Welcome to the Season of Lent starting Wednesday of next week, February 14, which is Ash Wednesday. The Season of Lent offers us an opportunity to review our spiritual life and plan to grow our faith and work towards a spiritual renewal. The most common way many people make plans for the Season of Lent is by making Lenten promises. The tradition of making Lenten promises is a very good strategy that helps us to be able to keep up with personal disciplines. As we do so this year, I encourage everyone to consider including the three pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting and almsgiving in our Lenten plans. These three pillars of Lent are geared toward “giving up, taking up, and lifting up” something in our lives during the Season. In fasting, we give up attachment to bodily needs like food and material things. By setting aside quality times for personal prayers, we take up new habits to strengthen our relationship with God. When we give alms, we are lifting up our brothers and sisters who are in need of our love, prayers and support. 

I invite you and your family and friends to come and join us for the Ash Wednesday Liturgies. Masses will be at 6:30am, 8:15am, 5pm, and 7pm. We will have Liturgy of the Word with distribution of ashes at Noon. The Stations of the Cross will be held at 6pm in the Church, followed by fish fry on Fridays through the Season of Lent. May God give us His grace and strengthen us to be able to carry out our Lenten promises faithfully to the end. 

I invite you and your family and friends to come and join us for our Annual St. Benedict Parish Picnic from 12:30pm-3:00pm next Sunday, February 18 at Desert Breeze Park in Chandler. I am excited and looking forward to the fun. We will have free hot dogs, hamburgers, kids crafts, cornhole, Lip Sync contest, raffle baskets, music, and more. Not mandatory but we will appreciate it if you could RSVP here to enable us to plan for enough food for everyone. A big thanks to our Fr. Bob Binta Knights of Columbus Council for sponsoring the event and providing the hot dogs and hamburgers. I look forward to seeing you there!

Millions of dollars from the pro-abortion industry are flooding into Arizona from out of State. This includes paying workers to collect signatures in front of grocery stores and other public locations for an amendment to our State Constitution.

The goal of the signature campaign is to enshrine a constitutional right to unrestricted abortion in Arizona. What makes a constitutional amendment especially grave is that our own Arizona Legislators could lose the ability to regulate abortion in any way, leaving us with the potential for fully unrestricted abortion. Find out more...