Author Archives: stpeters

A Guided Tour of St. Peter’s Church!

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Every year the parish normally gives a guided tour of the church to the young people who are preparing for First Communion. This is to help them feel more at home in their parish church. This year, because the preparations are online, the tour was pre-recorded for them. You can also download a pdf tour of our stain glass windows here.  If you have been missing St. Peter’s, please join us for a video tour of your parish church. Although the church is open every day for prayer, we are very much looking forward to when we can be back together for the celebration of Mass. Hope to see you soon!!!

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The People of God—Called to be Saved Within the Church

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Some time ago, in an effort to support my ministry in a downtown parish, I enrolled in degree program for addiction counselling. This semester, the course that I am taking is for individual addiction counselling. Recently, as I was watching one of the counselling teaching videos for the course, I was struck by what one of the individuals in the video said about why she found it difficult to accept help from other people. She recounted that because of her Christian faith, she had been raised to be very autonomous and not to accept help from other people. At this point, the counsellor in this teaching video, also acknowledged that he was a Christian and had also been raised not to accept or need help from other people. He said that his Christianity had taught the need for both the individual Christian, and each Christian community, to be able to stand on her/his/its own and look after her/him/itself. The individual was to turn to Christ and find all that he or she needed in his or her relationship with Him. Help was not to be sought from other people. Continue reading →

“Brothers and sisters: If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will He not with Him also give us everything else?” (Romans 8: 31)

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Every year, on the Second Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of the Transfiguration of Christ. This year, we hear the account from the Gospel of Mark. In Mark’s Gospel, the Transfiguration takes place after Peter acknowledges Jesus to be the Christ of God and just as Jesus begins His journey up to Jerusalem, where He will be crucified and die.

The Transfiguration is an event that takes place with Jesus’ closest disciples: Peter, James and John. Jesus takes them up a mountain and there they see Him transfigured before them. As He appears radiantly transfigured, He is also seen in conversation with the great prophets of God—Elijah and Moses. Peter is so overwhelmed by this experience, that he wishes to preserve it and ensure that it continues by building a house for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. He does not want the experience to end. And yet, no sooner does he propose this project and Moses and Elijah disappear and Jesus returns to His usual appearance. However, before the experience is over an another extraordinary event takes place. God the Father can be heard proclaiming from the cloud: “This is my Son, the beloved.” Continue reading →