Fifth Sunday of Easter May 18, 2025

 
        
       Our Lady of Peace Parish
Also Serving Our Lady of the Smile Parish, Waterhen Lake and
St. Jude’s Parish, Green Lake

Office Hours: Closed MON, TUES, THURS & FRI
OPEN : Wednesday 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Office Phone:  306-236-5122 
Cell Phone: 306-304-7271

Parish Email: [email protected] Pastor Email: [email protected]
Facebook: Catholic Church Meadow Lake
Website: https://www.meadowlakecatholicchurch.com/
Address: 504-3rd Ave. East, Meadow Lake, SK S9X 1H5  
 
  I will bless your name for ever, my King and my God.
Psalm 145 Refrain
 
 Our Vision:
A Community of Disciples
Our Mission
We commit to form disciples
who joyfully and faithfully
live out the mission of
Jesus Christ
by enriching our relationship
with God and neighbour
through the intercession of
Our Lady of Peace.

​Pastor: 
Fr. Uche Umechikelu, MSP
Parish Secretary:
Pat Bencharski
 
Masses
Intentions

When there is a funeral, the daily mass will normally be cancelled.  Check Facebook for the most up-to-date information.  On Tuesday to Friday and on Sunday, Our Lady of Peace masses will be livestreamed on Facebook.

Mon., May 19 – No mass
 
Tues., May 20 – No mass (Fr. Uche on holidays)
 
Wed., May 21– No mass (Fr. Uche on holidays)
 
Thurs., May 22 – No mass (Fr. Uche on holidays)
 
Fri., May 23 – No mass (Fr. Uche on holidays)
 
Sat., May 24 – No mass (Fr. Uche on holidays)
 
Sun., May 25 – 10:00 am (Our Lady of Peace Church & Facebook) - People of God

Sun., May 25 – 12:30 pm (St. Jude’s Green Lake) (Lay led) - People of God

THIS WEEK IN THE PARISH

1. Fr. Uche starts his holidays Monday, May 5. He has arranged for replacement priests to come for Sunday masses. There will be no daily mass during his holidays.

 
Sunday Collection –  May. 11  Meadow Lake  $4530.38   Green Lake  $321.20  Children’s $8.65
 
Sunday Church Attendance –    May. 11   Adults  98  Children  13  Total  111
 
The Pope’s Prayer Intention for May – For working conditions – Let us pray that through work, each person might find fulfilment, families might be sustained in dignity, and that society might be humanized.
 
Fr. Uche’s Holidays – Fr. Uche will be leaving for holidays on Monday, May 5. He has arranged for replacement priests to come for Sunday mass. There will be no weekday masses while he is on holidays.

​Grad Scholarship – We are once again hoping to present graduates with a scholarship from Our Lady of Peace. If you would like to participate in this project please place your donation in an envelope marked Grad Scholarship.  Thank you.
 
Scripture Insights – Fifth Sunday of Easter
Taken from Source Book for Sundays, Seasons and Weekdays 2025: The Almanac for Pastoral Liturgy, LTP Liturgy Training Publications Copyright 2024, 3949 South Racine Avenue, Chicago, IL 60609, pg. 202.
 
 The first reading for this Fifth Sunday of Easter reminds us of the energy of a young and enthusiastic community of faith.  While this passage from Acts brings to conclusion the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabus, it also provides us with insight into how the members of the early Church needed to support and encourage one another to remain faithful, particularly in times of hardship.
In our text from the Book of Revelation, reminiscent of the concluding chapters of Isaiah, we hear of a time to come when all will be well, when the world as we know it will be no more.  The picture is one of restoration and consolation.  God will “make all things new” (21:5a).
The setting of today’s Gospel passage is the Last Supper.  Our lectionary reading has selected certain verses from John 13 in a manner that does not necessarily help us understand what has transpired and what will happen.  In the opening verses of this chapter, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples; in the closing verses (three verses after today’s reading), Peter asks Jesus where he is going and wants to know why he cannot go with him.  Jesus responds by telling Peter that he will deny Jesus three times.  Thus, while our reading for today most definitely refers to and emphasizes a new commandment of love, the depth of Jesus’ love seems to be undercut by the removal of several verses of this pericope.  Jesus commands us to “love one another” (Jn 13:34).  Even when we fail to love as Jesus loves, his love will embrace us when we return.
 
·         The colonization that brought formal Christianity to the Americas also enacted, in large part, the erasure of native cultures.  Our Church calls us, however, to see God’s active presence in all people and creation.  Different cultures “permit us to see the multiform richness of which the teachings and energies of the same Gospel are capable, the same principles of truth, justice, love and liberty, when they are traversed by the Spirit of Christ” (Faith and Inculturation, 21).   In multicultural contexts like the United States, there is a unique opportunity for the Church to celebrate and foster this richness.
 

• How well would any of us perform on the litmus test of discipleship presented by Jesus in the Gospel?  To love one another is a multidimensional action that is easily thwarted by our ego, our trauma responses, and our survival instincts.  God seeks to enter into our woundedness with care, wiping away every tear, making us new, and enabling us to love.

 
Faith – Beyond the Head and the Heart
C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian apologists, didn’t become a Christian without resistance and struggle. He grew into adulthood nursing a certain skepticism and agnosticism. He wasn’t drawn naturally to faith or to Christ. But he was always radically honest in trying to listen to the deepest voices inside and at a certain point he came to the realization that Christ and his teaching were compelling in such a way that left him unfree. In conscience he had to become a Christian.
Many of us are familiar with the words he wrote on the night when he first knelt down and gave himself over to faith in Christ. Having just come back from a long walk and a religious discussion with J.R.R. Tolkien (who was his colleague at Oxford) he describes how he knelt down and committed himself to faith in Christ. But, by his own admission, this wasn’t an easy genuflection: I knelt down as the most reluctant convert in the history of Christendom. Wow! Not exactly what we take for first fervor.
But he goes on to describe why, despite all his natural reluctance, he became a convert: Because I had come to realize that the harshness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and God’s compulsion is our liberation. What is God’s compulsion?
 What ultimately do we trust enough to give our lives over to?  God’s compulsion sits below our thinking and our feeling. Our heads tell us what we think is wise to do. Our hearts tell us what we would like to do. But a deeper voice in us tells us what we have to do.
The deepest voice of God inside us isn’t always at ease with our head or our heart. That voice is God’s compulsion inside us and it can make us the most reluctant convert in the history of Christianity, it can have us standing before Jesus telling him that he looks the opposite of truth and life, it can have us looking with utter disillusion at the seemingly chronic infidelity of our churches, and still have us say, we have no other place to go. You have the words of everlasting life. Doubt, disillusionment, and lack of understanding aren’t virtues, but they can push us to a place where we have to decide before what ultimately we need to genuflect.
                  A reflection from Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI