Mothers are often portrayed in both fictional and nonfictional literature in ways that reflect the complex demands they face in life. This literature often captures our imagination by portraying women of strength who face hardships and challenges with determination, strength, and a selfless love for the well-being of their children. This is indeed a significant part of being a mother – facing the adversities of life and preparing children to withstand them. For Catholics, the Blessed Virgin Mary is an inspiring model of both determination and joy who is not protected from the sorrow and anguish of being a mother.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 1172 emphasizes the maternal importance of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Church which stems from her care of Jesus, her Son, by stating that the “Holy Church honors the Blessed Mary, Mother of God, with a special love. She is inseparably linked with the saving work of her Son. In her, the Church admires and exalts the most excellent fruit of redemption and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image that which she desires and hopes wholly to be." The Gospel of John provides the account of the moment she becomes a mother to Jesus’ disciples and thus the Church, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son. “ Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” (John 19: 26-27)  [CCC 964]

In his 1965 encyclical, Mense Maio, Pope Paul VI recognized May as the month for the Marian devotions, “May is a month which the piety of the faithful has long dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God.  …  For this is the month during which Christians, in their churches and their homes, offer the Virgin Mother more fervent and loving acts of homage and veneration; and it is the month in which a greater abundance of God's merciful gifts comes down to us from our Mother's throne.” 

Many of our parishes are named after Mary, others offer the Rosary daily during the month of May and they could erect an altar with a statute or a picture of Mary as a reminder of this Marian month.  It is a long-standing tradition to crown the statue of Mary during May to honour her faithfulness.  Additionally, the Feast of Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, was instituted by Pope Francis in 2018 and is celebrated on the Monday after Pentecost.  Mary’s example of trust, faith, and strength inspire us in the living of our faith.  

These devotions encourage us to imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary’s virtues in our own lives and to think of the women of faith and courage who nurture and inspire us – firstly, our mothers and grandmothers.  They have a vital, even irreplaceable, role in our lives.  Their love, faith, courage, strength, and humility guide us through the experiences of life so that we can follow God’s call and live our lives in service to others.  And then we think of the women who are maternal figures in our lives, the women who devote themselves to living an authentic and courageous witness of faith through acts of sacrificial love.

In his Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete Et Exsultate, On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World, Pope Francis writes about women of faith saying, “Within these various forms, I would stress too that the “genius of woman” is seen in feminine styles of holiness, which are an essential means of reflecting God’s holiness in this world. Indeed, in times when women tended to be most ignored or overlooked, the Holy Spirit raised up saints whose attractiveness produced new spiritual vigour and important reforms in the Church. We can mention Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Bridget, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. But I think too of all those unknown or forgotten women who, each in her own way, sustained and transformed families and communities by the power of their witness.”  (GE, 12)
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In this month of Marian devotion, let us pray for and honour the women in our lives and in our Faith Tradition who have “sustained and transformed families and communities by the power of their witness.” (GE, 12)

In the experience of life, there are particular moments and natural seasons when we are aware of the signs of decline and of new beginnings. In the autumn, the leaves fall from the trees, and the plants stop growing.  All of creation goes to sleep for the winter season of dormancy.  After the winter, just when it seemed all of creation had died, new life begins to emerge.  Crocuses, daffodils and tulips begin to sprout through the ground and leaves start to grow on the once bare trees.

What we see in nature is also reflected in the events of our life - those times of struggle or pain that lead to new beginnings.  A baby is born in our family following the passing of a generation; we reconcile with a friend who had become estranged; we secure a job after a period of unemployment; we see a victim of domestic abuse and work with a local agency to secure a shelter; or we see the people who are homeless in our community and we open the doors of our parish to offer a shelter.

As Christians we are invited to follow Jesus Christ, to embrace His passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension which we identify as a faith event that we call the “Paschal mystery”.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states its theological meaning as follows, the “Paschal mystery has two aspects: by his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens for us the way to a new life.  This new life is above all justification that reinstates us in God's grace, "so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (654) 
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The liturgy and the sacraments of the Church allow us to experience the Paschal Mystery, through word and symbols, and especially in the liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter as a journey from sin to the newness of life. The CCC describes how the liturgy makes the Paschal Mystery present, “Christian liturgy not only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them present. The Paschal mystery of Christ is celebrated, not repeated. It is the celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration, there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present.” (1104)

The Paschal Mystery is an integral part of the spiritual life. It is the faith-filled journey of living with Christ that embraces difficulties or death, only to rise exultantly to a new reality in our relationship with God and our neighbour. When we encounter such moments, it can be the person of Christ who is present to us through His suffering, death and Resurrection that allows the Holy Spirit and grace to transform the way we see and understand our life. We discover that our life has a pattern of dying and rising, and that God is with us. This fosters within us the hope that new beginnings will always be possible despite the endings that occur in our lives.

We see that new life can come from death, and a new beginning can present itself within life experiences that we might have described as endings. Sometimes it is said that when God closes a door, He opens a window. This saying reflects the Christian hope and belief that in the “deaths” or “endings” of our lives, the experience of the Paschal Mystery calls us to look for and embrace the new beginning. 
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As the Paschal Mystery is celebrated this Lent and Easter, may Jesus Christ’s passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension be the fulfillment of our faith in new beginnings.

The Season of Lent is a time for examining our spiritual life and faith practice.  We identify the ways in which we need to grow to be more faithful to Christ, to others, by turning away from sin and undertaking spiritual practices of holy detachment. Lent invites us to pray more frequently, give alms, and undertake fasting which can instil a “graced self-discipline”.   This self-discipline helps us to avoid the sins that draw us away from the love of neighbour and God.  

Pope Francis in his 2019 Lenten Message states, “Indeed, when we fail to live as children of God, we often behave in a destructive way towards our neighbours and other creatures – and ourselves as well – since we begin to think more or less consciously that we can use them as we will.”  Furthermore, he pointed to the unchecked sinfulness that can become cyclical and unremitting in our lives, “that lurks in the human heart (cf. Mk 7:20-23) takes the shape of greed and unbridled pursuit of comfort, lack of concern for the good of others and even of oneself.”  These attachments can gradually overpower each one of us so that we find ourselves engulfed by the “unbridled pursuit of comfort”.

St. Ignatius of Loyola addressed such attachments in the Christian spiritual life through the foundational principle of indifference or more commonly known as holy detachment. In the Spiritual Exercise #23 he states, “Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save their souls. The other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings to help them in attaining the end for which they are created. From this, it follows that I should use these things to the extent that they help me toward my end, and rid myself of them to the extent that they hinder me. To do this, I must make myself indifferent to all created things … I ought to desire and elect only the thing which is more conducive to the end for which I am created.”

As we journey through this Season of Lent, our spiritual and penitential practices can open us to the grace of a holy detachment in our life, to surrender our control and our desires to God. Let us pray for the courage to rid ourselves of those things which hinder our relationship with God, to be more responsible for the care of the created world, and most especially the sacred dignity of our brothers and sisters. Through this grace, the Lord will prepare our hearts to fully receive Him and celebrate the gift of the Resurrection this Easter.   

Over 450 Catholics attended the Faith & Fun NHL game with Bishop McGrattan, and $2,250 was raised for Elizabeth House. We are looking forward to doing this again and maybe will be visiting a Stampeders game! 

See more pictures here.

Most Reverend William McGrattan made an announcement on Friday, February 22, 2019, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Apostle: 
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Reverend Mr. Troy Nguyen, having completed his studies through St. Joseph's Seminary and Newman Theological College in Edmonton, AB and currently serving at St. Peter's Parish, Calgary as Transitional Deacon, will be ordained to the Priesthood on Friday June, 28, 2019 at St. Mary's Cathedral at 7 pm. 

“We’re about building missionary disciples,” Fr. Cristino said, expressing the hope that this centre will better serve the needs of a growing, vibrant community, working alongside ministries like CCO and the University of Calgary Catholic Community, while encouraging the young to go out and leave the community after a time of formation and build up the Church elsewhere.
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As a St. Bernard’s parishioner and mother of young children, it is exciting to see the next generation fill the church that has become my family’s home.  I look forward to watching the new ministry unfold with an abundance of hope in my heart for the future. My hope is that each young person who enters St. Bernard’s feels as welcome as I did nearly a decade ago.  

Written by Jessica Cyr
​Photography by Yuan Wang

The experience of love and friendship, the awareness of being loved at the level of our souls, is the very desire of God for our human fulfilment. It is interesting that the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, Theresa May, has appointed a "minister of loneliness" to tackle the personal and health issues caused by communal isolation. In Canada, Dr Robin Lennox, an assistant professor at McMaster University reported that “anywhere between 25 and 30 per cent of Canadians across various age groups are reporting persistent loneliness or social isolation.” (January 2019)  The experience of such loneliness is not due to the absence of people or the availability of means to communicate with each other. Indeed, technological progress and the various social media provide many ways to communicate, text, phone, and to express “likes” and even human emotions to each other. 

The feeling of loneliness can reflect an inner emptiness which eludes human fulfilment.  St. Augustine speaks to such desolation when he prays, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”  Through the grace of God, we come to realize that the feeling of emptiness cannot be filled by distractions or acquiring things. Rather, it is during moments of openness or spiritual awakening that the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with the fullness of God’s love. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, "God is Love and love is his first gift, containing all others. God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."  (CCC 733)  God’s work of grace in our souls is directed towards helping us to love God wholly and generously, as God loves us.  

At the closing Mass of WYD 2019 in Panama, Pope Francis spoke in his homily about the importance of love, “we may possess everything, but if we lack the passion of love, we will have nothing. Let us allow the Lord to make us fall in love!” Love seeks out, welcomes, accompanies and serves. Love inspires us to hold others in our hearts desiring for them the fullness of God’s love and grace. This act leads not to loneliness or isolation in our human experience but rather to true love and friendship in union with God and others.