Alleluia!  He is risen!  It always feels good to say that after 40 days of Lent, but that is especially true this year.  Last year we were unable to gather in person for our Easter celebration, so it feels especially good to celebrate it together (as well as with our parishioners who continue to watch the livestream Mass at home – we miss you and pray for you on this holy day).  I thought I’d take this opportunity to share with you some of Pope Francis’ Easter homily from last year, written during the middle of the COVID lockdowns.  I hope this message will continue to give us hope as we try to emerge from this pandemic with a stronger faith.  God bless you all!

“After the Sabbath” (Mt 28:1), the women went to the tomb.  This is how the Gospel of this holy Vigil began: with the Sabbath.  It is the day of the Easter Triduum that we tend to neglect as we eagerly await the passage from Friday’s cross to Easter Sunday’s Alleluia.  This year however, we are experiencing, more than ever, the great silence of Holy Saturday.  We can imagine ourselves in the position of the women on that day.  They, like us, had before their eyes the drama of suffering, of an unexpected tragedy that happened all too suddenly.  They had seen death and it weighed on their hearts.  Pain was mixed with fear: would they suffer the same fate as the Master?  Then too there was fear about the future and all that would need to be rebuilt.  A painful memory, a hope cut short.  For them, as for us, it was the darkest hour.

Yet in this situation the women did […]

We’re just one week away from our Parish Retreat! Our Parish Retreat is always a special event, a time when we can come together for prayer as a parish family, especially as we try and support one another during our Lenten preparations. I’m especially excited that we’re able to have our Parish Retreat at this particular moment. We’ve had to cancel so many events during this pandemic, and we’ve had to severely modify so many others. The Parish Retreat is one of those rare events that we didn’t have to modify or scale back during the pandemic. In fact, because we’re live streaming the retreat, we have the potential to come together with even more of our parishioners.

The theme of our Parish Retreat this year is “In Hope We Are Saved.” The retreat will take place over the course of three nights and will feature three speakers who are very dear to our hearts at Christ the King:

On Sunday March 21st at 7pm, Fr. Tom Jones will give a talk entitled “Called to Hope”. Fr. Tom served as Pastor of Christ the King from 1996 until 2007. He currently serves as the Superior of Holy Cross House, the skilled-care facility for Holy Cross priests and brothers.
On Monday March 22nd at 7pm, Mrs. Megan Urbaniak will give a talk entitled “People of Hope”. Megan served as Director of Adult Faith Formation at Christ the King for several years, and she now works in Campus Ministry at Notre Dame.
On Tuesday March 23rd at 7pm, Br. Matt Rehagen will give a talk entitled “Hope to Bring”. Brother Matt has assisted in our school over the last two years, so many of your kids know him […]

Lent has begun!  This is an important penitential season where we “step up our game” with 40 days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving in preparation for the great celebration of Easter.  Hopefully all of us have a plan for how we’re going to make this a meaningful season of prayerful preparation, but if you haven’t got your plan together yet, it’s not too late!  Here are some things we’ll have going on at the parish to help you in your observance of this season.

We’ll offer Massat 5:30pm every Monday through Friday during Lent.
There will be many opportunities for confessionduring Lent

¨ Confessions will be offered at 6pm every Wednesday during Lent, in addition to our normal Saturday morning 9am confession time.

¨ We’ll be participating in the diocese’s The Light Is On for You campaign, offering confessions from 6-8pm on Tuesday, March 9th.

¨ Additional confession opportunities will be offered during Holy Week, and we’ll publicize those times when the dates get a little closer.

Our Parish Mission will take place on March 21stthrough the 23rd, at 7pm each night in the church.  We’ve got a terrific lineup of speakers:  on Sunday we’ll have Fr. Tom Jones, former Pastor of Christ the King; on Monday we’ll have Megan Urbaniak, our former Director of Adult Faith Formation; and on Tuesday we’ll have Br. Matt Rehagen, who assists in our school (and the brother of our former Parochial Vicar, Fr. Chris Rehagen).  Each night will also be live streamed, so mark your calendars!
This year’s Fish Frywill be a drive-thru event, with the proceeds going to our sister parish, Corpus Christi in Jalchatra, Bangladesh.
We’ll have a special (free!) Lenten Zoom Bible Study.  Contact Fr. Gil for registration or additional information:  frgil@christthekingonline.org.
We also have prayer resources available in the […]

This week is Catholic Schools Week, a great time to celebrate the importance of Catholic education in handing down the faith to our young people.  It’s an especially good time to celebrate the many ways that this is being done right here at Christ the King!  So many good things are happening at our school every day.  I hope that all of us are proud of this ministry, whether or not we have kids in the school.

As with everything else these days, Catholic Schools Week will look a little different this year.  (It feels like I say that a lot these days, doesn’t it?)  Normally we have our Open House today (January 31st).  We not only invite prospective families to tour our school and meet our teachers, but we welcome existing families and even parishioners with no children in the school.  After all, as we always say, the school is the largest ministry of the parish, and so all of our parishioners have a stake in how it’s doing.

This year, though, tours will just be with new families by appointment so that we’ll be able to follow all of our protocols regarding social distancing.  However, we encourage you to take the virtual tour of our school, which can be found on the school web site:  https://school.christthekingonline.com/ in order to get the latest on the great things going on in our school.  And also, please continue to spread the word about our school to families you know who may be looking for a school for their children.  Even if they weren’t able to make the Open House today, we would still love to meet them and give them a tour to show them what our school has to […]

Today marks the end of the Christmas season, as we return to Ordinary Time by celebrating the Baptism of the Lord.  While it’s always sad to see the Christmas decorations come down (the church always seems to look its most beautiful during the Christmas season – thanks Art & Environment crew!), we’ll now move forward into Ordinary Time, where our Gospel readings will allow us to enter into the daily ministry of Jesus’ public life.

I thought I’d use today’s column to touch on a few loose ends related to our capital campaign and construction project.  We’ve been all moved into our new facility for a few months now, but we’re still continuing to work on a number of smaller items in order to finish the project completely.  We’re also continuing to receive the final invoices from our contractor, so we’ll be able to provide you with a more detailed financial summary once the project is completely closed out.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous column, we’ve taken out a bridge loan from the diocese to allow us to pay these bills while we finish collecting our pledges.  Our 3-year campaign will wind up in December 2021, so all of the money we collect on your pledges during 2021 will go towards the payment of the bridge loan.  We expect that the remaining payments will fall a little short of the total bridge loan; as I’ve mentioned in a previous column, we were able to keep cost overruns to a minimum, but there were some that we had to incur.  However, we don’t expect to incur any long-term debt.  The worst-case scenario would be that we cover any difference with money from savings, but my hope is […]