Monday Message, March 9, 2026
KNOW
We have a Parish Leader Check In this week. The link is here and our agenda will include an open forum for you to complain about anything. That’s not really true, but wouldn’t it be fun?
There is a Lunch and Learn on March 11th. Please only come if you actually use LEAD and have relevant questions. People have been coming that have never logged in and just want lunch. Only sort of kidding, but these events are for local leaders with questions about how to get the most out of the platform. See more here.
Ministry Day is almost upon us and we hope you are planning to join the star studded list of presenters for NEXUS: Finding Hope On The Digital Continent. Please let us know if you want to bring a group and pay at one time. Just email the Institute. Otherwise, you can sign up, see the speakers, pick your workshops, and see the schedule here.
If you know a man who would benefit from the Men’s Retreat this weekend – our first bilingual retreat – send them this link.
If you know a young person who is in high school and should attend the diocesan youth day, send them this link.
If you work with young people, join us for the conversation about the future of youth ministry in the diocese on March 11 at St. Aloysius. Yes, we know that is the same night as a Holy Communion Meeting with the bishop.
The JPII fund application process is open. Please see this flyer and give careful consideration to what you seek funding for (we can help with suggestions, by the way).
St. Michaels has approx. 200 Holy Week books they no longer need. Email Loren if you want them.
Have you seen this new resource page? Managing the Middle is featured in the weekly newsletter, but we’ve added the collection here – just for parents of teens.
Missionary Childhood Association
A few weeks ago, Ali Holden, Director of the Missionary Childhood Association for the Pontifical Mission Societies shared an opportunity with us for the K-8 students in faith formation to participate in a national Christmas artwork competition. The attached flyers, one in English and another in Spanish, describe what the contestants stand to gain. A total of 24 winners will be selected so there is a good chance for someone to be a winner. Five of you promised to share this information, so please make sure you do!
Summit in Hartford
On August 29, 2026, the USCCB will host a summit in Hartford. If you are interested in being part of the diocesan delegation, let us know vial email. This year’s conference will examine closely Listen, Teach, Send: A National Pastoral Framework for Ministries with Youth and Young Adults. Hosted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Hartford, this conference aims to equip catechetical leaders, educators, parents, and Ministers with Youth and Young Adult Leaders with strategies to empower today’s young disciples.
I feel like we sort of stumbled through Lent. Family life has been messy, but love always is.
We have not made it to evenings of Taize prayer or soup and supper at the parish like we had hoped. Between play practice, cello lessons, piano lessons, and therapy appointments, not to mention endless doctors, the weekends really have become about rest – after you do everything else you ignored during the week.
Parenting a teenager is hard. Parenting four at a time is, shall we say, not for the faint of heart. Yes, I know one is technically not a teenager any more, but the needs are the same.
So as we settle into this last weeks of Lent, I am reminded of the words of my late friend and fellow pilgrim, Macrina.
The acting out of love to the extent of dying on a cross is a mystery I have never been fully able to understand. My limited ability to love stands embarrassed at such extravagance. My daily attempt falls short of my dreams. I carry my crosses carefully, trying to make sure they don’t take too much out of me.
I always leave a little pink around the edges of my crosses. I can not bear unpleasant things. I honestly don’t know how Jesus did it! I can hardly accept WHY he did it. The why he did it always makes me feel guilty about the pink around the edges.
During Lent, at least, I’d like to let the pink go. I’d like to be content for forty days with a cross that is not pretty. But I am so young in my faith. It is hard not to cheat a little and search for soft, easy, pretty crosses.
O God of Lent, remember me. Help me to take all the clutter that I try to decorate my crosses with, all the ways I try to camouflage your death and dying because my faith has not grown enough and to look at death as it really is: an emptiness that brings me face to face with LIFE.
And yet, within my fragile, questioning heart I know that if I would ever dare get close enough to dying, to death, it would fall over into life.
O God of Lent, Your love has opened my eyes. It is my own pink-edged crosses that have broken my heart.
But your cross has saved me.
from Seasons of Your Heart
Macrina Wiederkehr
