SERVICE NEEDED?
Our small group communities are up and running! Some of the Service-oriented groups are interested in serving their fellow parishioners. Do you have a need they could help you with? Here are some examples: Would you enjoy help with groceries or other shopping? Taking care of some errands? Doing yardwork or other outdoor projects? Would you like a casserole or meal brought to you? Maybe you’d just appreciate a visit or a phone call occasionally. If someone in your household is laid up due to an illness or surgery, of if you’ve suffered a bereavement recently, you might benefit from some support. If you’re interested or have a need, please contact our small group coordinator, who will inform me, and we’ll see how we can respond: contact Jill Kress, parishlife@ssppjesuit.org, 313.961.8077 ext 204.
AMERICAN SAINTS
At our Lenten virtual Evening Prayer (Wednesday at 7:30PM), each week we’ve contemplated one of the six African-American Catholics who are now candidates for sainthood. Their stories are inspiring and amazing and deserve to be known by all American Catholics. If you haven’t been able to attend, I urge you to find out about them (for your Lenten reading!) in these brief biographical notes.
NATIONAL JESUIT NEWS
There was ground-breaking news this week (made the New York Times!) about a subject I’ve reported on previously: the recent efforts of the Jesuits at Georgetown University and other Jesuit schools to come to terms with their colonial-era slaveholding. These efforts have resulted in identifying 10,000+ living descendants of the Georgetown enslaved people. This week it was announced that the descendants’ organization and the Jesuits will jointly establish a $100 million fund, the Descendants’ Truth and Reconciliation Foundation, for reparations – but not in the sense of personal benefits for these descendants, but rather projects and initiatives that will lift up future generations and repair the social and economic wounds of a sad and sinful past. Lenten good news, indeed, of repentance and reconciliation.
Our next issue won’t come out until after Easter. I’ll save my Easter greetings until then, but in the meantime I pray that we can all enter into the Holy Week services (see schedule in the E-Newsletter) and experience much spiritual nourishment and renewal in them. And today is the Feast of St. Joseph, husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Read why Pope Francis has proclaimed this the “Year of St Joseph.”