? The most important thing is to have tried the product. Many of just heard about it but it hasn’t changed our lives. So we must pray and read Scripture every day. Why Scripture? Because each time we read Scripture and ask for its meaning in our day we have a miraculous occurrence. We must have met the Lord and let Him save us before we will share Him. Save us from what? Sin first of all, then human faults and failings, disordered addictions. I think there are many people who have given up on trying to be better. You are right on giving up on trying to be better on your own. I know it is frustrating when you don’t succeed. But you don’t succeed because you have not let the Lord journey with you in your struggles. I know we have prayed to the Lord take them away. And we are angry or disheartened when they don’t just disappear. I have been, too. I have learned that our struggles are here for a reason, that something got disordered and journeying with the Lord through them is our means of holiness. In fact, the harder life, the greater the struggle, is the greater opportunity to grow in holiness. But only if we go with God.

I just listened to a story by JR Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle.” It is a story about a man whose greatest desire is to paint a tree leaf by leaf. He loves the detail of a single leaf. He is constantly interrupted by his neighbour who is ungrateful and who sends him off on errands, one that eventually kills him. Niggle does begrudge his neighbour but has the grace to think well of the small kindnesses he paid him. When he gets to judgement and goes through the tribulation, he one day comes upon his tree, now in real life. He sees that his masterpiece is almost complete and with the help of his neighbour they complete what is left. Niggle thought that his desire was to paint a masterpiece yet he later discovered that what he did for others was the real masterpiece.

How can we start making our life a masterpiece? If we do the small things well in the presence of God in our lives, though perhaps simple, we will be surprised of the effect they are having. Do not doubt yourselves because your life is not going the way you have planned it. That means God is working in your life. Do not be surprised if you don’t always know the right thing to say. Or if you think of it afterward. Trust that there is a reason for that. Much of life is not saying. We all want our words to make an impact but the truth of the matter is it is not our words that make the impact but our investment that makes the impact. What we sacrificed for will make the impact. St Francis is known to have taken one of his brothers with him to go preaching and all they did was walk around. The brother asked St Francis, “Why didn’t we say anything? St Francis said, “We spoke by our lives.” Our lives say more than our words, not saying that we shouldn’t speak but more important is that we are attempting to live it and we are humbled when we are not living it. Ghandi was once asked by a mother, who had travelled a far distance to see him, what was wrong with her child. Ghandi observed the child and told her to come back in a month, which she did. Ghandi told her that the child ate too much sugar. She said, “Why did you not tell me that last time?” He said, “Because I ate too much sugar and I had to stop before I corrected your child.”

So taste and see that the Lord is good and you will be labourer in the vineyard. Look to the Lord, trust the Lord and always give thanks to the Lord for everything, even the bad things. Because God makes good come out of bad. God makes good come out of hell and sin. So give thanks always fear not, God is good.

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It seems odd that we do not thank Him more. He has surrounded us with beauty and love. So why is it that we do not thank Him more? I think it is because we focus on the things He hasn’t given and never promised to give. He never promised to make our lives easy. He actually promised that it would be hard but that He would be with us. However, the world tells us we should just be given everything. And it is true, in a sense, we are offered everything through grace but God knows it is not helpful for us to be simply given things.

Imagine if you showed up for practice and the coach said, “I am going to make this really easy for you. We don’t need to practice because I already have the trophy since you guys did an amazing job just by showing up.” No, you would think about games and practice developing human skills, becoming more. Imagine hearing that it is not necessary and the coach doesn’t want you to strive for anything. What is the point of playing sports? Good point. God is not going to let us have it easy because it is not good for us. When was the last time you thanked God for making your life hard, so that you could be perfected as a person and challenged yourself to be all that you can be?

This does not happen in easy times. I grew up thinking like this, that life should be easy. And it is not too surprising because our life is filled with movies and books of magical gifts that no one earned, they just got them and they made life easy. Life was handed to them. The older stories made the person have to seek these gifts but now you get them by accident. But that is not reality. Life is hard because we are meant to be great. We are meant to be saints. The harder life is, the greater saints we can become, the more we can profess our love of Jesus. The harder it is, the more we need to trust God and need miracles. We are not blessed when things are easy, we are blessed when they are hard. When they are easy, we must challenge ourselves even more to be better.

Today we are here to thank God for everything. Take some time today to take God for hard things, to journey with God through hard things. Thank Him for the miracles He is working. I had a miracle of faith recently. During Lent, I prayed each day a Chaplet of Divine Mercy that souls would come back to Confession. During Lent it happened. Many souls came back who had been away for many years. One that stood out was someone who was dying with an illness. Recently, I was called to hospice because someone had died and the husband wanted Last Rites. At first, I was annoyed because I am sinful and selfish and it was late. I wanted sleep but shortly, by grace, I thanked God for this opportunity. And there was this woman who God had brought back in the nick of time and now her soul was saved. It was a happy moment. Don’t be afraid if life is hard. God is good and wants to save us. He has surrounded us with many good things. Abide in His love, mercy and grace each day and give thanks.

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The Eucharist is the difference in our faith. What makes the saints, what makes us Catholics different it is the power that comes from the Eucharist. Simply that. Otherwise we have the same things as everyone. We have books, we have rules, but only we have the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the solution to all the trouble that we are having in the Church. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute, we have the Eucharist and we still have all this trouble. And the people that have it aren’t doing that great a job.” Yes, it is true, but it is true that the Eucharist will be the difference. We just have to start using the power contained in it to change our lives. And that power is twofold: first asking, very important, and second thanksgiving. Once you have asked Jesus has to do something, you can start by being thankful right away. Why be thankful? Because that is faith. Faith is a belief in things unseen. It is a trust. The word “Eucharist” means thanksgiving. Why? Well there is plenty to be thankful for. For one thing, God does what He says. The Eucharist is the difference. How many times do we take our Lord into our bodies and ask for nothing? We don’t even say that we love Him. If we hire a contractor to come into our house and pay his rate of $100 an hour, we never say “Just hang out.” Yet, we invite our Lord in and expect nothing. This is the man who rose people from the dead, drove out demons, healed the sick, walked on water and we ask Him to do nothing. That is ridiculous when we think of it. We need to start asking for the grace and healing we need or we won’t become saints. Once we ask we must start giving thanks because God starts doing when we ask. I knew a person that told me she had severe vision problems. A priest prayed over her and said, “You are healed,” so she threw away her glasses. She could not see at this point and had a real challenge to get home because she simply could not see, but she still believed. The next day, she was able to see. We do not know the Lord is working because we feel He is working, we know He is working because He says He is working and with faith we will see it. Ask and give thanks. The Eucharist is truly the difference. God wants to do great and miraculous things today in each of our lives. Ask and give thanks because the Eucharist is the difference.

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I have a friend who grew up in a very dysfunctional family. His father simply lost the will to care about him and let him fend for himself. He had a friend who had a relatively good family and they sort of adopted him and that saved his life. He lived there, ate there, and, because of this, he had some stability in his life. This is why the Trinity is important because it is the perfect relationship that we are all looking for. Within it contains love, guidance, in fact, everlasting love. It is what we look for when we are looking for others to satisfy us. The Trinity contains the desires of man’s soul. It is what we strive for each day.

I don’t know about you but I have found it odd that there is no God the Father feast in the Church. There are feasts dedicated to Jesus and Mary, to the Holy Spirit, to Saints, to churches and even to the Chair of Peter but no God the Father day. I feel the reason is because all these feasts reflect and come from the fathering of God. Everything is made in the image of God and all good things have their source in God. So, in truth, even though the Father seems hidden, He is revealed and celebrated in all the feasts of the Church, just as a human father whose works are revealed in his children. Our relationship with God as a father is revealed in everything we do. How strongly we enter into this mystery of the Love of the Trinity is revealed in each action in our lives.

Do we know the one true God as a Father who will provide for us and care for us or are we more thinking that we are on our own? Do we think to spend time in the Trinitarian Love of God each day or are we more living outside of the Trinity? In the Bible it says to call no man on earth your father. Doesn’t this mean that we cannot call priests Father so and so or have days like Father’s Day? No, it means that we have to know that the source of Fatherhood is God. We cannot be a good father without a good guide and we have the perfection with God as source. Do not be a father on your own; be a father in the light of God as a father.

We need to live in the mystery, but how can we do that? Well, when we get up in the morning we could think, “How does God want to father me today? What things do I know are going to happen to me?” Ask God to be a father to you. Where are you going to need to be loved and sacrificed for today? What things are going to drain your energy, your life force? This is where we ask Jesus to be with us. Where are we going to need power, gifts, strength from on high? Ask and you shall receive, knock on the door of the Trinity and it will be open to you.

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The Holy Spirit came and enlighten and enlivened the Apostles. Consider this: before Pentecost, the Church huddled in an upper room, they prayed, they worshiped but they did not bring more souls to Christ. Then the day of Pentecost came and the Holy Spirit rushed upon the Church and they went out and excitedly and boldly proclaimed the message of salvation to the people with power and signs. They spoke the languages of the people, and not only their languages but in a way that people could understand them. Peter handles the heckler with no problem: what should we do? They were cut to the heart. Repent and be baptized. Seems simple but it was not. The people were really changed, they gave up everything and followed. Three thousand from one homily!

What about our little community? Are we huddled here in our little upper room and afraid to go out and preach the message of salvation to others so that they may not perish? Most of us here have received the Holy Spirit through Confirmation. The same Spirit that rushed upon the Apostles on Pentecost came upon you and I at Confirmation. So why is little happening here? Why is there no or little deeds of power? Has the Holy Spirit abandoned our Church for another?

No, it cannot be true. God never abandons His Bride, so where is this Holy Spirit? Where are the great deeds of power? They are in you waiting to come out. I remember parts of my Confirmation, such as my sponsor. I don’t remember the part when we were confirmed and I don’t remember any preparation for Confirmation. It was simply a rite of passage. We did it, now we were done the Sacraments of Initiation. Not that I even knew that was completed. However, the gifts were given and I was confirmed. So what next? They stayed there sleeping hidden for seven years until someone explained to me what had happened to me, and what the gifts were that I received and how to use them. Then I was excited for them and I started trying them out. It was very exciting to see the promises fulfilled, that when I asked to use them they were there like treasure in the bank.

Last Sunday, I invited you to pray for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Now I ask you, where is the Spirit calling you? Has He called you to huddle here, to bury your treasure and the treasure of salvation so that others might not find them?

We need the Holy Spirit more than ever now to unravel the attacks that are leveled against the truth and the Church, the confusion. Look at Jesus. They tried and tried to attack him, to discredit Him and they failed until it was time for Him to suffer. Look at the attack we are under: we are the homophobic, child molesting Church, stuck in the past of male domination and oppressing woman. We are woman haters because we won’t say yes to abortion or contraception. We hate people with AIDS because we won’t let them use condoms. We are backed into a corner that we cannot humanly get out of. Do you think that we are going to move ahead with a slick media campaign? Do you think that all we need to do is to know more about these things so we can scientifically prove that these charges are false?

This will not work. We need the Holy Spirit to turn the tide, to speak their language, to know what they need to hear. To not merely defend ourselves and our way of life but to go forward with boldness and joyfully proclaim the message of salvation. To show a broken world full of broken people that there is hope, that their problems are not too big. Why? Because we know through the Holy Spirit that our problems aren’t bigger than God. We, too, struggle with the same infirmities and it doesn’t have to stop us because we know that God has a plan and it will be revealed to us when we need to know. But, through the Holy Spirit, if we ask we will daily get our bread and the means to thrive in the world. We will not know what is coming next but that God will be there to set us ablaze with power and love to win and thrive as sons and daughters of God. We are not orphans who have to make these things work. God is here and giving us the means.

When was the last time you asked to use a gift of the Holy Spirit? I am guessing mostly the answer is, “I haven’t,” or, “It was a long time ago.” This is insane when we think of it. God has given us power to be different in our lives and we are not using it and people aren’t being saved, maybe we aren’t being saved. Recently I was in a bad mood and everything was making me mad, silly things. I asked the Holy Spirit to change my heart and He did. I profited from the things that were happening, one after another. When I was sliding backwards, I asked again and surprise surprise it changed again. The Holy Spirit is the yeast in our bread. We cannot rise to be what we are called to be if we do not use the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I have put a paper on Confirmation in your pews to help you use the Holy Spirit better in your life. This is our power. This makes the challenges of the world nothing to be feared. We, like the Apostles, can bring the message without fear.

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