As we launch into the Third Week of Lent, I am pleased to be able to welcome a new member of the Parish Staff. Beginning March 6, Christine Fung-A-Fat will be working to develop and utilize existing and newly available tools of electronic communication for the sake of parish ministry. I am very excited about the opportunities for enhancing ministry here at St. Peter’s with the benefit of these tools, and I am happy to welcome Chris to our team in the Parish Office. She and her family are members of our parish community. She contributes regularly to the music ministry at the 11:00 Mass on Sunday, her family is active in the Youth Ministry programs of our parish, and her sons are Altar Server. Welcome, Chris!
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As we proclaim the Scriptures and the prayers of the Liturgy of the Third Sunday of Lent, “the Law” is a prominent theme. But it is important to hear and to recognize that mere observance of the law is not the good to which God calls us. In the Book of Exodus, God holds out the prospect of punishment or mercy according to one’s faithfulness to the law that is given. In the Gospel reading from John, we hear the words and observe the actions of Jesus in response to the perversion of the law which had changed the Temple area, “the Father’s House,” into a marketplace. And that marketplace was infamous! It was a place where the self-serving presentation of requirements of the law combined with the avarice and greed of those who changed profane money for acceptable gladly exploited and cheated those who came to worship. Jesus offered the sign of the temple being destroyed and then being raised up in three days. They who questioned and provoked him could not transition from thinking of the building before them to the fleshand-blood temple of his own body. The building ? the law ? become flesh and blood. Reverent worship will be sacrifice that is rending of one’s heart, not ones’ garment or something bought in a stall. Mercy will be ours to give if we hope that it will be ours to receive. From board rooms to sick rooms, classrooms to reconciliation rooms, who the person before me is must share in determining who and how I am.