Dear Family,
Last Tuesday our Pastoral Council had its first face-to-face encounter in many moons. We gathered in the rectory. It was good to have their smiling faces in the living room after so long.

We reviewed many things including bringing them up to date on the plans for the kitchen and the storage room additions. I covered most of that info in last week’s Twitch.

One of the members pointed out something I hadn’t noticed in the April 2022 edition of the Miami edition of The Florida Catholic. It was an edition filled with news of ordinations and anniversaries. It wasn’t until page 20 that there was a great article by Staff writer Ana Rodriguez-Soto, (a great lady.)

Dear Family,
I intended to head this Twitch with “Building the Kitchen” and Kitchen came out Kingdom. I will ponder deeply any possible hidden meaning this may have. One possibility might be that Kitchen building IS Kingdom building.

For sure, I believe that heaven has a fully equipped kitchen. My hope is that we can anticipate the heavenly Kingdom by building an earthy Kitchen. When you think about it, a heavenly meal is what we are all about every time we gather in our worship home to break the Bread and drink the Cup.

...And how long have you been faithfully bringing food to place in our DRIVE OUT HUNGER grocery carts? Hopefully, that food finds its way to kitchens to feed those who are hungering. We have a concern for the hungry.

Dear Family,
Why the big “OF”? (in the title of this article) Easter is a humongous feast. It’s so important that we want to keep it around. We have an eight-day period called an octave where each day is called Easter. That’s why today isn’t the second AFTER Easter, but the third Sunday OF Easter. I’m sure you have been awake all week wondering about that, and now you know.

Seriously, think about it. After Easter day we had the octave, or eight day period where the language of the liturgy kept speaking each day as though it were Easter Sunday. Why? The idea behind the octave custom after major feasts is that in a real sense, THE UNIVERSE STOPS. The death and Resurrection of Jesus exploded business as usual. For the disciples, things were radically different. In general people thought that Messiah meant someone that would get rid of the Roman domination.

St. John Paul II’s Devotion to Divine Mercy
BY MARGE FENELON
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

Editor’s note: Considered a mystic, St. Faustina Kow-alska spread the message of divine mercy in her per-sonal journal called "Divine Mercy in My Soul.” St. Faustina's message reverberated in St. John Paul II's heart. During the homily for her canonization on April 30, 2000, the pope declared Divine Mercy Sunday to be celebrated worldwide.

There are many notable things about the life and papacy of St. John Paul II, but the most notable is his devotion to divine mercy. In 1980, he wrote an entire encyclical on it, "Dives in Misericordia" ("Rich in Mercy"), in which he outlines the truth and meaning of mercy from biblical times to the present and beyond.