Connecting Easter Joy with Everyday Life

Connecting Easter Joy with Everyday Life

In what ways have our lives grown stagnant, cold or dark? Our celebration of Easter becomes more meaningful when we can see how it connects with our daily lives. It has been a long winter and a cool, rainy beginning to spring - but the light and warmth has finally returned, thank God. Yet in a much more powerful way, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ we celebrate today offers us an invitation that, if we respond, can have a great impact in our lives. Since Jesus' Resurrection has triumphed even over sin and death, the His warm light of life can shine on the other forms of darkness in our lives! Our Christian faith is more than just a system of values and morals, but a celebration of the fact that God's love for you personally means he wants to walk with you and me through our dark valleys and raise us up again to the hope and strength of new life. This is the heart of our faith that St. Peter proclaims in our first reading this Sunday: Jesus who died and rose again is Lord of life and wants to share his life and mercy with each of us.

Our two parishes of St. Martha and St. Mary are working together as a Collaborative of Parishes to build on the strengths of our faith communities and to share this new life in new ways. Just over the past year we have: implemented new, more engaging materials in our Faith Formation of Children and Youth; hired a new Coordinator of High School Youth Ministry to work with our volunteers and Director for Youth to grow this important ministry; we launched new, integrated websites for our parishes and implemented online giving to make the collections easier for those who prefer electronic payments; St. Mary Parish hired a new Director of Music Ministries, and St. Martha Parish has a new roof on our Pastoral Center.

Looking ahead, we are wrapping up the process of writing our collaborative's Local Pastoral Plan which will guide our efforts and new initiatives over the next three to five years to help both parishes grow as strong communities of faith. Our priorities will be: "The Sunday Experience" - including the ways we help people feel welcome and part of our communities; "Discernment and Vocations" - to help encourage future priests for our parishes and help all to hear Jesus' loving call in our personal circumstances; and "Faith Formation for Adults and Families." In this last Priority, we are working to complement our formation of youth with increased opportunities to participate in various kinds of adult discussions that can feel welcoming regardless of where we are on our faith journey. The next such opportunity for all adults is our May 1st "Faith Matters" event. These are relaxed discussions over coffee, tea, wine or beer at the Unlikely Story Cafe in Plainville. Fr. Chip Hines will be our guest to lead a discussion of the movie, "The Shack".

May we all make a choice to allow our new life in Christ, begun in baptism and renewed each Easter, to engage us in the real circumstances of our lives. We look forward to your being an important part of our future in St. Martha Parish and St. Mary Parish - a future filled with Resurrection hope!