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On This Page:
  - Easter
    - Easter Season Highlights
    - Parish Events Calendar
    - Easter Reflection
    - Let us Pray: Regina Caeli
  - Easter Season Event Details
    - Divine Mercy Sunday
    - Beatification of John Paul II
    - May is Responding to God's
       Blessings Month
  - Spiritual Reading for Easter
    - Easter Reflection by Pope
      JohnPaul II
    - Pope Benedict XVI's Easter
      2010 Message
    - Easter Sermon of St. John
      Chrysostom

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Stained Glass from
St. Joseph's

Want to learn more?
Click here to learn about this and the other stained glass windows in our church designed by parishioner and local artist Mary Mullins.

Easter

Thank you for visiting our Easter Page!  We are glad you are here!

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JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN, ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!

If you are new to the parish, welcome! If you have been away for awhile, welcome back! After all Sunday Masses this Easter you are welcome to visit our plaza welcome booth, pick up an Easter welcome gift, and learn about our parish life at St. Joseph's.

Quick Links
St. Joseph's parish warmly welcomes all of those who received the Sacraments of Initiation and entered into God's family this Easter!
 
 

Parish Events Calendar

Easter Reflection

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Today we celebrate the feast of feasts (Catechism 1169); The resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  As St. Paul tells us, if Christ had not resurrected, our faith would be in vain (1 Cor. 15:17); but He has, and numerous are the proofs that show us that the One who was crucified on Friday, has resurrected. 

Sacred Scripture gives as evidence of the resurrection, the empty sepulcher, which is mentioned by all four of the evangelists. Other evidence of the resurrected Jesus are the apparitions. They are definitive proofs to affirm the resurrection. They describe the real and even carnal presence of Jesus; He eats, walks, allows Himself to be touched, talks with them.  They are solid foundations of our faith in the resurrection.

Our faith also stems from those who first believed and today we continue to share this same faith in Jesus the Nazarene, who died for us, and who resurrected. For two thousand years, men and women have given testimony of our faith in the resurrection and this will continue until the end of times!

Jesus said to Thomas: "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" (Jn 20:29).

 

Let Us Pray!

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Regina Caeli
Queen of Heaven, rejoice! Alleluia!
For the Son you were privileged to bear, Alleluia!
Is risen as He said. Alleluia!
Pray for us to God. Alleluia!
 Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, Alleluia!
For the Lord is truly risen. Alleluia!

 Let us pray:
O God, who gave joy to the world through the resurrection of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, grant, we beseech you, that through the
intercession of the Virgin Mary, His Mother, we may
obtain the joys of everlasting life: Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.+

 

Easter Season Event Details

Divine Mercy Sunday - April 15th

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Our Lord's Mercy grants forgiveness of all sins and punishment on the Feast of Divine Mercy, Divine Mercy Sunday, mercy for even the most hardened sinners!

Click here to learn more about Divine Mercy Sunday

The Divine Mercy Novena begins on Good Friday, April 6th. Join us on April 15th in the church for the end of the novena at 3:00pm.
 

May is Responding to God's Blessings Month

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During the month of May we will be thinking on the many ways God has blessed us, our families and how we individually and as a parish have blessed others. Parish School of Religion students have been invited to enter a Art and Poetry Contest, reflecting on how they have been blessed or have blessed others.

Saturday, May 5th - Free Parish Breakfast 8am to 11am in Fr. O'Hare Hall, PSR student artwork will be on display

 

Spiritual Reading for Easter

Easter Reflection from John Paul II

Christ indeed from death is risen, our new life obtaining. (from Sequence of Easter Sunday)

On Easter Sunday, the Church is recollected in contemplation of the risen Christ. Thus she relives the primordial experience that lies at the basis of her existence. She feels imbued with the same wonder as Mary Magdalen and the other women who went to Christ's tomb on Easter morning and found it empty. That tomb became the womb of life. Whoever had condemned Jesus, deceived himself that he had buried his cause under an ice-cold tombstone. The disciples themselves gave into the feeling of irreparable failure. We understand their surprise, then, and even their distrust in the news of the empty tomb. But the Risen One did not delay in making himself seen and they yielded to reality. They saw and believed! Two thousand years later, we still sense the unspeakable emotion that overcame them when they heard the Master's greeting: "Peace be with you.'" Christ's Resurrection is the strength, the secret of Christianity. It is not a question of mythology or of mere symbolism, but of a concrete event. It is confirmed by sure and convincing proofs. The acceptance of this truth, although the fruit of the Holy Spirit's grace, rests at the same time on a solid historical base. On the threshold of the third millennium, the new effort of evangelization can begin only from a renewed experience of this Mystery, accepted in faith and witnessed to in life.

Fr. Joseph Illo's Easter Homilies

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Word on Fire: Fr. Robert Barron

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Click here to listen to Fr. Robert Barron's Easter sermon

Suggested Easter Links

EWTN Holy Week/Easter page

Information about celebrating Easter well as a family at wf-f.org

 

 

Pope Benedict XVI:
Easter Message from 2011

Benedict XVI
_“In resurrectione tua, Christe, coeli et terra laetentur!
In your resurrection, O Christ, let heaven and earth rejoice!”

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and across the world,

Easter morning brings us news that is ancient yet ever new: Christ is risen! The echo of this event, which issued forth from Jerusalem twenty centuries ago, continues to resound in the Church, deep in whose heart lives the vibrant faith of Mary, Mother of Jesus, the faith of Mary Magdalene and the other women who first discovered the empty tomb, and the faith of Peter and the other Apostles.

Right down to our own time – even in these days of advanced communications technology – the faith of Christians is based on that same news, on the testimony of those sisters and brothers who saw firstly the stone that had been rolled away from the empty tomb and then the mysterious messengers who testified that Jesus, the Crucified, was risen. And then Jesus himself, the Lord and Master, living and tangible, appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and finally to all eleven, gathered in the Upper Room (cf. Mk 16:9-14).

The resurrection of Christ is not the fruit of speculation or mystical experience: it is an event which, while it surpasses history, nevertheless happens at a precise moment in history and leaves an indelible mark upon it. The light which dazzled the guards keeping watch over Jesus’ tomb has traversed time and space. It is a different kind of light, a divine light, that has rent asunder the darkness of death and has brought to the world the splendour of God, the splendour of Truth and Goodness.

Click here for full message
 

Easter Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

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"Let all then enter the joy of Our Lord!
Both the first and the last, and those who come after, enjoy your reward!
Rich and poor, dance with one another, sober and slothful, celebrate the day. Those who have kept the fast and those who have not, rejoice today, for the table is richly spread. Fare royally upon it-the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry. All of you, enjoy the banquet of faith! All enjoy the riches of His goodness. Let no one cry over his poverty, for the universal Kingdom has appeared! Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again, for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let none fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed it by enduring it. He spoiled the power of hell when he descended thereto. Isaiah foretold this when he cried, 'Death has been frustrated in meeting him below!' It is frustrated, for it is destroyed. It is frustrated, for it is annihilated. It is frustrated, for now it is made captive. For it grabbed a body and discovered God. It took earth and behold! It encountered Heaven. It took what was visible, and was overcome by what was invisible. O Death, where is your sting? O Death, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and the demons are cast down. Christ is risen, and life is set free. Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of the dead. For Christ, having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits for those who sleep. To Him be glory and power forever and ever! Amen. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!"