Posted on February 26, 2017 View all news
Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus! Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ!
Ash Wednesday is this coming Wednesday. Please see the following pages in the bulletin for information regarding Masses. Also included, on page five, are the laws regarding Fast and Abstinence currently in effect for the Roman Catholic Church. Please be conscientious in observing these minimal obligations. As the quote from the Saints for this week states, more can and should be done. The Church merely gives to us these basic expectations as a foundation for the Lenten Season.
If you haven’t done so yet, please take home a flyer regarding our November Pilgrimage to Italy, to follow in the footsteps of St. Philip Neri. There is more information on the next page of the bulletin. If you would like additional information, or would like to sign up, please contact the parish office.
The following is the lesson from the Office of Matins in the Roman Breviary for Ash Wednesday. Please reflect on this in your own fasts, penances, and mortifications, as we 
prepare to enter into the great fast. Have a blessed week ahead!
“It is evident that by these precepts we are bidden to seek for inner gladness, lest, by running after that reward which is without, we should become conformed to the fashion of this world, and should so lose the promise of that blessing which is all the truer and more stable that it is inward, that blessing wherein God hath chosen us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. In this chapter we will principally consider the fact that vainglory findeth a ground for its exercise in struggling poverty as much as in worldly distinction and display; and this development is the most dangerous, because it entices under pretence of being the serving of God.
He that is characterised by unbridled indulgence in luxury or in dress, or any other display, is by these very things easily shown to be a follower of worldly vanities, and deceiveth no one by putting on an hypocritical mask of godliness. But those professors of Christianity, who turn all eyes on themselves by an eccentric show of grovelling and dirtiness, not suffered by necessity, but by their own choice, of them we must judge by their other works whether their conduct really proceedeth from the desire of mortification by giving up unnecessary comfort, or is only the mean of some ambition the Lord biddeth us beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, but by their fruits, saith He, ye shall know them.
The test is when, by divers trials, such persons lose those things which under the cover of seeming unworldliness they have either gained or sought to gain. Then must it needs appear whether they be wolves in sheep’s clothing, or indeed sheep in their own. But that hypocrites do the contrary maketh it no duty of a Christian to shine before the eyes of men with a display of needless luxury the sheep need not to lay aside their own clothing because wolves sometimes falsely assume it.” – St. Augustine