Pastor’s Letter: March 17, 2019

Pastor’s Letter: March 17, 2019

18 Mar 2019 | Posted by: chadmin

Dear friend,

This past Monday, my father and I went to the Chicago Blackhawks game. It was nice to be out of town for a bit and especially nice since they won 7-1! Always good to see your team win. The United Center was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day during the game. They gave away green fedoras as the entrance gift. They also had Irish dancers and an Irish band playing before the game. Truly was a fun all-around experience. While I was with my father, I shared about the iTunes scam that was happening to some of our parishioners in my name. As a reminder, someone was creating fake email addresses, that looked like my actual e-mail address, and proceeding to email parishioners in my name. Essentially the email would tug at your heart strings, asking to you go buy an iTunes card, scratch off the bar code on the back, and email the code to what was supposed to be me. Essentially this is like emailing someone cash. To my surprise, my father said the same thing happened at their parish in the Chicago suburbs last year. Something very difficult to stop. Please remember to communicate directly with someone if you are ever emailed asking for money, passwords, or personal information. Too many scammers out there!

This Sunday, March 17 is the feast of St. Patrick. Our Bishop presides over a special Mass at the Cathedral at 10:30am.  The parade downtown is at 2pm. With the recent passing of Randy Simmons, PND principal, many of the PND community and students/teachers from the local grade schools will walk in Randy’s memory. As part of the parade march, a t-shirt was sold to remember Randy and help raise money for a new PND tuition assistance fund in Randy’s name. I believe around 2000 shirts were sold! The sales are closed at this time but will begin again if you’d like to purchase a t-shirt and help grow the new tuition assistance fund. I will pass on information as it becomes available to me.

This Sunday we read the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus climbs a mountain with Peter, James and John. In their presence, the true nature of Jesus as the Son of God is made visible. He shines before them and God the Father is heard calling Jesus his Son and exhorting the Apostles to listen to Him. The Transfiguration is one of the moments that helped the Apostles grasp the reality of Jesus’ Divinity. Even though this happened, the Apostles held some doubt even after the Resurrection. In the Bible, St. Paul says that faith is the conviction of things unseen and the assurance of things hoped for. Faith will always require belief without full proof in front of us at every moment. As we pray over the transfiguration event, may it invite us to a deeper belief in all that God has reveal.

God bless,

Father David