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Mission Statement

We are a people of God called to serve Him and one another as we journey towards His Kingdom. We strive to bring Christ's love to all within and beyond our community. With the celebration of the Holy Eucharist as the center of our Catholic lives, we respond to the grace of the Holy Spirit by living and sharing the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  We welcome all who come to pray with us and who wish to make our Church their "second home".        

A Message From Our Pastor:

Do you remember the story of the ten lepers cured by Jesus?   It is the story of sickness and healing for each of the ten lepers, but it is also a story of the thanksgiving of the one leper and the lack of thanksgiving of the nine.  A children’s hymn puts it this way, “Then sick men with nowhere to go/ Ten men cleansed as white as snow/One returned to give God thanks/ But nine walked away.”  “One returned to give God thanks.”  And that one, a foreigner, a Samaritan.  Why did he return? What was he thanking Jesus for? At first, that seems like a foolish question.  Of course, he came back to thank Jesus for curing him of leprosy, for making his flesh clean again from this terrible disease that literally ate away the body.  Of course, this man came back to thank Jesus for curing him of this physical malady. 

            But, dear friends, there is more. The dreaded disease of leprosy was virtually a death-sentence for those suffered from it. They had to leave their families, live in caves outside the city.  They could not go near healthy people who feared catching the disease. They lived isolated lives, alone, fearful, abandoned.  They were, in effect, the living dead. And this cured man came back to thank Jesus not only for a cure, but for life, for another chance to live. He came back because he was like a newborn baby, with life all ahead of him. He was once the living dead; now Jesus has cured him and he comes back to thank Jesus for the most precious gift of all—the gift of life.

            Dear friends, we celebrate October as Respect Life Month, but Respect for Life is a year-long, indeed a life-long commitment.  We realize, as the cured leper did, that life is precious; life is always God’s gift.  But, as we say that, we remember that we live in a society that does not accept the right to life, a society that believes, as our late Holy Father Blessed Pope John Paul II said, in a culture of death, not a culture of life. There is no greater moral issue that faces our time than the issue of the right to life—the right of all life, the unborn baby waiting to be born, the handicapped person who needs our help, the chronically ill person who is dependent of others for everything, the old person seeking dignity in the later years of life.  Our society sadly would like to treat these people—the unborn, the handicapped, the chronically ill, the aged—as society long ago treated the lepers.  Our society tries to put these people aside, as  the leper’s society made him live in an isolated cave.  Our “caves” today are more extreme.  We condemn the unborn to death by abortion; some even want to allow mercy-killing to end the life of the chronically sick, the aged, those who are considered no longer productive.  Is there any moral serious issue than this?  War destroys many lives; thousands of our soldiers; countless others in foreign lands, victims of war.  But legalized abortion claims the lives of over one million children in this country every year, a staggering number of innocent lives that are lost.  Is there any doubting Pope John Paul’s words that society today believes in a “culture of death, not a culture of life?”

            What we need today is a cure, just as the leper in the gospel needed a cure. Our Lord will not cure our society by eliminating the threats to life.  He leaves that to us.  We are his healing hands. And how? How to we cure the culture of death? We become, again as the late Pope called us to be, “apostles of life.”  Pope John Paul several years ago issued his beautiful encyclical called “The Gospel of Life.”  He reminded us that “everyone has an obligation to be at the service of life.”  In fact, as he said, “to proclaim Jesus is itself to proclaim life….With humility and gratitude we know that we are a people of life and for life and this is how we present ourselves to everyone.”  And how? Yes, by carefully explaining our understanding of the precious of life; yes, by counseling those who come to us with problems, including the young woman contemplating an abortion whom we should help in every way possible; yes, by holding our elected officials responsible for promoting the cause of life.  All of those things are true.  But the late Pope emphasized that we are most the apostles of life when we serve others in our daily living.  To use Blessed Pope John Paul’s words, “The Gospel of life is to be celebrated above all in daily living which should be filled with self-giving love for others.  In this way our lives become a heartfelt song of praise and thanks to God who has given us this gift.  This is already happening in the many acts of selfless generosity, often humble and hidden, carried out by men and women, children and adults, the young and the old, the healthy and the sick.”  Above all, the Pope said, the family must be “the sanctuary of life …(and) in raising children the family fulfills its mission to proclaim the Gospel of life.”

            This is our mission, to be apostles of life, to do what we normally do—raise our families, help one another, assist those in need. In doing these things, you proclaim the Gospel of life.  We must all be like the leper who returned and knelt with thanks before the Lord Jesus. We must kneel before the Lord of life and hear His words, “You may go in peace; your faith—faith in me, faith in life—your faith has saved you.

                                                                                                              Father Thomas B. Derivan

For more information on how to be an “apostle of life,” consult the excellent material presented on www.priestsforlife.com.

“The gift of life, God’s special gift, is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age. Indeed, at these times human life gains extra splendor as it requires our special care, concern and reverence.  It is in and through the weakest of human vessels that the Lord continues to reveal the power of His love.

© AM 2011