Blessed Palm Sunday to you. As we enter into to this Holy Week, I invite you to truly make it holy. Yes, I know you still have to go to work and school, the grocery and gas station, but really try to quiet down and cut out all those things that are not truly necessary. And we know the difference. Necessary means required to be done, needed, essential. Maybe one of the best exercises we can engage in this week, is to really evaluate the words & actions of our lives in terms of necessary and unnecessary. If the purpose of our life, our birth, our daily struggle, our sufferings, our successes, our whole life is to know, love, and serve God in this life so as to be with Him forever in the next, we must figure out here and now, what is necessary. Use the added holiness of this week to prayerfully discern over the various pursuits of your life in terms of necessity. For this week, set aside those things that are not necessary so as to be more faithful & focused upon that which is truly necessary. Allow this week to unite you to the necessity of your Catholic Christian Faith, of the Sacrifice of Christ, of His immense Love & Mercy, of our need for God in a godless world. If Lent is Catholic Christians at their best, then Holy Week should necessarily be Catholic Christians fully for Christ. For much of the world and most people, this is just another week. They will go along as if nothing in particular is happening. They will follow their normal routines, engage in their normal activities, pursue their normal professions. Will that be us as well? Is this going to be Wholly a week for Christ and therefore a Holy Week, or will we just make a whole in our normal endeavors to admit Christ’s cross for a moment or to rejoice in the empty hole in the ground, known as tomb. If your faith is more than words upon our lips or a few pious thoughts from time to time, it should be manifest itself in the whole of your life, especially as we enter into Holy Week. We all engage in unnecessary endeavors. I do to! Some unnecessary pursuits could, maybe should, just be abandoned altogether. Yet, unnecessary does not always mean unimportant. There could be unnecessary pursuits given the greater religious significance of this week, that simply allow those unnecessary pursuits to take their proper place, so as to justly recognized the real priority and right relationship with God, neighbor, and self. And learning to know the difference between distractions and definitives will help make you Holy. Lenten Adoration of the Most Holy Eucharist Didn’t sign up? Don’t worry. Just Show up & Pray! Holy Week Schedule Tuesday Mass at 8a Tuesday Stations of the Cross at 6:30p Holy Thursday Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 7p Altar of Repose & time for quiet prayer with Christ in DAC until 10p Compline & Night Prayer in community in DAC at 10p Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion at 3p Saturday Confessions in the Garden from 8a to 10a (in the church confessional if weather is incremental) Saturday Easter Vigil with Sacraments of Initiation at 8:55p Sunday Mass of the Lord’s Resurrection at 8a and 10:30a [No Sunday 6p Mass] Nothing Less than saints for the Holy Family of God. Holy Family, Led by the Holy Spirit to the Lord’s Suffering, Death, & Resurrection, Pray for us. ~ Fr Jeremy M. Gries