A big thank you to everyone who made Catholic Schools Week a joyful event, especially the teachers, volunteers, and staff who organized our Open House, and the PTO for putting on so many fun events for our students!

After consultation with our Transition Team, Liturgy Committee, and parish staff, I’m excited to announce our plans for Easter and Holy Week. On Palm Sunday, March 24, we’ll have our usual weekend Mass schedule, plus our 4:30 p.m. Mass at SSP for Lent. The Seasonal Choir will sing at the 4 p.m. Saturday Mass.

The Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil) is one great prayer uniting the holiest days of the year, and therefore the Church’s liturgy recommends that it take place all in the same church building. So this year all our events for Triduum will occur at St. Stephen Protomartyr Church.

Holy Thursday: Morning Prayer at 8 a.m.; Parish Potluck and Fellowship at 5 p.m.; Mass of the Lord’s Supper at
7 p.m.; Night Prayer at 9:30 p.m. SSP Church will be open for personal prayer from 8 p.m. till midnight.

Good Friday: Morning Prayer at 8 a.m.; Stations of the Cross at 3 p.m.; Passion of the Lord at 7 p.m.; Night Prayer at 9:30 p.m.

Easter Vigil: Morning Prayer at 8 a.m.; the great Vigil of Easter at 8 p.m.

Since Holy Week is a special time, we ask our groups, sports, and activities to cancel their regular meetings and events during the week of March 24-30. If you have a meeting that must go forward, please let us know. This pause will let God renew our faith, centering us in what matters most.

For Easter, in light of the fact that we have two priests, we’ll offer extra Masses. As we made the Easter schedule, I kept our normal Sunday Mass schedule the same so that people who have come to our churches only occasionally would find Sunday Mass when and where they expected it. I also thought each church should have a Mass on Easter morning so people who love that church can celebrate Easter there. And it seemed to me that Masses at noon or later would not be useful on Easter. So our Easter Sunday Mass schedule will be 7 a.m. at SJB, 8:30 a.m. at SSP, 9 a.m. at SJB, and 10 a.m. at IHM. We’ll also have an Easter Egg Hunt for the children! Our dream is to have one big Easter Egg Hunt in Carondelet Park for the whole parish, but if those plans fall through we’ll have three smaller Easter Egg Hunts, one at each church, after the 8:30 a.m., 9 a.m., and 10 a.m. Masses.

I hope Holy Week unites our parish more deeply in faith, hope, and charity. The Parish Potluck on Holy Thursday is a tradition of SJB, the Night Prayer is a tradition of SSP, and the Easter Egg Hunt is a tradition of IHM. May God bring, also from the difficult moments of this transition, resurrection to new life!

Breaking Bread hymnals are coming back to all of our churches. In the Winter Transition Survey some people said they liked the hymnals, and our music ministry teams said that hymnals could help us have better music. As I’ve been reflecting on music ministry, I’ve become convinced that in the short term, we’ll pray better if we let each music team select songs they present well, rather than trying to use the same list of songs at all the Masses. The Breaking Bread hymnals will help us have that flexibility without our worship aids becoming gigantic. Long term, I’d still like to learn what sort of music best helps people meet Jesus for the first time and best helps newcomers to faith get started in prayer. If we can learn that, I hope to commit our parish as a whole to that music plan. But at the moment, my sense is that it’s going to take a good while, maybe a few years, to learn what music plan best helps our mission.

We are also changing our parish office hours. Starting this Monday, Feb. 5, the parish office will be open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Having our staff working on Friday but the office closed will give staff the time to focus on big-picture and long-term projects that easily get lost in the pressures of daily life.

There’s lots more to say about the Winter Transition Survey and what we learned, but I’ve run out of space here. So, if you’d like to learn more, you can read a report written by Transition Team member Thom Pancella, which includes my thoughts and charts summarizing the data. View the report online or pick up a printed copy in the vestibule of our churches this weekend. God bless you!