Sat., April 20 Holy Saturday 7:30 PM … Our Parish Family

Sun., April 21 Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord 8:00 AM … Bob McGrail by Sue McGrail 10:00 AM …Our Parish Family Monday, April 22 ~NO EUCHARIST~ Tue., April 23

12 PM … Children of crime & abuse by Jeanne Martel Wed., April 24 12 PM … Joan McGorry by Margaret-Ann Moran Thur., April 25 8:30 AM … Available intention Fri., April 26 6:00 PM … Pat Lencki (2nd Anniv) by the Bauer & Glenn families

Sat., April 27 4 PM … Our Parish Family

Sun., April 21 Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord 7:30 AM … Mary Marszal by Elaine Wood 9:30 AM … Rita Young (23rd Anniv) by Nelson & Lillie Duquette 5 PM … Dorothy Evelyn O’Brien by Virginia O’Brien Kelly

Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

Mon., April 22 7—8 PM … Food PantryTue., April 16 12:45 PM … Parish Nurse Thur, April 18 7:30 PM … Holy League 7:30 PM … Choir Practice

April 21, 2019

Weekend of April 14, 2019 Regular Offertory $4,510.00 Loose Offertory 545.20 Online Offertory Last Wk 395.00 Total Offertory $5,450.20

Stewardship $1,501.00 Stewardship Loose 267.35 Stewardship Online 80.00 Total Stewardship $1,848.35

Food Pantry $ 75.00

********************** Last Year: Wknd of April 15. 2018 Total Offertory $4,077.45 Total Stewardship $2,011.55

Thank you for your sacrificial gift!

Sanctuary candle The sanctuary candle burns this week for Annette Whitmore by Lisa Ruppel.

Monday, April 22: : NO CLASS—School Vacation Week Saturday, April 29, 6—8:15 PM: Movie “War Room” at Transfiguration Questions? Please call Lynne at 603.533.4574 or email jlphotiades@comcast.net.

READINGS FOR THE WEEK of April 21, 2019 Monday: Acts 2:14, 22-33; Ps 16:1-2a and 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; Mt 28:8-15; Tuesday: Acts 2:36-41; Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20 and 22; Jn 20:11-18; Wednesday: Acts 3:1-10; Ps 105:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8-9; Lk 24:13-35; Thursday: Acts 3:11-26; Ps 8:2ab, 5, 6-7, 8-9; Lk 24:35-48; Friday: Acts 4:1-12; Ps 118:1-2, 4, 22-24, 25-27a; Jn 21:1-14; Saturday: Acts 4:13-21; Ps 118:1, 14-15ab, 16-18, 19-21; Mk 16:9-15; Sunday: Acts 5:12-16; Ps 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24; Rev 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19; Jn 20:19-31

Call rectory with your acts! … The New Saint Raphael Follies ~ 5th Edition ~ June 1, 2019—Get Ready! Time to begin setting acts for the stage! If you are interested in helping or performing, please call the rectory or email

Kerri at kerri.stanley@st-raphael-parish.org. Thank you.

On Monday, April 15, the food pantry served 25 families and gave out 45 bags of groceries. We extend our heartfelt thanks to parishioners of Saint Elizabeth Seton for their contribution towards the Lenten drive.

Bake Sale & Canned Goods for Liberty House! Aoife Murphy, a senior at Bedford High School and former student of Saint

Benedict Academy, has asked SRP to help with her Senior Project. She will run

a bake sale after all Masses the weekend of April 27-28. She also will collect

donations of staple foods. Proceeds will benefit Liberty House in Manchester.

Liberty House supports homeless and struggling veterans, by providing them

with safe, substance-free transitional housing.

Easter flower remembrance Thank you to everyone who donated flowers in memory and in honor of loved ones. A complete list of donations is included in this week’s bulletin.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Joan McGorry, who died Apr. 6 and whose funeral Mass was celebrated by P. Jerome, O.S.B., pastor, last week. Also, pray for the repose of the soul of Marie Varle, who died Apr . 17 and whose fu-

neral Mass will be celebrated next Friday.

Year C Hymnal #902

Many thanks to Eric and Xiorli Bernazzani, who attended the Vespers service at Saint Joseph Cathedral April 16 to receive the oils from Bishop Libasci for our parish. The oils were received from them at the Mass of the

Lord’s Supper on Thursday. Thank you also to the 12 “disciples” in the foot-washing ceremony.

The Rectory will be CLOSED Easter Monday, April 22, and will reopen Tuesday, April 23. There

will be NO NOON Mass Monday. You are invited to attend the 8:30 AM Mass at Saint Anselm Abbey.

Next weekend, Catholic Charities 2019 Parish Appeal beings in our parish. Every year, your gifts to Catholic Charities provide effective services and hope to people

in our community in need of assistance. Our goal this year is $23,000.

Thanks to the Saint Benedict Academy students and staff for their contribution towards the Cath-olic Relief Services Rice Bowl event during this Lenten season. They raised $214. If you’d like to make a donation, go to www.crsricebowl.org or send a check to: Catholic Relief Services, CRS Rice Bowl, P.O. Box 17090. Baltimore,

In “Valediction,” the English poet Louis MacNiece (1907-1963) penned these lines, “I cannot deny my past to which my self is wed, / The woven figure cannot undo its thread.” For MacNiece, the relationship of the “self” to its past is like the relationship that a work of embroidered art has with its individual threads. If we try to separate our selfhood from our past, our identity would unravel. In an especially striking phrase, MacNiece says that the self is “wed” to its past. In other words, the self and its past are inseparable. This is true, surely, for each of us. MacNiece’s idea of the self relates to the wounds of Jesus, as well as our own spiritual wounds. Spiritual wounds are a permanent aspect of our selfhood. The glor ification of the wounds of Jesus has implications for us. In the Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis writes: “If you do not know how to meditate on heavenly things, direct your thoughts to Christ’s passion and willingly behold his sacred wounds.” The Stations of the Cross recount vividly how Jesus received the five wounds. Like the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, the Stations are easy to memorize. A kind of biog-raphy of the last part of the life of Jesus, the Stations tell the story of the wounds of Jesus. We read in Matthew’s gospel that the disciple is not greater than the master (Matthew 10:24). We, like Jesus, are wounded. We could each construct our own stations, our own account of woundedness. When we look at Jesus on the Cross, we can relate his visible, physical wounds to our own invisible, spiritual wounds. What do I mean by spiritual wounds? The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a lot to say about spiritual wounds. The Catechism reminds us that we are each wounded by sin (1949) and possess a wounded nature inclined to evil (407). The Catechism teaches us that our sins wound not just ourselves, but “the spiritual well-being of the Church” (1487). As members of the Body of Christ, the Catechism says, we belong to a wounded body (1422). When we tell our stories, whether to family, friends or confessors, they will include our spiritual wounds. Because of this, it is easy for us to relate to the Stations of the Cross. Perhaps you are thinking: “we should medi-tate on the wounds of Jesus, not our own wounds.” But Jesus says: “If any one would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). The cross is, by its nature, a wounding instru-ment. To take up our cross requires self-knowledge. We have to recognize what has wounded us, and we have to name those wounds. If we carry our cross faithfully, we will acquire spiritual knowledge of our wounds. … Acquiring knowledge of our spiritual wounds is an important part of the Catholic tradition. We read in the Catechism: “Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious er-rors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals” (407). We can only over-come our ignorance of our wounded nature by acquiring self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is therefore not simply a nice, spiritual platitude; it is the will of God.

Saint Augustine, in his Confessions, tells the story of his good friend, Alypius, who refuses to watch gladiatorial games. In these extremely violent games, gladiators routinely died, or were terribly maimed, for the entertainment of the Roman people. One day, Alypius is dragged unwillingly away from his studies and to the Colosseum by some friends. Augustine writes: “[Alypius] kept the gateways of his eyes closed, forbidding his mind to go out that way to such evils. If only he could have stopped his ears too! At a tense moment in the fight, a huge roar from the entire crowd beat upon him. He was overwhelmed by curiosity, and on the ex-cuse that he would be prepared to condemn and rise above whatever was happening even if he saw it, [Alypius] opened his eyes, and suffered then a more grievous wound in his soul than the gladiator he wished to see had received in the body (Confessions, 8, 13).” Augustine tells us Alypius’ spiritual wound is worse than the gladiator’s physical wound. Augustine goes on to describe how Alypius acquires a “reckless addiction” to the gladiato-rial games. During his first visit to the Colosse-um, Alypius experiences something brutal and revolting that inflicts permanent, spiritual dam-age on him. An object of aversion — the vio-lence of the games — becomes an object of intense desire. What har ms Alypius becomes what he loves. This self-damaging love be-comes an important part of the life story of Alypius. Self-damaging love — this is one definition of a spiritual wound. Augustine can-not share the story of Alypius without recount-ing this incident. The story says something important about our spiritual lives. Alypius is actually a saint, canonized in 1584 by Pope Gregory VIII. To understand Alypius, we must confront his spiritual wounds. Even if our spir-itual wounds are healed, they shape our lives. We might paraphrase MacNiece: “I cannot deny my wounds to which my self is wed, / The woven figure cannot undo its thread.” In Eucharistic Adoration, we consider the wounds of Jesus in a very different light from our perspective on the Stations of the Cross. The wounds are still there. In John’s gospel, chapter 20, the doubting Thomas is skeptical that Jesus has truly risen from the dead. … Jesus proves his identity to Thomas by show-ing his wounds. The wounds are not just par t of Jesus, they identify Jesus. Saint Bede the Venerable points out that the Risen Jesus could have removed all traces of woundedness. But he chose not to do that. Why does Jesus retain his wounds? Bede gives five reasons (cited by Aquinas, STh., III q.54 a.4 resp.). My favorite is reason number one. Jesus is more glorious with his wounds than without them. The Risen Jesus keeps his wounds to prove his holiness to a disbelieving world. If the Stations tell the story of how Jesus received his wound, then Eucharistic Adoration exposes their holiness. There is a famous prayer associated with Eucharistic Adoration called the Anima Christi, or the Soul of Christ. This prayer, used since the 14th Century, has a dozen petitions. The seventh asks, "Within your wounds, hide me.” What do we mean when we ask the Risen Jesus to hide us in his wounds? We ask to enter

Christ’s Mystical body through his wounds. Our entrance into Christ’s body occurs sacra-mentally through Baptism. But in an interior sense, our entrance into Christ’s body takes place slowly, as we acquire knowledge of our own spiritual wounds, and as we become aware of all that God has done, and is doing, to heal us. Like Saint Alypius, we slowly acquire a self-knowledge that draws us ever more deeply into the mystery of Christ. Even a healed wound remains a wound forever. But the memory of its healing gives glory to God, and consolation to the one who remembers. Because of this, we can confess, with increasing humility, confi-dence and gratitude to God: “I cannot deny my past to which my self is wed, / The woven figure cannot undo its thread.”◄ Bro. Dunstan teaches at Saint Anselm College and is studying theology at Saint John’s Seminary, Boston. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in theology.

From the Bishop: Most Rev. Peter A. Libasci, D.D.

Easter 2019 Message

Wounding and death in the Colosseum of Rome

Easter 2019

Dearly beloved sons and daughters of God:

St. Paul says, “Son though he was, Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered.” In another place St. Paul says, “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. He emptied himself and took the form of a slave. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient even unto death. Therefore God highly exalted him.”

The holy prophet Isaiah foretold this kind of love and said its presence would hail the arrival of the Messiah, the Anointed One of God who would free us, at last, from our exile, our oppression and our own failed attempts to find “the good life”

More and more in our lifetime, our hoped-for “good life” of peaceful contentment has, instead, become a battleground and struggle for power to get ahead or even to rule society. Voices are raised, threats are lev-eled, fingers are pointed in blame of others and in the midst of this oppressive atmosphere death, in many forms, stalks the soul of our society. Interior rage erupts in violent acts of protest or revenge. Interior tur-moil at times brings one to resort to the mistreatment of others for the sake of personal pleasure or gain. What has become of us? Is this how it will end?

Each year at Easter I stand before two paintings of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; one is of Jesus abandoning the place of burial and stepping forward into the light of a new day, a glorious reflection of God’s desire for each one of us, but captured by artists as the vindication of God’s beloved Son’s humility. There is another painting, the Icon of the Resurrection, also called, The Harrow-ing of Hell. In it, Jesus is revealed in glory and surrounded by an aura that de-notes his deity. He stands on two iron doors that have been torn from their hing-es and beneath them, out of the darkness, Satan is being crushed by the weight of his oppressive “doors” as Jesus rescues Adam and Eve, and with them, all who longed for God’s truth to lead them away from their fallen state to find their true purpose and worth; their true selves as God’s unforgotten and deeply loved sons and daughters.

It is this Icon of The Harrowing of Hell that is most apt at this time in our society. Only by identifying with Jesus as St. Paul had spoken of him and Isaiah foretold him can we experience liberation from evil’s oppressive grasp and step

into a new day that reflects God’s living desire for each one of us. Only through the two natures of Jesus, fully human and fully divine, can we as “only human” as we like to say, find the way out from the darkness and begin to live again now, and at last, stand before the awesome judgment seat of Christ and hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come into the Kingdom prepared for you before the founda-tion of the world.”

Blessed Easter! Blessed be God in his Angels and in His Saints and in His Only Begotten Son! Alleluia!