This is the Second Sunday of Easter and also known as Divine Mercy Sunday. There is a whole story about Divine Mercy that I encourage you to read up on. I want to talk here about the chaplet of Divine Mercy. The chaplet is a prayer devotional akin to the Rosary. If you struggle with the Rosary perhaps you should try this chaplet. It uses rosary beads in the fashion in which the Rosary is prayed but instead of praying the Hail Mary one says, “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” Like the Rosary it begins with some initial prayers and concludes with some specific prayers. Overall, it moves along very quick, and the prayers are very easy to memorize. The chaplet is addressed to God the Father in light of the sacrifice of the Son. The chaplet is a splendid intercessory prayer you can pray for yourself, your loved ones or absolutely anyone. It is a wonderful prayer to encourage someone on the edges of faith to pray, even non-Catholics for who it should have great appeal. I have the chaplet on a small business size card and will have them available at the entry of the church. You may also visit www.thedivinemercy.org for instructions on praying it. You will also find resources to hear it recited and even sang. So, I encourage you to take up this gift from the Mercy of God and use it. You will be uplifted and blessed. Yours in Christ. Fr. Sid.

Easter Sunday is the most important day for all Christians. We celebrate the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ! Unfortunately, in popular culture it comes in after Christmas, the Super Bowl and the Fourth of July. The Incarnation of our Lord observed at Christmas is indeed very important. But it means nothing without the Resurrection. Christmas has attached all the warm sentiments provided by a newborn child, angels, shepherds, and domestic stable animals. Easter however is very different. The Resurrection takes place in the shadow of brutal torture cheered on by a vulgar crowd of former admirers. Friday and Saturday of Holy Week are appropriately gloomy. Easter does not lend its self at all to the joyful build up with decorations, songs and gifts that proceeds Christmas. Taken seriously Easter has something no other holy day or national observance can give us. Easter gives us forgiveness for the past, love always present and the pledge of eternal life with God in the future. It strikes us as too good to be true. But it is true. Let it soak in. Thank God for it. Celebrate it! Have a very blessed Easter! Yours in Christ, Fr. Sid.

Here it is, Holy Week. It has been two years since we celebrated this week together. I want to use this space to explain some minor changes for this year. First, on Holy Thursday we will not have the washing of feet. On Holy Friday we will venerate the Cross without touching it. Veneration can be done by genuflecting, making the Sign of the Cross or bowing profoundly. On Thursday we will move the Blessed Sacrament to a temporary chapel in the parish hall where He will remain until the Saturday vigil. The hall will be unlocked Friday and Saturday. I encourage you to come by and “spend one hour with the Lord.” The Saturday vigil Mass is very special. According to the instructions for this Mass, it is not to begin until sundown. That’s why it begins much later than our ordinary time. And yes it is longer. There are several readings, Psalms, and prayers. All in all, it is more than just a celebration of the Resurrection. It is a celebration of the whole salvation history. It is also a very ancient tradition to bring new souls into the Church by baptism at this Mass. I challenge you to attend. Offer it to the Lord as a gift of praise and thanksgiving for your salvation. You will be blessed! Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid.

One of the great weaknesses in the Church right now is the loss of faith in the Sacraments, Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Confession, Anointing, Marriage and Holy Orders. For many years now this has been almost universally blamed on poor teaching to the Catholic faithful. It is true that when all the religious deserted 50 years ago that the Catholic mandate to pass on the Faith fell on very hard times. Parents had to step in and take over a duty they were not prepared for and received very little assistance from the Church. This was also coupled with an influx of distorted teachings about the Sacraments that did much damage to the “believing” dimension as related to the Deposit of Faith, that which is universally held by the faithful to be true. This brings me to the false contention that I want to take issue with. It is summarized by something I read in our Lenten meditations based on the words of St. Terresa of Calcutta. “Faith is not a matter of knowing, it’s a matter of believing!” The faith spoken of here is not the doctrinal composition of stated beliefs, but rather the faith lived out in our day to day lives. So, we say we believe in the Sacraments, but do we? This might best be tested by two questions of evaluation. One, do I regularly participate in those offered on a repeated basis, such as Confession and the Eucharist (Mass)? Two, do I consciously expect God’s Grace to be actively working in me through the Sacraments, therefore experiencing real power at work within me? If the answer is “no” or “not sure”, I am probably not dealing with a matter of sufficient knowledge of the subject material, but rather a matter of unbelief, not believing what knowledge we already have. Remember what Jesus said, “To him who has, more will be given. But he who has not even what he has will be taken away from him.” To him who has what we ask? Faith, believing! It’s not the conclusion just based on convincing evidence. Faith is a decision to believe someone we trust as being truthful. Jesus, I trust in you! I believe in what you have done, said, and revealed! Yours in Christ, Fr. Sid.

Well, this is a special Sunday in Lent. Besides having to get up an hour earlier for daylight savings, it is Laetare Sunday. This Sunday indicates a halfway mark in Lent and Laetare means “rejoice”. More specifically it means “Rejoice Jerusalem” because your salvation is coming. Accordingly, this Sunday is more “upbeat” than the rest of the Sundays of Lent. The liturgical color is rose, (I know, it looks like pink.) It’s to be a lighter version of the violet color of Lent. It’s appropriate to put flowers on the altar for the Mass. It is to mirror the joy of the father of the prodigal son, who begins to be filled with joy at the sight of his son from a distance. If we have been doing a proper examination of conscience, we may not be experiencing a joy about the condition of our soul. However, our Heavenly Father is joyful as He sees his children coming closer to Him with their hearts and souls. This is the mission of Christ our redeemer, to lead many children to the embrace of the Father. So, I invite you to enter into the joy of the Father and rejoice in the salvation, eternal salvation, provided to you by Christ the Son. Yours in Christ. Fr. Sid.

I want to pick up where I left off last week about the Sacrament of Confession. Last time I defined mortal sin. I would like to now define venial sin. Venial is pretty easy to define. It’s anything that is less than mortal. But venial sin should not be thought of as no big deal. It is kind of like poison. If I handed you a drink saying don’t worry it doesn’t have enough poison to kill you, would you drink it? Well, no! So, you could think of venial sin as a watered-down mortal sin. Where one drink of mortal is deadly, venial sin can kill slowly by accumulated doses. Habitual and unhindered venial sin disposes us to a growing disposition to more serious sin, even mortal sin. Although venial sins do not require the Sacrament of Confession to be forgiven, remedy must still be sought by confession to God and asking forgiveness. This is why nearly every Mass begins with an acknowledgment of our sin and asking for forgiveness. Most of us need to do it frequently. So, we can address our venial sins by personal prayer but there is a great advantage to also going to Confession. In the Sacrament we receive a measure of God’s grace. If we are serious about growing in virtue and ridding ourselves of vice, this is a huge advantage. It’s like having a cut on your finger and putting a band aid on it. It will probably heal. But if you put some antibiotic on the wound it will heal faster. Confession is like the antibiotic. Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid.

Lent is the season when we traditionally do more in the way of examination of conscience and take the opportunity to confess our sins. I would like to take a moment to review the difference between venial sin and mortal sin. Mortal sin is first a very serious sin. The Church defines it as concerning “grave matter”. Grave matter would be sins such as murder, adultery, character assassination (willfully telling lies to destroy another’s good reputation), stealing a significant amount, serious blasphemy, etc. etc. There is not a comprehensive list of grave sins. Now to be mortal it must be grave. Two, the person must be mentally aware that the sin is grave. And three, the person committing the sin must have sufficient time to ponder the seriousness of the sin and then still decide to commit the sin anyway. This sin is said to be mortal or deadly because it cuts off the grace of God from our soul. Or another way to say it, mortal sin destroys our relationship with God. Our Faith teaches us that this can be restored or healed by one of two ways. The Church teaches us that if one is capable of perfect contrition, they can pray directly to God for forgiveness and receive forgiveness. Perfect contrition means being truly sorry for offending God and not motivated by fear of punishment or other resulting bad consequences. The question we must ask, is a person who has committed mortal sin capable of perfect contrition? Probably not. So, God’s mercy through Christ provides a much easier way, the Sacrament of Confession. Through this sacrament, God the Father, through the death and resurrection of the Son, sends the Holy Spirit through the ministry of the Church/priest to give forgiveness of all sin even if the contrition is much less than perfect. I suspect many folks think that if they haven’t committed mortal sin there is no need for the Sacrament of Confession. That would be wrong. All the sacraments impart God’s grace. We all need God’s grace. Next week I will write about venial sin and the benefits of Confession. Yours in Christ, Fr. Sid.

I want to start this off by saying “Thank you” to everyone who contributed to the Diocesan Appeal. We surpassed our financial goal by a +30% and we also exceeded out participant goal. The dollars raised stay within our diocese and support its efforts. These efforts make the parish shine brightly among the diocesan parishes. However, I must keep before you how perilous our future may be. Parishes will continue to close or be consolidated as the shortage of priests continues. (We are blessed with 8 seminarians, the most in over 30 years with more coming next year. But it will be 10 years before this increase will help the situation.) St. Libory’s is experiencing growth. We frequently register new families and have many baptisms. But we are still the smallest parish within a 20 minute or less drive to 5 other parishes. If you have 6 people running from a hungry bear, all that 5 need to do is run faster than the sixth. We are the sixth. And in terms of numbers, we are way behind the other five. Before closing a parish, the Bishop will confer with the area pastors. This is cold realism, but they will primarily see closing us as a benefit to them by receiving us into their numbers. This is a frequent topic of my prayer and meditation before the Lord as pastor. I love this parish. It’s loving, faithful and fruitful. I really do not want it to close. But my prayer always takes me back to, Lord what do you want? I do believe His will is for us to thrive in the same sense that it is His will that His faithful thrive in His grace. But I also know His permissive will allows for the other, as when the people of Israel failed to enter the promise land even though it was His perfect will that they should. I have ideas, but I am only willing to pursue God’s will. Perhaps we could make our interior too beautiful to close. Perhaps we could offer our parish to provide the traditional Latin Mass, which has a growing popularity, especially with younger generations. Perhaps we could enthusiastically promote Catholic education of our children by throwing our support behind G.I. Central Catholic which is rapidly reclaiming its Catholic identity. (This would make us an asset to the Grand Island parishes as we would be helping with their burden of school support and therefore less inclined to desire our closure.) Perhaps we could become a center for adult Catholic learning. We have a hall that would certainly lend itself well to the need. (The pandemic has helped to produce an abundance of programs available via the internet.) Perhaps we could organize to be a vibrant outreach to the surrounding community with the redeeming message of our Lord. Perhaps we could do all of these and more. I realize that I’m dreaming here, but that’s where it starts. What’s your prayer for our parish? What’s your dream? Are we willing to say like Blessed Mary, “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.” Jesus said, “With God, all things are possible!” Yours in Christ our Lord. Fr. Sid.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the holy season of Lent. Here is a rundown on how it will go down. Ashes will be distributed in the traditional manner of the smudge on the forehead. Rome has also authorized another form of distribution that avoids any physical contact, the sprinkling of a pinch of ash on top of the head. So, there will be myself and another distributing by smudge and a third available for those who prefer the sprinkle of ashes. As for Confessions, there will not be a Penance Service. I will however offer extended time in the confessional. Starting the first Saturday of Lent I will be in the confessional beginning at 3 PM till 4:15 PM. I will also be available on Wednesdays after the evening Mass till 7:30 PM or as long as needed. Lent is a particularly good time to do meaningful examination of conscience. It is not for the purpose of making us feel guilty. The purpose is healing. Sin always injures us in some manner. Confessing our sins to the Lord and seeking forgiveness is the application of healing Grace to our wounds. This in turn moves us toward being the person we were created to be, made in the image of God. Yours in Christ our Lord. Fr. Sid.

In a little more than two weeks the Holy season of Lent will begin. Ash Wednesday will be different this year. Rome has given permission to apply the ashes by sprinkling them on your head so as to avoid direct contact from person to person. I’m not sure the ladies are going to appreciate that. What I am anticipating doing is offering both, the traditional ashes on the forehead and the sprinkled ashes. Please be aware that it is not required to receive ashes. This is not a sacrament. There would be nothing wrong with coming to Ash Wednesday Mass and abstaining from the reception of ashes. This is a really good opportunity to reflect upon why we receive ashes. It is an act of penance. The Gospel message is introduced with the imperative declaration, “Repent!” It means to turn, to turn from our sins and toward God. That is what Lent is all about, doing an examination of conscience and going to confession, all in preparation for our holiest of days, Easter. Yours in Christ our Lord. Fr. Sid.