Father Bill Keown ~ Our Pastor

Join us this Holy Week and invite others to accompany you! View and share our Lent and Holy Week Schedule here.

A Special Message From Father Bill

April 11, 2025

Dear Parish Family,

A blessed Palm Sunday to all of you. We are just a few days from the upcoming celebrations of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. I hope that this Lenten season has been filled with the Lord’s blessing for each of you and that you have met your Lenten goals, whatever they may be. If we haven’t quite accomplished all of the spiritual growth and discipline we may have been seeking this Lent, do not despair. We still have a few days before the Easter celebrations. Those few days of Holy Week can be for us a time of deep prayer and communion with our Lord.

I love Holy Week. Yes, it is a very busy time and I never seem to rest as much as I need, but the liturgies we will celebrate this week are some of the most beautiful of the entire year. In a very real way, we can sense the unity of our Church throughout the world as we enter into the sacred Triduum together. The Triduum is a deeper dive into the Gospel which will be proclaimed this weekend.

On Holy Thursday we focus on the institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood and we pray with the Lord as we journey with him to Gethsemane. On Good Friday, we celebrate the Lord’s Passion and His sacrifice for our sake. And at the Easter Vigil, we begin the great celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord which lasts 50 days until the feast of Pentecost. You may notice on Holy Thursday that there is no final blessing or dismissal after Mass, this is also true of the Good Friday service. We don’t hear the final blessing and dismissal until Holy Saturday at the vigil. This is because the Triduum is to be seen as a continuous liturgical event that takes us from the Institution of the Eucharist, through the Lord’s Passion and Death, and then to the joy of his Resurrection.

If you have not attended the Triduum before, I encourage you to try to attend all three days. I especially want to encourage those who are preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation and their families to attend the Triduum this year. These three days give us a special sense of what it is that we believe and celebrate as the Church.

A blessed Holy Week to you all.

In Christ’s peace,

Fr. Bill