Happy Easter to all!


  

An ancient Easter tradition has Catholics greeting each other with the words of Luke 24:34, "The Lord is truly risen!" The person so greeted responds, "And has appeared unto Simon!" Simon, named Peter by Jesus, continues to proclaim the resurrection of Christ through the person of his successor, the Roman Pontiff. 
Happy Easter to all!                      Fr. Marc-André Campbell






Holy Father’s Intentions for April 2013

General: That the public, prayerful celebration of faith may give life to the faithful.
Missionary: That mission churches may be signs and instruments of hope and resurrection.




THE HOPE THAT JESUS GIVES US
Jesus’ heart looks to all of us, to our sicknesses, to our sins. The love of Jesus is great. And thus he enters Jerusalem, with this love, and looks at us. It is a beautiful scene, full of light - the light of the love of Jesus, the love of his heart - of joy, of celebration. Jesus is God, but he lowered himself to walk with us. He is our friend, our brother. He illumines our path here: a Christian cannot be sad! Never give way to discouragement! Ours is not a joy born of having many possessions, but from having encountered Jesus in our midst; it is born from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life’s journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable, and there are so many of them! In these moments our enemy, the devil, comes... Do not listen to him! Let us follow Jesus! We accompany Jesus, but above all we know that he accompanies us and carries us on his shoulders. This is our joy, this is the hope that we must bring to this world. Please do not let yourselves be robbed of hope! Do not let hope be stolen!
Jesus takes upon himself the evil, the filth, the sin of the world, including the sin of all of us, and he cleanses it, he cleanses it with his blood, with the mercy and the love of God. Let us look around: how many wounds are inflicted upon humanity by evil: wars, violence, economic conflicts that hit the weakest, greed for money that you can’t take with you and have to leave behind (when we were small, our grandmother used to say: a shroud has no pockets), love of power, corruption, divisions, crimes against human life and against creation! And – as each one of us knows and is aware - our personal sins: our failures in love and respect towards God, towards our neighbour and towards the whole of creation. Jesus on the Cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God’s love he conquers it, he defeats it with his resurrection. This is the good that Jesus does for us on the throne of the Cross. Christ’s Cross embraced with love never leads to sadness, but to joy, to the joy of having been saved and of doing a little what Jesus did on the day of his death.
   gPope Francis, Homily of Palm Sunday