Bulletin-Week of March 7, 2021

Year 2 Confirmation Requirements 

This is to remind our Confirmation Year 2 Candidates to submit their Saint or Confirmation Name Report, Completed & Signed Sponsor Forms, Sponsor Commitment Form, and all other requirements i.e. (Baptismal Certificates, First Communion Certificates & Stole Order Form). Please turn them in the Youth Office as soon as possible.

Confirmation Zoom Classes - 2021

Our Zoom Confirmation Faith Sharing Class is on the week of March 7-11, 2021.

Please check in with your respective catechists for the Faith Sharing Class. Make sure you log in 5 minutes before your class begins. All mics and cameras should be turned on.

Reminder: Year 2 Mass – March 14, 2021 @ 5pm Mass

PARENT & SPONSOR FORMATION CLASS

Parent & Sponsor Formation Class is scheduled for March 16 from 7pm to 8pm via Zoom.

Tony Azpeitia uses his own Zoom ID that can be found on our calendar.

Thank you for making yourself available for this opportunity to advance your faith.

Spring Retreat 2021

We are now accepting registration for Spring Retreat 2021. Please sign up in the Youth Office and more information will be posted on the website.

CHALLENGE

3^rd Sunday of Lent – In today’s Gospel we read about how Jesus overturned the tables of the merchants and the moneychangers in the Temple at Jerusalem. In order to understand the relevance of Jesus’ action, we must learn more about the activities that were going on in the temple area. Worship at the Temple in Jerusalem included animal sacrifice, and merchants sold animals to worshipers. Moneychangers exchanged Roman coins, which bore the image of the Roman emperor, for the temple coins that were needed to pay the temple tax.

Jesus’ action at the Temple in Jerusalem is recorded in all four Gospels and is often understood to be among the events that led to Jesus’ arrest and Crucifixion. The Gospel of John, however, places this event much earlier in Jesus’ public ministry than do the Synoptic Gospels. In John’s Gospel this event occurs at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, after his first miracle at the wedding feast at Cana.

We must read the Gospel of John carefully, especially in its presentation of Jesus’ relationship to Judaism. The Gospel of John tends to reflect greater tension and animosity between Jesus and the Jewish authorities than the Synoptic Gospels. The Gospel of John was the last of the four Gospels to be written, and its narrative reflects the growing divide between the Jewish community and the early Christian community. Thus, greater emphasis on the distinction between Christianity and Judaism is found in John’s Gospel.

Reflecting upon the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), John recalls Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple and uses that story to interpret this later event. John explains to his audience, an early Christian community, that temple worship would no longer be necessary because it was surpassed in the passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. With greater frequency than the other Evangelists, John intersperses post-Resurrection reflections of this Christian community in his narrative.

After clearing the Temple of the merchants and the moneychangers, John’s Gospel tells us that the people asked for a sign of Jesus’ authority to do such an audacious act. In response, Jesus predicted his death and Resurrection. Throughout John’s Gospel, the language of signs is distinctive. Jesus’ miracles are called signs, and the people look to these signs for proof of his authority. Here we learn that the sign par excellence will be Jesus’ passion, death, and Resurrection.

During Lent we reflect upon the meaning of this sign for us and for our world. We might take this opportunity to consider the quality of our prayer and worship. In our prayers we seek to deepen our relationship with the person of Christ. In our worship with the community, we gather to experience anew the passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus and its significance in our lives. Christ promises to be present with us when we gather for prayer.                                                                                                                        John 2:13-25

If you can attend Mass in person and you are longing for Him in the Eucharist, then Jesus wants to see you. Come to Mass this Sunday and be transformed by His Word and by the Eucharist.

“Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give,

Not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

                                 2 Corinthians 9:7