Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, 
 
                                                                    Watch! 

My adorable and inquisitive 5-year-old godson, Dayo, recently asked me to get him a wristwatch. He was fascinated by the features, especially the lights on my Fitbit wristwatch. He wanted to know how the buttons function and it was fun showing him. What functions do timepieces serve? It helps us to keep a record of the time of day. Watches also help us to set up alarms, prompt reminders for important events. My watch (my cell phone watch) for instance is set up to wake me up at certain consistent times and to remind me of important hours of prayers like 3.00 pm Divine Mercy hour and 12 pm and 6 pm Angelus prayer. Watches keep us on alert and to map out time. They remind us of getting ready for a function. I sometimes oversleep when my watch alarm is not set to wake me up. I have occasionally missed my Divine Mercy prayer because my watch alarm was not set for 3 pm. Not waking up at the right time or missing prayer times can have unpleasant consequences.  
 
Not being alert or on the watch for the coming of Jesus can have devastating consequences. Advent Season helps us to trigger the attitude of a watch person. It is a season of waiting and watching for the coming of Jesus Christ which we celebrate liturgically at Christmas. How do we keep alert and on the watch for the coming of Our Savior? There are a couple of suggestions: Prayer, Meditation, and Reconciliation. Lack of prayers places our watchfulness in sleep mode. Distraction from total focus on the Lord of Life, Jesus the Christ puts us to spiritual sleep. A broken relationship with God and neighbors through sin leads to sleep of death. We can avoid being found asleep in these spiritual ways by keeping watch always and especially during this season of Advent through intentional constant prayers, meditations on Sacred Scriptures, and Sacrament of Confession. 
 
Due to the pandemic, we will not have a communal celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation this year. What I plan to do is offer more opportunities to hear confessions on other days in the week other than Saturday afternoon and Thursday evening as I currently do. Confessions between Sunday masses in Advent will return this Sunday. Be on the lookout for additional days for confession on the parish website, Facebook page, and bulletin. Be on the watch! 
 
By the way, I got my godson a wristwatch. He likes the lights that come up at the press of the button. Do you have your watches on? What steps do you plan to take to be watchful during this Advent? Do you have a family Advent Wreath? Do you plan to have time for family prayers and reading of the Bible? Do you have plans to come with the family to confession before Christmas? I say this to you and to all: “Watch!” (Mark 13:37). 
 
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! 
Fr. Bernard, OP 
Pastor 
 

 Dear Brothers & Sisters,
 
The Gospel reading for this last Sunday in Ordinary Time, Matthew 25: 31-46 offers us a portrait of Jesus as the judge; St. Paul depicts him as the Risen Lord in 1 Cor. 15: 20-26, 28; and the Prophet Ezekiel in 34:11-12, 15-17 pictures him as a shepherd. All the images of Christ bring to fore features of his Lordship over all the universe. Jesus as the Judge, Lord, and shepherd is deserving of our focus and trust as we live through the current season of anomy (to borrow the title of the second novel of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka). There is so much disorder in our world, and the only one who can restore order is Jesus. But for Jesus to restore order, we must acknowledge him as the ultimate judge over our actions, the Lord of our life and conscience, and the shepherd of our individual souls and society at large. 
 
When Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King in 1925, he intended that we recognize the universal Lordship of Jesus Christ via the way of the Cross and submit ourselves to his dominion. We are to surrender our independence to this shepherd-Lord because his kingship is devoted to saving us in the way we could not save ourselves. Let us pray the lyrics of that beautiful song to the King of the Universe: “Shepherd of my soul, I give you full control.” 
As we restore our souls and society to Jesus, let us at the same time offer him thanks for all he has been for us. He is deserving of all our praise, worship, and thanksgiving as we read from Revelation 4 during one of our weekday masses this past week. With the pandemics, racial justice protests, and ongoing election conflicts defining most of our 2020, we may be tempted not to see reasons to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. But we must remember that the bible instructs us to “render constant thanks” to God, for “such is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 4:16).  
 
I AM THANKFUL to God for all of you, my brothers and sisters. Thanks for your gifts of love, pastoral and financial support. E seun. 
 
Happy Thanksgiving!
 
Please celebrate safely with your family and friends. 
 
Fr. Bernard, OP 
 

Dear friends in Christ,
                                                                            Gift Of Giving

It is not Thanksgiving Day yet but I want to offer heartfelt thanks to all and sundry of this parish who have been very generous over the years with their God-given gifts or talents in the service of the parish. In this Sunday’s Gospel reading from Matthew 25, Jesus teaches us about the productive use of God’s gift and grace by servants who received five and three talents. They doubled their gifts by putting them to use until the return of the master. Jesus is disappointed in the servant who buried his God-given gift instead of putting it into use. He was probably afraid of taking risk.
The use of gifts or talents involves risks. IT entails sticking out one’s neck; it often implies going beyond one’s limit. It takes an act of trust and selflessness to put to use our gifts. All of us are gifted, there is no one without a gift. Some have outstanding and extraordinary gifts while others have gifts that are not easily noticed. Whatever the case, each person is gifted to build up the church.
There are many of our parishioners worth acknowledging for the good stewardship of their gifts. I can’t exhaust  the list of those that readily come to mind but will at this point identify the following: Mike Rider who worked so hard to get our new camera installed; John Gulya and his team for working tirelessly to see our church sanitized; Corrine and Michael Checco for making sure we have music at our Sunday morning liturgy; Amie Barone for preparing the memorial wreath for our deceased brothers and sisters; and so on.
I also want to thank everyone for the generous gifts of their money towards Dominican Province of Nigeria mission appeal, collection for St. Vincent de Paul’s Angel Hope project, and many individual big monetary gifts toward our parish Capital Campaign, parish cameras for streaming mass, parish benevolence fund and the Diocesan Annual Campaign. Thank you for the gifts.
Last but not the least, I want to say thank you to Parker, Lydia, Catie, and Rose for the Soul Cakes they gave me on All Souls Day after a visit to the parish cemetery, That was thoughtful of you young saints. I had to google Soul Cake to know what it is all about. Thanks for the addition to my knowledge about All Souls tradition.

In Christ,
Fr. Bernard, OP
 

 
Dear friends in Christ,
                                                                     Please Read Me! 
I am an important letter of clarification from an Apostolic Nuncio. My goal is to throw light on recent confusion created by papal pastoral statements regarding homosexuals' rights to love within the family structure and a concession for civic union within state law. This confusion was aided by sensation courting media and others with ulterior motives to misrepresent personal statements made by Pope Francis in the documentary Francesco, as a move to change the church's teaching on marriage. Please read. Thank You. 
   
Your Excellency,                                                                                                                                    30 October 2020 

The Secretariat of State of the Holy Father has asked me to share with you, and through you with the members of the Episcopal Conference, the following observations in reference to certain remarks contained in the documentary film “Francesco”, by director Evgeny Afineevesky, that have caused various reactions and interpretations in the last few days.  The Holy Father has directed that these observations be offered to permit adequate understanding of his words.   
  
More than a year ago, in the course of an interview, Pope Francis responded to two distinct questions at different moments that, in the said documentary, were edited and published as a single response without necessary context, which has resulted in confusion.  The Holy Father, first and foremost, referred in a pastoral manner to the need, within the family, for a son or a daughter with a homosexual orientation to never be discriminated against. The following words are intended in this sense: “Las personas homosexuals tienen derecho a estar en familia; son hijos de Dios, tienen derecho a una familia. No se puede echar de la familia a nadie ni hacerle la vida imposible por eso”.  (“Homosexual people have the right to be in family; they are children of God, they have the right to a family.  No one can be thrown out of the family or made life impossible for that.“)   

The following paragraph from the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation concerning love in the family, Amoris Laetitia (2016), can shed light on those responses: “During the Synod, we discussed the situation of families whose members include persons who experience same-sex attraction, a situation not easy either for parents or for children.  We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence. Such families should be given respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives.” 
 
A subsequent question during that interview pertained rather to a local law of ten years ago in Argentina, regarding “matrimonios igualitarios de parejas del mismo sexo” (“equal marriages of same-sex couples”) and to the opposition of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires towards it. In this respect, Pope Francis affirmed that “es una incongruencia hablar de matrimonio homosexual” (“it is an incongruity to speak of homosexual marriage”), adding that, in such a precise context, he had spoken of the right of these persons to legal cover: “lo que tenemos que hacer es una ley de convivencia civil: tienen derecho a cubiertos legalmente.  Yo defendi eso.” (“what we have to do is a law of civil coexistence: they have the right to be covered legally.  I defended that.”) 
  
During a 2014 interview, the Holy Father expressed himself as follows: “Marriage is between a man and a woman. Secular States want to justify civil unions in order to regularize the various situations of cohabitation, driven by the necessity to regularize economic matters between persons, such as ensuring health care, for example. The different situations must be examined and evaluated, according to their circumstances.” 
  
It is therefore clear that Pope Francis was referring to particular State provisions, and not certainly to the doctrine of the Church, which has been reiterated on numerous occasions over the years.   
  
Grateful for your cooperation in this matter, I assure you of my good wishes and remain,  
  
Yours faithfully,          
Christophe Pierre  
Apostolic Nuncio