Easter is a Season, not just a day. Just like Christmas and its Twelve Days, there is more to it than a 24-hour period of time. After Easter Sunday the Season continues—first with the Octave 8 or days of Easter, and then the full Easter Season which concludes with the Pentecost Sunday, May 15th, some 50 days later. During this time various different liturgies within our Easter Season are celebrated.

I also wish to thank everyone who made our Palm Sunday celebrations so beautiful: Susan Zybert and Nicole Poirier and the many music ministers for the wonderful choir Mass at the 11 a.m. and the other Masses, and to our cantors who began the Mass in Russell Hall singing “Hosanna” for the procession into the Church with our palms.

I want to say “thank-you” to Christine Tanski for heading up once again this year’s children and family Easter Egg Hunt and party on Saturday, 19 March. It was a grand success and more than 100 children really enjoyed themselves. From the pancake breakfast and arts and crafts to the Easter egg hunt, it was filled with lots of fun and tons of good times. A great deal of work goes into pulling this annual event off each year and I am most appreciative for all Chris’s work and enthusiasm as well as all the work of the many, many volunteers

This weekend we will hear in the gospel from John (8:1-11) the story of the woman caught in adultery and the response from Jesus to the Pharisees who brought to Him this "sinner" and their desire to entrap Jesus so that they could kill Him. First, let me note that the ancient law of the Jewish people held a punishment for both the woman and the man caught in this adulterous act. Second, the meaning of this gospel is all about the mercy and forgiveness of God—and how His love and forgiveness for us is beyond anything we can understand

This weekend’s Gospel, Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32, known as “The Prodigal Son,” is particularly appropriate for us to hear during the Lenten season and even more so during this Jubilee Year of Mercy, which the Holy Father has asked us to celebrate not simply as an institutional Church but as a family of believers. And in this parable we have a family very much in need of mercy and forgiveness

Most Catholics today are used to the Mass being conducted in English, and they hardly ever think about the fact that Latin remains the official language of the Catholic Church. But occasionally, Latin reasserts itself, as it does in the case of Laetare Sunday. Laetare Sunday is the popular name for the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Laetare means "Rejoice" in Latin, and the Introit (entrance antiphon) in both the Traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo (the Mass we celebrate in English) is from Isaiah 66:10-11, which begins "Laetare, Jerusalem" ("Rejoice, O Jerusalem").