From the desk of Fr. Mike...

 

Next weekend, our Children from the Religious Education Program will be celebrating their First Holy Communion at the Sunday 11:00 a.m. Mass.  We wish them well and pray that their parents will continue to encourage them to receive Our Lord as often as possible.  Do keep them in prayer, and give them your encouragement when you see them next week.

 

Next weekend is Mother's Day on Sunday and the Women's Guild and the Knights of Columbus are sponsoring a Mother's Day Breakfast at the Community Center.  Please stop by BEFORE coming to the 11:00 a.m. Mass and enjoy a delicious breakfast with your mothers.  They will serve from 7a.m. to nearly noon.  To keep the one hour fast before communion, you should have eaten by 10:30 a.m. ....since you would not receive the Eucharist until after 11:30a.m.  

 

Today, I will be celebrating my Jubilee Mass at Holy Spirit Church in Fresno at 3:00pm.  Thus there will be no Spanish Mass at 12:30pm and the Bass Lake Mass will be a SCAP (Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest).  Thank you for understanding.

 

Next Saturday morning, for those who might be interested, I will be celebrating a Basque Mass at the Borba Ranch in Madera (right on the San Joaquin River and the 99) at 11am.  It is our annual Fresno Basque Picnic and all are welcome.

 

This coming week, two very special priests in our diocese, Monsignor Francis X. Pointek and Father Francis X. Alabart (yes, both are Francis) will be celebrating their 70th Anniversary of Ordained Priesthood.  Both are retired and in their nineties.  The priests and the bishop will gather with these men on Wednesday morning at St. Francis Church in Bakersfield for a lunch.  Pray for these true pioneers of priestly life as they worked hard in many parishes in their lifetimes.

 

From the desk of Fr. Mike ...

 

Last week, Richard and Jeri Gardini, long time members of our parish were killed in a horrific car accident in Fresno.  We want to extend to their family and friends our heartfelt condolences.  They were regular members at our Saturday evening Mass.  May God grant them eternal rest.  Please keep Richard and Jeri and their family in your prayers.

 

I returned on Saturday from a few days of rest and reflection at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, CA.  The abbey is a Trappist Monastery, where I made a retreat thirty years ago before I entered the seminary.  It was nice to return to the quiet countryside of northern California near Chico.  The monastery was once a part of the Leland Stanford Ranch and given to the Trappist monks who came from Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky over a hundred years ago.  The monk's ranch and farm is on 500 acres on which they pray, work, and study.  I am grateful for their prayers over the years.  I then went to Yuba City/Marysville area to celebrate a Basque Mass before driving home.  I thank Father Ricardo Magdelano for celebrating the Saturday 5:00 pm Mass.  Father Ricardo is a hospital chaplain to Kaiser and Children's Hospital in Fresno.

 

Recently a joint meeting of the Pastoral Council and the Liturgy Committee was held at the Bass Lake facilities. The two groups joined me to review and look at our recent experience of Lent, Holy Week, Triduum and Easter.  As mentioned in the recent bulletins, so many people make things happen.  So many people work hard to make our churches beautiful, the liturgies meaningful and dignified, and take the time to do the scheduling and training of all the liturgical ministries that serve our parish community.  While we are not always as happy as we want to be, since this is not paradise (that will coming soon enough for all of us), we attempt to listen, to evaluate what we hear, make no immediate decision, and carefully consider what we might do better in the future.  It was also an opportunity to affirm what was done well.  Overall the consensus was that the liturgical events went well and that all those who participated worked well and did a fantastic job.  There is room to correct, grow, and improve what we all try to do.  We continue to work on better communication.  We thank everyone and we hope that our Liturgy Committee can continue to improve our quality of service.  I also ask you to notice that our ushers now have all purchased and wear blue blazers and their badges so they can be identified if they are needed.  They are also going through training to handle medical emergencies should they be needed at the Masses they serve.  

 

I am sure you may have heard in the news recently that Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Archbishop Jose Gomez, the Archbishop of San Antonio, TX as the new Coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles.  Archbishop Gomez will officially take over the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on March 1, 2011, upon the retirement of Cardinal Roger Mahony, who retires on his 75th birthday, February 28, 2011.  The Diocese of Fresno is a suffragan see under the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, making Archbishop Gomez our new Metropolitan at that time.  That means he leads the Provence of Los Angeles.  He will not have any direct jurisdiction over this diocese, but gathers all the bishops of the Los Angeles Provence for two meetings annually to discuss the issues of the Catholic Church of Southern California.  This also means that Cardinal Mahony who has a residence in our parish at Fish Camp may be helping us more when he has the time to come to the mountains.

 

From the desk of Fr. Mike

 

I want to add more notes of gratitude for many of our parishioners who have given so much of their talents to the parish community.  Easter is such a special time for us to thank God, and thus I feel it necessary to take the opportunity, last week and this week, to thank many people who serve this parish community.

 

A big thank you to the North Fork Choir and their director, Phyllis Mediati, who have played faithfully for the 8:30am Mass at St. Joseph the Worker Mission Church for so many years, and have also helped Our Lady of the Sierra Church by providing music for Good Friday and for the Confirmation Mass in the past.  Thank you to all of you.  I also want to acknowledge Vince Smith who takes care of the sound system and to the volunteers who come to St. Joseph's to clean the church.  Without all of you, many things could not happen.   The Lectors, Eucharistic Ministers, and the Ushers continue to serve the mission community as well. We are indebted to you all.

 

Thanks also to Art and Environment committee of Bass Lake at St. Dominic Savio and to the musicians who help Kevin whenever they can.  Also to Jim Ferguson and Mike Carter who set up for Mass for me on Sunday afternoons.  They make it a pleasure to celebrate Mass there near our beautiful Bass Lake.

 

I want to also acknowledge those of you who come and clean Our Lady of the Sierra Church every Wednesday morning after the 8:00am Mass.  Under the leadership of Booty Guadagnini, these wonderful people come and vacuum the carpet, clean the tables and window sills, clean the toilets, and many other tasks that need to be done in order to maintain our beautiful church.  You are all appreciated!

 

There are also those men who, under the leadership of Nico Guadagnini, do the hard manual labor such as mow the grass, fix plumbing, do heavy lifting, and just about anything else that needs to be done.  These men always work quietly behind the scene on Wednesday mornings. We send our gratitude to them for their time given to the parish.

 

There are a group of ladies who give up their Monday mornings in order to come to the parish office and count the collection and make the necessary deposits in the banks.  This group will work three hours or more to make sure that all is done well under the guidance of the parish staff.  They had to work especially hard after the Easter celebrations.  Here again is another group of parishioners who come and quietly work behind the scenes to give aid to the parish.  Thank you so much ladies!!!

 

The members of the Parish Finance Committee - Roger Mercier, Chuck Anspach, and Roman Zabicki - are of very valuable help to me and Nancy in overseeing the financial aspects of the parish.  They meet with me regularly, look at all receipts and deposits, and give me advice concerning projects.  

 

The Pastoral Council also helps me in dreaming of ways of creating the Kingdom of God in our time and in our place here in our Catholic mountain communities.  This council's main responsibility is to advise me on how we can better serve all of you and to dream of ways of creating a better Catholic community.  It is through this council that we have a Health Outreach committee and we have been working hard to be more hospitable to those who come to our church.  Through the Liturgy Committee, an outreach of the pastoral council, we have been able to do some wonderful things at Mass, especially at the special times of the year. 

 

Let us also not forget those who pass on the faith to our children and young people under the direction of Peggy Stewart and Consuelo Mercier.  To the teachers and their aids who teach religious education on Sunday mornings, to those who help gather the high school students at the high school at the Monday noon hour and to Jerry Roche who teaches the Confirmation class on Sunday mornings.  Their ministry is extremely important to the parish!

 

We cannot ignore in our gratitude list those members of the parish Women's Guild and the Knights of Columbus who give of their resources and their presence in our parish. Thank you to all their members and continued blessings in the future.