April 2021 Newsletter – One Day is as a Thousand Years

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

This Easter Season is marked by the particular joy of being together in-person in church once again. The beauty of each of your faces, your smiling eyes, the thanksgiving, the song, the praise reverberate with that joy. One year ago we could not gather in-person. We did not know what might happen. Would the parish survive? Would we ever gather again? How will I shop? How will I obtain my most essential needs? Most of us had never faced a challenge of the magnitude brought about by COVID-19. We deeply felt the loss of normalcy. The questions and the fears were natural. Tears were natural. Yet, in spite of those rightly placed feelings and fears, the parish persisted. Prayer and supplication were made for each of you, our entire Church, the nation, and the world. Holy Masses were offered. God’s mercy was called upon in Jesus’ Holy Name. Prayers of intercession were offered to the Blessed Virgin. Yes, throughout it all, the parish bore on, carrying out its witness before the world. Your discipleship fought against despair. The greatest testimony of the time was the gift of perseverance all of you, the parishioners, friends, and members of Holy Name of Jesus were graced with. You did not throw in the towel, nor would you even think of allowing for defeat. By God’s grace the parish not only survived, but grew and was strengthened. Your hearts were uplifted, but not only. The hearts and minds of countless others known and unknown encountered our witness to our risen Lord and Savior. We bore witness in ways seen and unseen, by prayer, outreach, charity, kindness, and sacrifice. Because of what we did together, witnessing to the might of Jesus’ Holy Name, grace continues to abound. The Lord Almighty is the creator of the times and the seasons. He chastises, but also lifts up. He tests and rewards those who bear up. You, my brothers and sisters, have borne up mightily in witness to the power of the Risen One in our lives.

April brings us again to Easter joy. Celebrating Easter in our 100th year as a parish recalls past joys and resurrects our hope for the future. Abundant blessings are being received as we continue moving forward.

This month we focus on Mother Teresa as a faithful disciple of our Lord who lived her life in a beautiful way showing unconditional love. We celebrate the return of two Holy Masses on Sundays and the regular reception of Holy Communion. We remind ourselves of our Sunday obligation which, first and foremost, requires our presence in church each Sunday. We learn various ways of giving the Easter greeting in many languages. Check out information on our Music Scholarship program. We look forward to this summer’s national activities, the Men’s Retreat and the Kurs Encampment for children and youth. Read our special thank you for great work and a beautiful donation. And, we also share more of our 100 years of memories.

Check out all this and more here in our April 2021 Newsletter.

Bible Study for Bright Week 2021

This week’s memory verse: For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

John 3:17
  • 4/4 – Revelation 2:7
  • 4/5 – Numbers 24:5-7
  • 4/6 – John 7:38
  • 4/7 – Jeremiah 31:12
  • 4/8 –  2 Peter 3:18
  • 4/9 – Song of Songs 4:15-16
  • 4/10 – Psalm 92:12-15

Pray the week: Lord Jesus, move me from the joyous contemplation of Your empty tomb in the garden to proclaiming, testifying, and bearing witness to You. Help me to grow the seeds of faith You have planted in all people.

Reflection for the Solemnity of the Resurrection 2021

In the garden.

“He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To Him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Here we are, in this beautiful garden, standing in awe before an empty tomb.

I have spent a lot of time these days contemplating this garden, in my mind’s eye thinking that it closely resembles the nearby tomb where Jesus was laid.

Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried. So they laid Jesus there…

I watched as this was put together, the color and texture of the place, the scent of flowers where our beautiful Lord slept in death.

Picture, in your mind’s eye, the women, setting off to the tomb before daybreak on the third day, eager to attend to the remains of their Lord and Master. They loved Him and could not do otherwise.

Each of the Gospels differ slightly in the exact narrative, but they all agree that the first witnesses to the resurrection were the woman who followed Jesus. They all found the tomb empty and went or were instructed to go tell the disciples. 

Here we are, in this beautiful garden, standing in awe before an empty tomb.

The narratives describe the reaction of the women and the disciples as one of fear, a lack of understanding, or wonderment – all words for awe. Awe is defined as a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

We too respect this garden, and we encounter it with fear and wonder. Certainly, we can picture the scene, we even physically sense it in feeling the petals of the flowers, the moisture of the green leaves, smelling the flowers and the scent of earth, touching the sharpness of the crown of thorns still resting nearby and the hardness of the rock. We can look up and see the cross still standing, but can we connect with the new reality this day brings?

Here we are, in this beautiful garden, standing in awe before the empty tomb. We still stand in awe because, like those women and disciples, we can hardly believe what God has done for us.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.

He gave His Son for us. His Son suffered and died for us. His Son rested in the tomb for us. His Son rose for us. For you. For me. Awe.

Here we are, in this beautiful garden – not just that garden, but the new Eden in which we dwell with God, no longer alienated or unreconciled, because of all Jesus did. So, affirmed now, let us go forth from this garden to proclaim, testify, and bear witness to our risen Jesus.

Reflection for Good Friday 2021

Perfect

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.

Jesus, the perfect Son of God, the perfect advocate, the perfectly blameless and sinless one, the perfect high priest, the perfect lamb was sent by God the Father to save the imperfect.

The testimony of the Scriptures insists upon Jesus’ perfection. In Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, we read: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

What is so amazing is that God would self-sacrifice perfection for the likes of us. He gave perfection so those who hate, the violent, the prejudiced, the deniers, the betrayers, the unfaithful, the cheaters and liars, those who place politics above truth, the thieves, and the man or woman who just cut you off or slammed a door in your face, can confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.

The Father instructed His perfect Son to be the perfect sacrifice, to take upon Himself the sin we live in, because only by the offering up of perfection taking on our sin could we be saved.

Throughout the history of the Jewish people, we see time and time again God taking action to save, not because of some imperfect offering from imperfect people, or because of some human plea, but by His own perfect will; by His choice and interior self-agreement. God chooses, God agrees, God brings about. 

In the end God brought about perfect forgiveness of sin, fellowship with the imperfect, and adoption of the imperfect through the offering of the Perfect one, Jesus. All we need to do is accept that gift. Can we in our imperfection grasp this and say yes? Assuredly so! Now is the time.

Therefore, on this Good Friday, and in each of our days, let us take account of where we fall short, let us then give thanks for the timely helpavailable to us because we have approached the throne of grace and have said, ‘Yes Lord, I believe.’ Let us take every opportunity to let all we encounter know what God has done for us. Then, with deep humility, rest in God’s perfect love.

Reflection for Maundy Thursday – Holy Mass of the Last Supper

Up.

Brothers and sisters: I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you

Dearest people of God in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ

There is a consistent quality in what happens over these three days of the Pascal Triduum. It is the quality of “up.” Consider these few short excerpts from the Gospels:

Jesus tells His disciples: “We’re going up to Jerusalem. There the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and scribes. They will condemn him to death.”

Matthew 20:18

he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.”

Mark 14:13-15

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Mark 14:26

And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him

Luke 23:33

Up to Jerusalem, in the upper room, up on the Mount of Olives, up to Golgotha, the place of The Skull. Jesus travels ever upward.

Each of these references have to do with going to a higher place, to going up. This is, my brothers and sisters, why Jesus embarked on this journey in fulfillment of His Father’s will. 

His journey was and remains so that we may be lifted up to God. 

It is so we might spread the word to humanity, held down in sin and despair – that Jesus, the Son of God died for you so you might be lifted up. Accept Him.

This is why, on this very night, Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist and the Holy Priesthood. He did this so we might remain in His constant presence, sins forgiven, partakers in His very Body and Blood, in every Holy Mass lifted up to heaven till He brings everything to completion.

This is why, the final step in His journey was to be raised up – raised so that we may rejoice in both the forgiveness of our sins and the fact that the gates of heaven and resurrection have been opened up to us.

We have received what has been passed onto us. Let us then, on this night and throughout this Triduum, keep our eyes fixed upward, to the cross and to the promise of heaven opened up for us. Amen.

Bible Study for Holy Week 2021

This week’s memory verse: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes

Romans 1:16
  • 3/28 – Ezra 1:1
  • 3/29 – Exodus 32:5
  • 3/30 – Isaiah 55:11
  • 3/31 – Acts 18:24-26
  • 4/1 -  Acts 1:8
  • 4/2 – 1 Thessalonians 2:13
  • 4/3 – Luke 4:18-19

Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant that my words, my entire being, may be a public proclamation of my faith in You. If I shrink from this, call me back and heal me so I may speak boldly of Your good news, peace, happiness, and salvation. 

Reflection for Palm Sunday 2021

Working to change.

The Lord GOD has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them.

Throughout Lent we have focused on the change and reform necessary in our lives. We delved into the Lenten disciplines of fasting, sacrifice (or giving), study, and prayer. There is one discipline left – proclamation.

If we have taken these disciplines seriously, we should each be seeing change in our lives, or at least more clearly hear the call to conversion, change and reform. By now we should be walking each day as more ardent and faithful livers of Jesus’s gospel way. Sins like anger, resentment, and their like should be more foreign to us.

Of all the disciplines of Lent, proclamation may be the hardest to achieve.  We can take time to fast, sacrifice or give a little more, study, pray. Most of that we can do on our own, almost stealthy, unseen to the outside world, but proclamation – everyone sees that.

Proclamation is very important to me personally. Let me tell you about that.

I often wonder if people think I am a little off, maybe not quite aware of what’s going on. Perhaps I do not see reality? They see me often thanking and congratulating people for what they might consider insignificant or even something the people I am thanking should just do – you know it is their job…

There are reasons for that. Most of my early life was marked by ongoing encounters with two kinds of people, those who recognized kindness and those who could not find a good thing in a basket of gold. Two types of proclaimers modeled. Who would I be?

Our first reading from Isaiah 50 points to Jesus Whose whole life was proclamation. He came speaking the Good News. It was His constant message. He showed us the kingdom. He told people – and tells us – what we have to do, repent and believe in the gospel. 

Isaiah says in Chapter 52: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation.

The beauty of Jesus’ proclamation was that there was nothing in His entire being –  including every trial, wound, scourge, humiliation, thorn, nail, lack of breath, and curse heaped on Him that was not Him speaking out about our value before God. His death on the cross was proclamation of that value.

If we want to bear Christ’s name in honesty and integrity, we must be proclaimers of the kingdom. We must proclaim good news, peace, happiness,and salvation. We have to let people know, and in the end let people hear the change and reform Jesus caused in us. Could we rather nitpick, focus on the one mistake someone made, or criticize even the smallest gift shared? Sure. But then, what kind of proclaimer are we?

Holy Week and Easter 2021 Schedule

Holy Week and the celebration of the Solemnity of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ are the true central point of our liturgical year. In this time, we are called in a special way to walk with Jesus from His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, to the Last Supper, through His passion, death, and entombment, to His glorious resurrection. 

All celebrations will be conducted in full and the church is completely open. We will also broadcast our services for those who cannot attend in person.

  • March 28: Palm Sunday. Holy Mass with Blessing and distribution of Palms at 10am.
  • March 30: Holy Tuesday. Chrism Holy Mass in the Cathedral, Scranton, 11:30am.
  • March 31: Holy Wednesday. Day of Fast.
  • April 1: Maundy Thursday. Day of Fast. Holy Mass with Reception of Oils, Reposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and Striping of the Altar at 7pm. Church remains open afterward for private devotion.
  • April 2: Good Friday. Day of Fast. Church opens at Noon for private devotion Seven Last Words at 1pm. Bitter Lamentations / Gorzkie żale at 3pm. Liturgy of the Presanctified and Opening of the Tomb at 7pm. Church remains open afterward for private devotion.
  • April 3: Holy Saturday. Day of Fast. Liturgies of the day (New Fire, Blessing of Holy Water, Proclamation of the Exhortations, Renew of Baptismal Promises) at 10am followed by the Blessing of Easter Baskets.
  • April 4: Solemnity of the Resurrection (Easter). Solemn Resurrection Procession and High Holy Mass at 8am. Second Holy Mass at 10am.

Centennial Year- Part 3

Our parish has some really amazing artifacts, part of the wonderful legacy we have inherited. Among these are:

The chandelier at the center of the church’s nave: The chandelier came from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs. The chandelier had been located in the grand parlor of the hotel. The historic hotel began as a boarding house built by Gideon Putnam in 1802, and eventually grew into the world’s largest hotel. The hotel was demolished between 1952 and 1953. Ironically, after it was demolished the hotel’s vacant lot became the site of a Grand Union Supermarket.

The church’s bells: We are still trying to track down the history of the church’s two bells. Thankfully, those glorious bells (a great bell and a tolling bell) are still in place and functional. Parish lore informs us that the bells were forged at the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in Schenectady where many of our parishioners worked.

Tadeusz Kszesniak created the Szopka which has been displayed in our church for the Christmas season for over 30 years. Tadeusz immigrated from Poland in the late 1970’s. Tadeusz had offered his artwork to St. Paul’s R.C. parish in Schenectady where it was rejected. He approached Stefan WÄ™glinski from our parish who gladly accepted it.

Our 100th Anniversary web page at has a listing of all benefactors and what they donated.

Stay tuned for more to come – and comment if you are in the picture.

Bible Study for the 1st Week of Passiontide 2021

This week’s memory verse: Pray without ceasing

1 Thessalonians 5:17
  • 3/21 – Philippians 4:6
  • 3/22 – Jeremiah 33:3
  • 3/23 – James 5:16
  • 3/24 – Ephesians 6:18
  • 3/25 -  1 Timothy 2:8
  • 3/26 – 1 John 3:22
  • 3/27 – Luke 18:1

Pray the week: Lord Jesus, grant that my life be one continuous prayer. Help me in faithfully praying without ceasing and with the same passion and determination as with which You prayed.Â