Dear Family,
Lent arrives on this (Ash) Wednesday. (I still have some Christmas ornaments to put away.)

Now begins the time when we prayerfully focus on getting ready for the Feast of Easter. Easter is at the very core of who we are as followers of Jesus. “And if Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.” (I Cor. 15:14)

FAST AND ABSTINENCE IN LENT
No Meat for everybody over 14 years old on Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays of Lent.

Fasting means one full meal and two smaller meals in the day. It applies to people in good health between 18 and 59. Our two fast days are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We are encouraged to extend that fasting to Holy Saturday.

These holy practices help us remember that we are dependent on things outside ourselves for our well-being. Our ultimate dependence is on the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. We have life because he gave His.

Dear Family,
Happy Housekeeping is the name of the game for this Twitch! There are not enough words to say thanks to all the people who are involved in all the following events and undertakings.

TRINKETS AND TREASURES is hardly over and we gallop toward the next events on our full parish calendar. My heartfelt thanks to Mary Ann Smith and the incredible group of women and men who pulled off another classy “repurposing sale.” It gives a whole new meaning to ‘yard sale.’

The amount of work storing, arranging, pricing and ultimately selling, is huge. Mary Ann was heard to remark at one point, “This isn’t my first rodeo.” But how the crew manages to ride bucking broncos, rope their cattle, and throw lassos around the little heifers still demands great talent. Anyone who makes the difficult look easy, blesses us. We thank the Lord for The ‘Rodeo Master’ and the wranglers in her corral.

Dear Family,
Thank you for making your gift and/or pledge to ABCD 2023. The brochure we gave you underlines in very simple terms the outreach that you, (The Church of Miami,) is able to do for the various needs of our Archdiocese.

Our portion of the goal is $143,516. I’m kicking it off with my gift of $5,000. I would normally never tell you that, but I want to make the point that this is really important for us. And... the practice of the Archdio¬cese is to return to each parish any excess over their goal. That allows us to focus on our own outreach projects as well.

It’s important to me because all the way back in 1958 when the Diocese of Miami was established, one of the first things Bishop Coleman Carroll did after arriving in the city was to announce that we were going to build a seminary.

I was already in the seminary in Hartford, Connecticut because we had no seminaries south of Baltimore or east of Little Rock. Bishop Carroll had a fund drive within months of coming. I think it was called the Diocesan Development Fund, DDF.

Dear Family,
Visions of meatballs are still dancing in my head as I continue to think wonderful thoughts about the Spaghetti Dinner. What a great way to celebrate St. ebastian’s feast day. Again, I thank all the men and women who made it work under the aegis of the Men’s Club and Ed Rebholz.

A very special thanks, also, to Marie Barbagallo. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out she made the desserts! Her rice pudding, her home baked biscotti, and her cannolis stuffed with her own filling were delightful. Talk about having folks you like who can also cook as friends!!!

I know the dinner takes the work of many people who work in the background. I hear the Lord saying to them, “Well done, good and faithful servants... Come share your master’s joy.” In His operations, absolutely no one is nameless or faceless. A dear former parishioner (and hard worker) used to tell me, ‘If you give me all the praise here, there won’t be any left to get up there” as she pointed to heaven.