This week's Pastor's Corner and Homily both address the topic of Silence as a community discipline entering into Lent. Please read the Pastor's Corner and then listen to the Homily.
The Pastor’s Corner
This Wednesday is “Ash Wednesday” and marks the beginning of our annual Lenten journey. The season of Lent is a time of focusing on repentance and the forgiveness of our sins, and we are also asked to focus on three things: Prayer, Alms giving and Fasting. As pastor, it is my mission to provide you with the tools you need for your spiritual growth in being well disposed to receive God’s Grace, and this Lent our hope is to provide you with an opportunity to fully experience the Graces of Lent and its fulfillment in Easter.
This year, after consultation with the Parish Advisory Board, we have decided to adopt a community discipline for St. Landry Church. We are asking that all observe silence in the church in preparation for Mass, during Mass, and after Mass. For our visitors, signs will be posted at all entrances to the church so they will be aware of our Lenten practice. This discipline is intended to foster prayer, alms giving and fasting. The desire is that when we come to Church each of us will prayerfully prepare for and participate in the liturgy (prayer), that in our silence we will show charity (alms giving) towards our fellow worshipers by providing an environment of prayer for them without distraction, and that we will reinforce the good habit of awareness and reverence while in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament (fasting). More of the details will be provided in the homily this weekend. As we enter into the Lenten Season this week, let us pray that each of us will more fully focus on Jesus as the center of our lives, and thus grow closer to Him throughout the season.
God Bless!
Fr. James Brady
Homilies are now available to download and listen to!
As part of our answering the challenge of the Holy Father to go out and evangelize utilizing new technologies, we're now offering the homily each week for download. Clicking the link to the homily should download it and automatically start it playing in whatever music player your computer is set up with.
On the technical side, the file sizes are about 5 megs which means it may a minute or two to download on slower Internet connections. It is also an MP3 formatted file which means that these are essentially podcasts. Don't worry if all the technical words don't mean much to you. It means we're using the latest in technology in order to make sure our church parish can reach the most people.
The current week's homily is available on a link on the front page of the website next to the link for the current week's bulletin. On the page with the prior bulletins, the corresponding homily will be sitting side by side with its bulletin. We started on the anniversary of the start of the Catholic Church, Pentecost Sunday --- over three years ago. This week, the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time is our
two hundred and forty first! podcast to be posted. The homily is given by
Father James Brady.
So, take a listen and let us know what you think.
Click here to download the homily from St. Landry Catholic Church, Opelousas, Louisiana
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