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Christ is risen! He is truly risen! From the clergy and staff of the region, I would like to wish you and your families a Happy Easter and a fruitful celebration of Our Lord’s Resurrection. These past six weeks of Lent and the last few days of celebrating the Triduum have brought us to the principal feast of the Church, and now ashes and penance give way to life and celebration. Click on title for full column.

WWPR Holy Week Schedule Click title for full schedule.

Today’s celebration of Palm Sunday marks our annual remembrance of Jesus’ Passion and the Church’s entry into the solemnities of Holy Week. It provides us with the opportunity to reflect on the incredible love that moved God Himself to take up a cross that was not His responsibility and bear the weight of our sins. This is also a time to reflect on how Jesus’ suffering gives meaning to our own. Click on title for full column.

Holy Week Holy Thursday, April 18: 7:00-8:00 am, St. James 11:00-Noon, St. Matthias 5:30-6:30 pm, OLR.

Good Friday, April 19: One hour after each of the Good Friday services at OLR and St. James.

Holy Saturday, April 20: 8:30-9:30, St. Matthias 10:00-11:00, OLR 2:00-3:00 at St. James.
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One of the joys of the Catholic faith, at least from my perspective, is the incongruity of universality in the midst of obvious differences. By that I mean that one can attend Mass anywhere in the world, in virtually any language, and still follow what’s going on. Whether you’re at your home parish, on vacation, or at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, you can still worship God in the way He has prescribed for us. Click title for full column.

Fatima Holy Hour at Our Lady of the Rosary Thursday, April 4, 6:00 pm Click title for full article.

The season of Lent gives us many opportunities to reflect on the mystery of Suffering. Suffering is a hard topic to discuss and talk about even among relatives. But it is a reality of life. We all suffer in many different ways, including physical, mental, emotional, and moral. While medicine can seek to ease physical, mental, and emotional suffering, it cannot approach moral suffering. Also we suffer at different degrees. Click title for full column.

This Friday the radio station NASH 94.1 FM will be visiting the St. Matthias Fish Fry as part of their Lenten Catfish Fridays! Come join us for the fish and fun!

All women are invited to the Martha Mary Tea and Social at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish Activity Center (PAC) this Sunday, March 31, 12:30-2:30 pm.Tea, coffee and light refreshments will be served, we'll have fun together, and have an opportunity for some brief sharing. Click title for more information.

While I do quite a bit of reading in my spare time, I am the first to admit that not all of it is particularly edifying. While I don’t read irredeemable wastes of time like celebrity gossip magazines or, heaven forbid, Jane Austen novels, there are some literary habits of mine that just won’t die off. Chief among them are Wodehouse stories, certain spy novels, and other light, formulaic fare. Once I am used to an author’s style and I have read enough of his or her work, I can usually tell where the story is going long before it gets to the conclusion. Rather than being a letdown, it’s often comforting to see patterns emerge, especially since I’m usually just reading such things for my own enjoyment. But trends and patterns like these don’t emerge solely in the realm of easy reading; they are also found in the greatest literary collection the world has ever seen: Holy Scripture. Click on title for full column.

As I’m sure I’ve stated before, some of my fondest memories from childhood revolve around the Wednesday dinners we shared every week with my dad’s side of the family in St. Bernard. When it was someone’s birthday, they chose what Gogi Bern would make that evening. Otherwise, we would rotate through a selection of delightful home-cooking from our Grandma, with one notable exception: Ash Wednesday. Click title for full column.

St. Matthias 3/15-4/12 5:00 –7:00 pm Dine in

Our Lady of the Rosary 3/15-4/12 Dine In: 3/8, 3/22 & 4/5 5:30 - 7:00 pm Drive Thru: Every Friday

St. James of the Valley 3/15 5:00-7:30 pm

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8:30 am: Our Lady of the Rosary Mass
12:10 pm St. Matthias Mass
3:30 pm: OLR Ash Distribution Service
7:00 pm: St. James of the Valley Mass
7:00 pm: St. Matthias Ash Distribution Service

I have had a great love for education since at least high school. When teachers at Covington Latin asked me if I had any interest in being a priest, and there were several such teachers, I would always tell them that I wanted to be a teacher (and a baseball coach, which of course is a teacher of that most perfect art form). Some of the most formative experiences for me come from my two brief years as a teacher before entering seminary, and this week’s Gospel reminds me of perhaps the most impactful of them. Click on title for full column.

An extraordinary meeting in Rome between Pope Francis and representatives of the world’s bishops concluded this past Sunday. The purpose of this gathering was to address the great evil of clerical sexual abuse of minors, with particular focus on bishops who failed to appropriately deal with this abuse in their dioceses. Click on title for full event information.

Please join us this Saturday, March 2 for Bunco at St. James of the Valley For event registration, please register at EventBrite.com and search on Mardi Gras Bunco in Wyoming, Ohio. Click on title for full event information.

One of the more stressful experiences that virtually all of us go through fairly regularly is assessment and evaluation. From the time we begin school until we retire, there is usually someone who breaks down our performance and tells us what we did wrong and how we can do better in the future. Every few years I have a review with the Archbishop. Many have a yearly review with their boss. In fact, perhaps retirement isn’t as free from all this pressure as I imagined. Having never been a grandparent, for all I know there is some sort of standard review between parents and grandparents to make sure one can maintain their license to spoil the kids rotten. Click on title for full column.

I am a number of years removed from being a teenager, but from what I remember about the experience, and what I can cobble together from what modern day youths tell me, there are two primary social concerns that drive kids in the modern age. The first is the desire to have fun virtually all the time, which, by the way, is exhausting to even think about for me nowadays. The second is an overwhelming desire to fit in. Nobody wants to feel socially isolated by others. There are certainly those who are socially isolated by choice, but that’s another issue entirely. Click on title for full column.

I wouldn’t say that I come from a particularly musical background, but I do love music. In addition to the handful of instruments I play poorly, I also find myself whistling and/or singing virtually all the time in the office. You can ask the wonderful parish staff, as those poor folks are subjected to it almost constantly. In fact, one of the benefits of living on my own in the rectory is that I can loudly serenade my cat with made up songs without anyone else judging me condescendingly. Click on title for full column.

The ebb and flow of parish life is truly a beautiful thing, even when passing through these dreary winter months when I spend my free time thinking about the glorious possibility of one day being old enough to retire and spend January and February ministering as a priest in Miami or someplace where 50 degrees is considered freezing. Because of the weather, flu season, and probably other factors of which I am unaware, there is a fairly steep increase in anointings and sick calls during the winter. But even though Fr. Lambert, the deacons, and myself see an uptick in hospital and home visits, it seems to me that there are still some misunderstandings about when, and to whom, the sacrament of the anointing of the sick should be administered. Click title for full column.