Bible Camp 2009

Bible Camp 2009 is back for two weeks in July for children aged 5 – 10. Week One is July 6 to July 10 and Week Two is July 27 to July 31. Time: 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon. The cost is $50 per child per week. Please register at the parish office. Volunteers are needed. Please call the parish office if you can volunteer.

Statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Dear Parishioners of St. Joseph:

You may have noticed that a new statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus now greets us as we enter and leave our parish church. It had become necessary to replace the old statue that had greatly suffered from our Canadian winters and was beyond repair. The pedestal that accompanies the new statue memorializes those priests who have served as pastors of our parish and have resided in our community. It is fitting that the new statue and pedestal have been installed at the beginning of a year consecrated to the priesthood. May this be an occasion for all of us to pray that priests may always be ministers of God’s immense love for all of us.

Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), Visitandine of the monastery at Paray-le Monial, was chosen by Christ to reveal the desires of His Heart and to confide the task of inspiring new life to the devotion. When Christ appeared radiant with love and asked for a devotion of expiatory love, frequent Communion, Communion on the First Friday of the month, and the observance of the Holy Hour (probably June / July, 1674); at the "great apparition" which took place during the octave of Corpus Christi, (1675, probably 16 June), He said, "Behold the Heart that has so loved men. Instead of gratitude, I receive from the greater part of mankind, only ingratitude", and asked her for a feast of reparation on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christ. The devotion to the Sacred Heart spread throughout the whole Universal Church and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that love with which the Divine Redeemer continually loves the Eternal Father and all human beings.

Father Marc-Andrè Campbell