60 YEARS WITH ST. MARGARET MARY
“Place in this Heart all your sufferings and difficulties… He changes everything into love.”— St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
September always feels like a new beginning. Summer draws to a close, schools reopen, parish activities begin again, and we settle back into the familiar rhythms of another pastoral year.
This September is different. We begin it in the midst of our 60th anniversary year, grateful for all that has been and wondering what God may be asking of us in the years ahead.
Throughout the coming months, we will allow our patron, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, to accompany us. Her spirituality was centered on a simple but profound conviction: the Heart of Jesus is the place where we can bring the whole of our lives.
St. Margaret Mary writes: “Place in this Heart all your sufferings and difficulties… He changes everything into love.”
For sixty years, people have entered the doors of our parish carrying the whole of life with them: joy and sorrow, marriages and baptisms, First Communions and funerals, hopes fulfilled and prayers seemingly unanswered. Generation after generation has gathered around the same altar and placed all of it before Christ. Perhaps that is where our anniversary year should begin. Not simply by looking back, but by placing our past, our present and our future into the Heart of Jesus.
We remember with gratitude. We receive the present as gift. And we entrust the future to the One who changes everything into love.
we thank you for sixty years of grace.
Receive all that has been,
bless all that is,
and lead us now into the years ahead.
Through the prayers of St. Margaret Mary,
change everything in us into love.
Amen.