Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Happy Easter! I hope the joy of Jesus’ resurrection can carry forward in your life into the coming weeks, especially this Season of Easter, but beyond as well! What  Easter is to the year, Sunday is to the week—what the Church has always called “Little Easter” each week—when we recall this central fact of our faith and Church’s life,  that Jesus calls us to die and rise with him to new life all the time.

This week we thank everyone for everything they have done to make our parish expression of faith in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus such a beautiful and profound  experience in time. The sheer number of hours that are spent in planning, publications, music rehearsing, decorating, loading and unloading, and then the hundreds
of people on hand to do what is needed for the liturgies themselves, our ushers/greeters, ministers  of Word and Eucharist, vocalists, choirs and instrumentalists, altar servers and deacons and priests. The week after is often compared to what a mother sometimes goes through after having a baby—now what? So much goes into the big
event, you almost have to reinvent what comes next because there was so much going on we weren’t thinking about Easter Monday!

Someone said I should have kept track of the number of hours people spent, that nobody would believe it. Well, that is true, if it were even possible, but someone would have to spend a lot of hours just counting a lot of hours.

So, to all of you, thanks. I hope your participation filled your hearts with Easter joy and that your tired is a good tired. I know mine is. And hat you are getting good and regular sleep. God has got to be pleased with the hard work, the sharp use of gifts, the big work of praise and thanks. We all acknowledge that these things just don’t happen, and it is thanks to all of you that it did this year. I think our liturgies were more beautiful this year than they have ever been.

In a particular way we owe a debt of thanks to people who really did spend countless hours: Rick Caporali, David Mathers, Chris Lanzarone, our Sisters and pretty much all musicians: Thank you for generously using your gifts.

God bless all of you, happy Easter!