All Saints Catholic Church

As churches begin to reopen and welcome back members, we must be ready to lead our communities into the “new normal.” Revive is tackling how we can do that through their latest online course, “Advancing Your Parish Through a Time of Crisis.”

The truth is that it should feel like Easter all year-round in the Church. Every Sunday, we celebrate a mini-Easter. Our Lord is ALIVE! He is risen and alive, and we need to celebrate. We are an Easter people who bear witness to his resurrection through our stewardship.

This Pentecost is much like the first one. It finds us behind closed doors, in fervent prayer, longing for our Lord. The Holy Spirit leads us out into a world that has changed dramatically over the past year. However, the message is the same. God has won the victory in Jesus Christ.

As Catholics become more used to this “new normal,” is it even possible to go back to how it once was? To help parish leaders navigate their way through the COVID-19 pandemic and this exact question, the Amazing Parish has created a free webinar series, “Surviving or Thriving.”

The truth is, the modern world increasingly seems to have no real idea what love is or how to determine when love is real. That makes the seemingly simple words of Jesus about loving God and your neighbor very complex indeed.

I had thought it odd for the longest while that Jesus would say that he was going to go away. He had risen from the dead recently so couldn't he stick around? On pilgrimage in the Holy Land, in a small church which has a marbleized footprint on the ground commemorating the last step of Jesus as he was lifted into the sky, I was still confounded.

Every Spring, kids get dressed up in white dresses or little suits and walk into a church packed with parents, siblings, and grandparents to watch the young ones receive Jesus in the Eucharist for the first time in Holy Communion. But the sad reality is that some families see First Communion as a rite of passage but end up not maintaining a faith life for themselves or their children.

In the Gospel we hear Jesus say to us, “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you…” This gospel is striking during our current times. In a time of confusion, suffering, uncertainty, and for many isolation and loneliness, God the Father is actively caring for us and telling each of us, you are not alone.

This journey of faith is not always easy. Sometimes the greatest wounds are those we suffer when family members and friends wander away from God and leave us behind. What are we to do in such a situation? We must realize that God is more powerful than us.

It doesn’t matter where you are in your life — you could work in an office, at a parish, or in the home — you will at times have a to-do list a mile long that seems overwhelming. You wonder how you will get it all done. Below are some tips to keep you organized and crossing tasks off of your list.