“After Jesus was baptized, the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan.” Mk 1,12

Dear parishioners,

I have quite a bit to share with you this week, so more on the temptations of Jesus in Sunday’s homily.

First, three under-reported success stories.

The first is Ave Maria Garden’s Valentine’s Day Bouquet fundraiser for Chalice. I reported in an earlier pastor’s corner that the total number of bouquets requested and delivered was 55. The final tally is 73 arrangements, with no less than $2300 being sent to Chalice for relief for poor families in the Third World. Congratulations and thanks to Jane and Simon and their co-workers!

The second under-reported success story is Project Advance. I said previously that our total rebates for 2020 were for a total of $80,000. The final results are in. The total in rebates for the year stands at $89,000! Click here for the full report on our year’s performance, our best ever. You will find a very detailed, very thorough report on the year’s financial results, on participation, and on trends over the years. I can only say thanks to all those who contributed so generously. Thanks to this, and thanks to the federal wage subsidy, we have restored a cushion which will enable us to pay our archdiocesan assessment, our single largest expenditure after salaries and benefits for staff, even if our revenues don’t recover in the present year.

The third success story is All Were Filled. I was present on Friday for the distribution of boxes. It was incredible. There was a convoy of vehicles, neatly lined up, like a drive-through at McDonald’s, waiting to receive 5 or 10 boxes for their respective parishes. It works like a well-oiled machine. There are now no fewer than 10 parishes participating in this food distribution programme. St. Mary’s is the hub for this operation. Every Friday, Richard Lange goes to Richmond to pick up the boxes, brings them back to St. Mary’s, where they are collected by the people doing the distribution to the recipients in all the parishes. Thanks be to God, and to Richard and Lorna, and to the army of volunteers, here at St. Mary’s and in 9 other parishes, who are making this happen. God bless you all.

With the arrival of Lent, there is just one change to our current schedule. We are introducing live streamed Stations of the Cross at 6:30 p.m. on Fridays, followed by live streamed mass at 7:00 p.m. This replaces the hour of confessions/communion/personal prayer on Friday evenings. Till further notice, everything else remains the same.

We had our first experience of “walk-throughs” on Ash Wednesday. We feel they went remarkably well. It gives us confidence, going into Holy Week, when we will no doubt repeat this experience. There was just one hiccup. People tend to arrive prior to the half-hour for which they have pre-registered. This creates a crowd just outside the entrance to the church, so we have to let them in in order to dissipate the crowd. We allow an interval of one half-hour between each half-hour of walk-through, so we can safely absorb this early arrival, as long as the numbers we allow in remain low. But we would prefer by far that people arrive after, not before, the opening hour for which they pre-registered. That way, they would be allowed in immediately upon arrival, and there would never be an accumulation of people waiting to get in. Also, we could more safely increase by a few, the number of people we allow into the church every half-hour. A final point. If you pre-register in the future for a walk-through, and you arrive   early, if those who arrived by car simply wait in their cars until opening time, that alone would be of help.

Susan Diewold has come up with a very nice idea for the Lent and Easter seasons. Every Sunday between now and Pentecost, she will post a painting which depicts the gospel of that Sunday, together with a commentary on the painting, questions to promote further reflexion, and a link for people wanting more information. She calls this project “The Gospel according to Art”. Thank you Susan, for providing us with this visual catechesis. You can click here to view this Sunday’s painting. On future Sundays look for “The Gospel according to Art” on our parish website, our parish bulletin, and our Instagram and Facebook pages.

Last but not least, remember to join us on our Youtube page 10 minutes before the 11:15 mass each Sunday, with your children aged 4 to 7, to watch “Lent with Paula”!

Finally, we have lost a long-time parishioner whom many of you know, since he and Gert have been parishioners of St. Mary’s since 1963. He is Roger Marquis, a fellow Saskatchewanian. We will really miss him. We celebrated his funeral on Saturday, February 20th. He and Gert celebrated 60 years of marriage in 2020. Gert, our prayers are with you and with your children and grand-children.

That’s it for this Sunday. God bless us all, keep us safe, and grace us with a fruitful Lenten season.

Fr. Guy