April 13, 2025
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
The holiest week of the entire year is here! Are you ready? Not just with egg decorating supplies, ham, baskets, and your Easter bonnet. Are you ready for the most important part of this week, the reason for this week? This Holy Week that we begin today provides for us a most sacred time of special grace and blessings. The Sacred Easter Triduum, that begins with Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper and continues through Easter Sunday evening, offers us an invitation to enter into the life changing mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection. These are the days of our salvation. Will we enter into them? How will we enter into them? Will we let them transform us? How will they transform us?
The schedule for Holy Week was mailed to all parish homes and is printed on page 5 of this week’s bulletin. Please don’t miss the opportunity to share in these prayerful and powerful sacred liturgies, prayers, rituals, and devotions this week.
The Easter Triduum begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday at 7:00 p.m., during which we remember the institution of the Eucharist and the Priesthood. A special part of this Mass is the Mandatum — the command of Jesus to do as He has done by washing the feet of others. This ritual reminds us that the Eucharist and the priesthood are about the total gift of self: Jesus giving himself totally to us in Body and Blood and his priests giving themselves totally in service to the Church. The participants in this year’s Mandatum are servant-leaders of our parish who volunteer their time and talent at Fish Fry Dinners. Remember, our Fish Fry Dinners are more than just food. They are an act of hospitality, welcome, service, community, and outreach as we welcome our local community to experience the Good Shepherd Family and how we live our faith, hope, and love.
Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament continues after the Mass of the Lord’s Supper until 11:00 p.m. on Holy Thursday. This ancient tradition goes back to a devotion that Christians began at the site of the house of the high priest Caiaphas where Jesus was taken after He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. At this site, there is a dungeon believed to be where Jesus was kept overnight before He was brought to Pilate. The dungeon is underground and, at the time of Jesus, there was no door or steps down to it. There was just a hole at ground level that Jesus was lowered into by a harness. Tradition holds that our Lord was held in this damp, dark, and dirty pit in the ground. He was all by Himself. His friends and followers had abandoned Him. He knew that He was to be executed the next day. He was all alone. Please come and stay with Jesus on Thursday night so He will not be alone.
Please remember our Parish Penance Service is this Tuesday, April 15, 2025, at 7:00 p.m. in the church. Several priests will be available to hear confessions. Please note that this is the last scheduled time for confession at Good Shepherd before Easter. There is an Examination of Conscience on page 10 of this week’s bulletin to help us prepare.
Let’s make this a truly Holy Week!
Father Neil Sullivan