By June 2016, the Government of Canada is expected to pass legislation to legalize assisted suicide. Cardinal Collins encourages Catholics throughout the archdiocese to visit CanadiansforConscience.ca and support the Coalition for HealthCARE and Conscience. The coalition represents a group of like-minded partners, including 5,000 doctors across Canada, who are committed to protecting conscience rights for health practitioners and facilities. You can use this website to write directly to your Member of Parliament, respectfully expressing your concerns. Given tight timelines for this legislation, please take action no later than April 1, 2016.

CanadiansforConscience.ca

Office of Vocations is hosting a Young Men’s High School (Day) Retreat at St. Augustine’s Seminary on Saturday March 12, 2016. Provides a time to pray, to interact & socialize. Priests and Seminarians will deliver talks on practical aspects of faith. Offers opportunities for Prayer, Mass, Adoration & Confession. For more information call 416-968-0997 or email: vocations@archtoronto.org

Working wonders for those in our community…

“At Mary Centre, the residents of our homes have developed friendships, yet they maintain their own individuality,” says Denise Tremblett, Program Manager, “Although some of their relatives may have passed on, they love to remain active with healthy recreational activities and visiting regularly with the rest of their friends and family members. We enjoy cooking and providing for them so they can remain at home here and enjoy their lives. We are extremely grateful that ShareLife donors have helped to make a difference for these very special people!” Last year, over 1,500 people with special needs received outreach services from ShareLife-supported agencies.

Sunday March 13, 2016 is ShareLife Sunday
Please give generously. You can work wonders!

Availability sheets for the Holy Week services for Palm Sunday – March 20, Holy Thursday – March 24, Good Friday – March 25, Easter Vigil – March 26 and Easter Sunday – March 27 are posted in the Sacristy. These are to indicate availability only. Names not on the list for a particular service will be presumed unavailable for that service.

Assignments for each service will be chosen from the names listed as available. Please sign up by March 5. Holy Week service assignments will be posted in the Sacristy on March 12.

OFFERING ENVELOPES for 2016 are available at the back of the church.  The boxed sets are organized alphabetically. Please make sure to pick up only the box with your name on it. Thank you!! Please note that the tax receipts for 2015 will be mailed out by 19Feb16.

Together we are continuing to work wonders…

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” Matthew 5:7 (NRSVCE)

Our Lord encourages us with a timely reminder about what our actions truly should be – to show mercy to others. Does showing mercy mean to take the time delivering food for the local food bank in our neighbourhood? Do we have time to help by serving on a weekend in the soup kitchen in our city or praying for a family who is dealing with a personal crisis? Or maybe the refugee family who needs some volunteer help resettling their family to a new life here in Canada. In essence, ShareLife becomes that connective bridge between the pulpit and the street. When we are called to action in the Catholic community, we know of so many ways we can make a difference by working together in the lives of those in need. Annually, we share in helping over 114,000 individuals, thanks to the support received through our collective efforts.

Please help us celebrate our ShareLife’s 40th anniversary by supporting our annual Archdiocesan appeal during this Lenten season! —Thomas Cardinal Collins, Archbishop of Toronto.

Sunday March 13, 2016 is ShareLife Sunday
Please give generously. You can work wonders!

Please note that the Parish Centre will be closed on Monday, February 15th for the Family Day Holiday. Daily Mass will be celebrated at 10:00 AM in the Centre chapel.

Ash Wednesday, February 10, 2016, marks the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent. The highest point of the Church’s year is the Easter Triduum (Holy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday) during which we recount the death and resurrection of Jesus the Lord. We prepare for this three-day period by the season of Lent, and prolong it for the great 50 days of the Easter Season. The celebration of Easter, of being reborn in the Risen Lord to a new life, will only have meaning to the degree that “we die to the old self.” Thus, the Church asks us to live this period of Lent, with Christ in the desert, as a period of forty days devoted to inward renewal through prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Let us prayerfully consider before Lent how we might make the best use of this time to imitate the Lord in His dedication to the Father so that His resurrection may take deep root in our thoughts, words and actions throughout Lent and forever.

Ash Wednesday Masses:
8:00 a.m. and 12:10 p.m. in the Centre Chapel and 7:00 p.m. in the parish church.

Stations of the Cross:      
A great Lenten spiritual devotion held on Friday evenings during Lent after the 7:00 p.m. Mass on the First and Last Friday of the month and at 7:00 p.m. every other Friday.

Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting (one meal and two lighter meals with no eating between meals), and abstinence (no eating of meat). The law of abstinence obliges those 14 years of age and older, and the law of fasting obliges all those from 18 through 59 years of age. The Church recommends that we observe not only Good Friday, but the other Fridays of Lent as days of abstinence, or that we perform some act of charity as an alternative—the choice is yours. Lenten penances should be external and social, as well as internal and individual; meaning they should help us grow in our relationship with God and in charity for our brothers and sisters.

Lenten Reconciliation Services:

• Day of Confessions: Saturday, March 12, 2016 in the church from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• Saturday, March 19, 2016 from 1:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m. in the church
• Good Friday, March 25, 2016 from after the 3:00 p.m. Good Friday Service until 6:30 p.m.

During the season of Lent, the parish will begin Eucharistic Adoration in the Centre Chapel. Please consider signing up for an hour of prayer each week to spend time with the Lord.

World Day for Consecrated Life will be celebrated in the Church on Tuesday, February 2, 2016 and in parishes on the weekend of January 30/31, 2016. Please pray for all those who have made commitments in the consecrated life, and be sure to thank them on their special day. May they continue to be inspired by Jesus Christ and respond generously to God’s gift of their vocation.

All are welcome to come to a special Mass presided by Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick this Sunday, January 31 at 3:00 p.m. at St. Paul’s Basilica, Toronto to close the Jubilee Year for Consecrated Life and to celebrate with and pray for these men and women religious who are such a vital and important part of the life and ministry of the Church in our Archdiocese.

On Tuesday, February 2, the Church celebrates the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life.

In the Archdiocese of Toronto we are blessed to have living and serving among us more than 900 religious men and women of 100 different religious congregations. This World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life is a wonderful opportunity for us to thank God for the gifts of these religious sisters, brothers and priests and to pray for God’s blessing upon them in their efforts to faithfully live the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.

In closing the Jubilee Year for Consecrated Life, there will be a special Mass next Sunday, January 31 at 3:00 p.m. at St. Paul’s Basilica, Toronto in celebration of the vocation and witness of these special men and women religious who are such a vital and important part of the life and ministry of the Church in our Archdiocese. All are welcome to attend.