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Worship Aid for Palm Sunday
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Holy Week is here. Celebrate with us the most beautiful and meaningful liturgies of the year as we enter the Mystery of our salvation in the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Principal liturgies are the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday at 7:30 pm, The Passion and Veneration of the Cross on Friday at 4 pm in Spanish, 7:30 in English, the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday at 8:30 pm. The Easter Sunday Mass schedule will be the same except for NO 5:00 pm Mass. Please see the bulletin for a complete schedule of the Sacred Triduum. Join us as we approach the Joy of Easter.
Join us for “Tre Ore,” the Seven Last Words of Jesus, in meditation and song on Good Friday from 12 to 3 pm. Limited confessions will be offered during the Tre Ore.
The Blessing of Easter foods will be on Holy Saturday at 10:00 am and we will pray together Morning Prayer and Office of Readings at 8AM Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Remember no Masses on Thursday morning, Friday or Saturday, except for the Vigil at 8:30 PM.
Please return your Rice Bowls. We would appreciate it if you could change the coins and bills into a check, but we will accept coins.
The ECHO Yard Sale returns to the school gym on Saturday, April 26, starting at 8 am.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
Adults who, for whatever reason, are catechized but have never received the sacrament of Confirmation are invited to contact the office. Fr. Don will be planning a series of classes during the Easter Season in preparation for Confirmation with Bishop Burbidge on Pentecost Sunday.
All Saints Church Multi-Car Raffle is still in full swing. Four vehicles will be raffled along with a $20,000 cash drawing, plus other cash drawings. The final deadline for ticket returns is April 29th. The drawings begin at 1:00pm Saturday, May 3rd, at All Saints Parish in Manassas. Please return all tickets by mail directly to All Saints in the envelope provided.
Thank you to all of the volunteers who made our Spring-Cleaning Day a tremendous success. The church looks fresh and clean as we enter into our Easter celebrations.
The Parish Office will be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday.
Worship Aid for Fifth Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 78% of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
Come one, Come all! Saturday, 5 April 10am-2pm. Please come help spruce up the church in preparation for Easter. Many hands make light work. We will be working on pews, floors around the pews, candle areas, altar, and choir loft. https://signup.com/go/gOiQRAS
All Saints Church Multi-Car Raffle is still in full swing. Four vehicles will be raffled along with a $20,000 cash drawing, plus other cash drawings. The final deadline for ticket returns is April 29th. The drawings begin at 1:00pm Saturday, May 3rd, at All Saints Parish in Manassas. Please return all tickets by mail directly to All Saints in the envelope provided.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
This past week we celebrated the Solem-nity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It always surprises me because every year it is deep in the season of Lent and we are focusing on being reconciled to God preparing for the upcoming passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Doing the math, of course, Jesus is con-ceived by the Holy Spirit nine months before his birth — March 25. We just aren’t thinking about Christmas right now.
It occurs to me that the day deserves more significance than it receives, and could even qualify as a holy day. Culturally, we are conditioned to think of Christmas and Easter as the high feastdays the Church gathers around with special solemnity. Think of it: although Jesus’ birth and resurrection are central to faith, would not the incarnation, God entering into our humanity in Christ be as important, if not more, than his birth? By the time he is born, Jesus has already been living our humanity for nine months.
The feastday is titled the Annunciation because it makes very clear that Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit and this was confirmed by the message of the angel Gabriel, thus strengthening the dogma of the one person/two natures of Jesus. But it is the moment of conception that is the beginning of this new life of incarnation.
I think this would be the perfect oppor-tunity for the Church to use this feastday as a teaching moment. Didactic feastdays (like the Assumption of Mary or Immaculate Conception) are obligatory because they teach Church dogma through the living practice of the Church. One of the concepts one learns in theology is lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing.
This is the absolutely perfect feast for the Church to proclaim the sacredness of human life. A pro-life feastday rooted in the story of Jesus himself, no one would deny that the moment of Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit was the event of the Incarnation. All life is precious.
This is the Fourth Sunday of Lent, traditionally known as Laetare Sunday. Laetare, means to rejoice. It is proposed to us as a disposition for today, but it may not be your first reaction to Lent. We tend to tone down our celebrations during Lent to reflect a more meditative, even somber, mood. Sorrow for sin, penance, fasting. You may have noticed we haven’t been lighting the stained glass in the sanctuary, a kind of fasting for the eyes, as no recessional hymn is a kind of fasting for the ears.
But in the middle of it all, if you seek it, there still exists the kind of joy that is unshakeable even in adversity. Jesus certainly wasn’t happy on the cross, but there was a joy he sustained because he knew he was accomplishing his Father’s will. The little sacrifices we make (or the large ones, too) can be united to Christ in his self-gift to our loving Father, and we can know his joy and make it ours.
One last thing — someone asked me last weekend what the rocks were doing in front of the altar. I realized we put out the bucket of rocks and never told anyone about it. It is something I started at my last parish and brought it here, so most probably know about this already. I call it “Living Stones” and here is how it works: During the season of Lent, approach someone who has left or been away from the Church and invite them back. After you have personally made this invitation, you then take a stone from the container and place it in front of the altar.
The other thing I never mentioned is that those stones are there as a reminder that we must pray for these people after the invitation has been made. When you are at Mass, pray for the people represented by these stones. It might just be the prayer that will help them to feel welcome again. And tell them they are being remembered! In a certain sense, it will be like they have already been present to us if they decide to give faith another chance.
Like the feast of the Annunciation, in the silence of Lent allow yourself to be surprised by a moment of joy this weekend as with hope we observe the coming feasts.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for Fourth Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 78% of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
Come one, Come all! Saturday, 5 April 10am-2pm. Please come help spruce up the church in preparation for Easter. Many hands make light work. We will be working on pews, floors around the pews, candle areas, altar, and choir loft. https://signup.com/go/gOiQRAS
All Saints Church Multi-Car Raffle is still in full swing. Four vehicles will be raffled along with a $20,000 cash drawing, plus other cash drawings. The final deadline for ticket returns is April 29th. The drawings begin at 1:00pm Saturday, May 3rd, at All Saints Parish in Manassas. Please return all tickets by mail directly to All Saints in the envelope provided.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
This past week we celebrated the Solem-nity of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It always surprises me because every year it is deep in the season of Lent and we are focusing on being reconciled to God preparing for the upcoming passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Doing the math, of course, Jesus is con-ceived by the Holy Spirit nine months before his birth — March 25. We just aren’t thinking about Christmas right now.
It occurs to me that the day deserves more significance than it receives, and could even qualify as a holy day. Culturally, we are conditioned to think of Christmas and Easter as the high feastdays the Church gathers around with special solemnity. Think of it: although Jesus’ birth and resurrection are central to faith, would not the incarnation, God entering into our humanity in Christ be as important, if not more, than his birth? By the time he is born, Jesus has already been living our humanity for nine months.
The feastday is titled the Annunciation because it makes very clear that Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit and this was confirmed by the message of the angel Gabriel, thus strengthening the dogma of the one person/two natures of Jesus. But it is the moment of conception that is the beginning of this new life of incarnation.
I think this would be the perfect oppor-tunity for the Church to use this feastday as a teaching moment. Didactic feastdays (like the Assumption of Mary or Immaculate Conception) are obligatory because they teach Church dogma through the living practice of the Church. One of the concepts one learns in theology is lex orandi, lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing.
This is the absolutely perfect feast for the Church to proclaim the sacredness of human life. A pro-life feastday rooted in the story of Jesus himself, no one would deny that the moment of Jesus’ conception by the Holy Spirit was the event of the Incarnation. All life is precious.
This is the Fourth Sunday of Lent, traditionally known as Laetare Sunday. Laetare, means to rejoice. It is proposed to us as a disposition for today, but it may not be your first reaction to Lent. We tend to tone down our celebrations during Lent to reflect a more meditative, even somber, mood. Sorrow for sin, penance, fasting. You may have noticed we haven’t been lighting the stained glass in the sanctuary, a kind of fasting for the eyes, as no recessional hymn is a kind of fasting for the ears.
But in the middle of it all, if you seek it, there still exists the kind of joy that is unshakeable even in adversity. Jesus certainly wasn’t happy on the cross, but there was a joy he sustained because he knew he was accomplishing his Father’s will. The little sacrifices we make (or the large ones, too) can be united to Christ in his self-gift to our loving Father, and we can know his joy and make it ours.
One last thing — someone asked me last weekend what the rocks were doing in front of the altar. I realized we put out the bucket of rocks and never told anyone about it. It is something I started at my last parish and brought it here, so most probably know about this already. I call it “Living Stones” and here is how it works: During the season of Lent, approach someone who has left or been away from the Church and invite them back. After you have personally made this invitation, you then take a stone from the container and place it in front of the altar.
The other thing I never mentioned is that those stones are there as a reminder that we must pray for these people after the invitation has been made. When you are at Mass, pray for the people represented by these stones. It might just be the prayer that will help them to feel welcome again. And tell them they are being remembered! In a certain sense, it will be like they have already been present to us if they decide to give faith another chance.
Like the feast of the Annunciation, in the silence of Lent allow yourself to be surprised by a moment of joy this weekend as with hope we observe the coming feasts.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for Third Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm
Join us for our monthly (third Monday) Taizé Prayer Service on Monday night, March 24, 8 - 8:45pm. Come for a peaceful moment of simple song and silence and pray for unity.
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 65 of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
All women in the parish are invited to a Lenten Night of Reflection with a special talk given by Fr. Don, Saturday, March 29th from 7-9:00pm in the Saint Bernadette School Gym. Please join us for refreshments and for small group discussion.
Come one, Come all! Saturday, 5 April 10am-2pm. Please come help spruce up the church in preparation for Easter. Many hands make light work. We will be working on pews, floors around the pews, candle areas, altar, and choir loft. https://signup.com/go/gOiQRAS
All Saints Church Multi-Car Raffle is still in full swing. Four vehicles will be raffled along with a $20,000 cash drawing, plus other cash drawings. The final deadline for ticket returns is April 29th. The drawings begin at 1:00pm Saturday, May 3rd, at All Saints Parish in Manassas. Please return all tickets by mail directly to All Saints in the envelope provided.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
Some weeks are easier than others to meet a bulletin deadline with an article. This week I’m struggling. As I write this, the ceasefire in Gaza has ended and escalated destruction is promised. There were another thousand dead and wounded people today as missiles destroy their tent cities. Focused on all the news here, the destruction of the West Bank (what is left of Palestinian territories) is underway, largely overlooked by the news cycle. East Jerusalem and Bethlehem could become another Gaza. Apparently our loyalty to Ukraine is no more after losing nearly 500,000 soldiers, according to U.S. officials. Not to mention the family that each of these Ukrainians and Russians leave behind. It is heartbreaking, all of it.
We have also been praying for people in Sudan, a conflict that I am ashamed to say I knew little about. Sudan is on the other side of Egypt from the Holy Land, to the south. I looked it up. In 2003 there were already a million refugees in Sudan from South Sudan and neighboring countries. Military overthrows by warring factions following an autocratic leader have, in the past five years, displaced 12.5 million people. Last year, complicated by new climate realities, an officially confirmed famine threatens everyone. Half of the population, some 25.6 million people, need assistance and protection and face acute food insecurity, 8.5 million of them at emergency levels. Cholera, measles and malaria are spreading at a time when two thirds of the population do not have access to health care. 90 percent of the country’s 19 million school-age children have no access to education.
These are the places where CRS, Catholic Relief Services, uses our support to help people. Every rice bowl from you makes a difference.
We consider the penance we are doing in Lent as effective for the reparation of our own sins, personally, but our Lenten sacrifices and good works are also efficacious when applied to the sins of the world in a broader sense.
We can apply the grace of our actions for the benefit of others. When I talk about this with my non-Catholic friends they find it a strange concept, because faith for most of the world is just “between me and God.” According to Catholic tradition, you can ask God to use that grace for whomever needs it most. Maybe you can receive Holy Communion and ask that the grace be given to your non-Catholic wife or husband, or a son or daughter who might not be coming to church anymore.
Sometimes you will hear that the Pope has declared a day of fasting for the intention of world peace, or for the sanctity of life. We do not pray for concepts, but to benefit people. Our prayers, fasting and almsgiving may be offered to God for a person who might be able to bring about the change that is needed, or people who might die of hunger today in Sudan. Or they may benefit the Christian and Muslim families who, in the Gaza tragedy, are largely forgotten.
They might be offered for the conversion of heart of the very ones who are causing so much suffering and death.
Consider this for Lent. Take a day each week and fast or pray a little extra, or intentionally offer up your joys and sorrows, your successes and failures, breakthroughs and frustrations for these, the least of our brothers and sisters, as Christ himself clearly explained to us.
Who knows what the general judgment on last day will be like? The Church teaches that it will take place at the end of time, after the resurrection of the dead, when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, revealing the full consequences of human actions and determining eternal destinies.
Not the particular judgment which every soul will experience at the hour of death, this “universal judgment” is the moment when all people will be judged at the end of time, according to what we did to care for one another and how the consequences of our good or evil deeds have affected the overall virtue of all.
We are responsible for each other, bound together... so let us get going with our prayers, good works and sacrifices for the benefit of those who need the grace we can share to do the right thing.
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for Second Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Tuesday, April 8, 6:30pm
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 64% of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
All women in the parish are invited to a Lenten Night of Reflection with a special talk given by Fr. Don, Saturday, March 29th from 7-9:00pm in the Saint Bernadette School Gym. Please join us for refreshments and for small group discussion.
Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,
You may have noticed a new addition to our worship space last weekend. Half a year ago I designed and contracted the finish carpenter, John Matson who made all our sanctuary furnishings in the style of the altar, to make us a baptismal font.
For nearly nine years I have celebrated baptisms in the vestibule and it has never seemed right. Although it is beautiful, its utility is limited. It is a tight space with an uneasy step up/down to the font, and people have fallen. If you have more than two families it is uncomfortable, gathering in what seems such a transitional space with no seating. This does sometimes become a problem because grandparents and great grandparents often need to sit, and they can’t. Conscious of this, I have been aware of rushing baptisms because the space is simply uncomfortable.
The new font in the center of the church will allow us to truly celebrate the Rite of Baptism with standing and sitting as the Rite is written. People, seated in the back center sections of pews will be able to see and participate in the Rite without distractions.
Brides: don’t get nervous. The font is moveable and the aisle is still yours!
I don’t know if you have ever attended the Easter Vigil, probably the most ancient and beautiful Rite of our Church – the blessing
of fire, the lighting of the candle, the blessing of Easter water, the celebration of the sacraments of initiation, the renewal of our baptismal promises – if you have, you will see immediately how beautiful this is going to be, baptizing new members in the heart of the assembly. The font we have used for the past eight years in the sanctuary (actually a landscaping water feature) has become too heavy to lift as we get older.
(By the way, the Easter Vigil this year is on Saturday evening, April 19 at 8:30pm, until probably about 11pm. Try to join us and celebrate with all the new members of the Church and their families. You will be glad you did.)
As we have had a lot of new members join the parish, I find that many people do not know the story of our altar, a great treasure. If you look to the left just inside the front doors of the church around the corner, you will see a photo of Saint Pope John Paul II celebrating Mass in 1979 on the Mall in front of the Smithsonian Castle. That is our altar, the biggest relic I’ve ever seen. In its first years it was smooth and square... Made from green wood, over time it has dried, shrunk, twisted in a most interesting way, and provides a great reflection for us for Lent. We often hear of the cross as Jesus’ altar of sacrifice, but few people can meditate on an altar that literally looks like the wood of the cross!
The Lord be with you.
Worship Aid for First Sunday in Lent
Lenten Observances
Fasting: Food equivalent to one regular meal, one small meal – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday
Abstinence: No meat – ALL Fridays
Parish Soup Suppers: Fridays in Lent, 6pm
Stations of the Cross: Fridays, 7pm in English, 8pm in Spanish, in the church
Lent Confessions: Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm, Saturdays, 3:30-4:30pm (as usual). Please plan confessions early in the season to avoid running out of time.
Parish Penance Service: Monday, April 4, 6:30pm
40 Hours and Parish Lenten Mission: Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Sunday–Tuesday, March 16-18. Begins with 5pm Mass Sunday followed by adoration and mission talk by Fr. Bill Quigley, CICM, director of Missionhurst’s Mount Tabor Retreat House in Arlington at 6:15pm. Additional Masses on Monday and Tuesday evening at 6:30pm followed by Lenten Mission talks at 7:30pm. Close of 40 Hours with Benediction, Tuesday night after the talk.
Bishop’s Lenten Appeal continues we are currently 39% of our parish goal of $ 560,000. Pledge envelopes can be found in the pews of the church or visit : www.arlingtondiocese.org/BLA. Please indicate you are a parishioner on the envelope.
Now accepting applications for PRE-Kindergarten in our school. Interested in joining our school community? We focus on faith formation, academic excellence, and community service. Visit our website: www.stbernschool.org/admissions-process/
All women in the parish are invited to a Lenten Night of Reflection with a special talk given by Fr. Don, Saturday, March 29th from 7-9:00pm in the Saint Bernadette School Gym. Please join us for refreshments and for small group discussion.
No Taizé this month in lieu of our 40 Hours Observance. We will resume next month 21 April at 8pm.