1) Archbishop Vigneron's Easter Message |
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“We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again.”
We proclaim these words every day at Masses celebrated throughout the world. No matter the language, location, time, or community, we faithfully proclaim the death of Jesus Christ and profess his miraculous resurrection. Christ’s victory over the devil, sin, and death itself is a joyous triumph; it is the reason we can face any uncertainty, endure any evil or injustice, and remain joyful and hopeful amid any difficulty. These words define our lives as Catholics, especially during this Easter season.
The events of Holy Week – the liturgies of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter –are not mere remembrances of past events. We are not memorializing something from the past that lives only in the history books. What happened two thousand years ago certainly changed the course of history, but its impact is enduring in a way no other event ever was or will be until Christ returns in his final triumph. Christ’s death and resurrection – his defeat of sin and death – irreversibly changed the course of your history, my history, and the destiny of every person who has ever lived and ever will live. When we participate in the liturgies of this week, we receive the graces of God the Son, who, because of his immense love for us, desired to become one of us and then willingly gave up his life so that we – all of us – could be free and live with him forever.
That sacrifice is profoundly beautiful; in it we rejoice and for it we are immeasurably grateful. As the world around us continues to endure war, disease, economic strife, and more, we must remind ourselves and our brothers and sisters that there is reason to hope, there is reason to rejoice. Easter is an opportunity to share with those who have never heard the Gospel that there is great freedom in Christ and His message. If we embrace that most precious gift—and especially if we are willing to share it with others—this Easter season can be one of abundant hope and joy in our families and communities.
I invite you to reflect anew on Christ’s Paschal mystery, to rejoice heartily in it, and to receive with gratitude the love and joy that come from it. I also invite you to share this great joy with others. The world needs Jesus, and we Christians were created to live in this time and this place in order to share Him with those around us. This is our greatest honor.
I wish all of you and your families a joyful Easter season. May God bless you, protect you, and hold you close to his heart now and forever. Christ is Risen! Alleluia!
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron
Archbishop of Detroit
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2) Monsignor Mike's Easter Letter |
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This is the night of which it is written:
The night shall be as bright as day,
dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness.
The sanctifying power of this night dispels wickedness,
washes faults away,
restores innocence to the fallen,
and joy to mourners,
drives out hatred, fosters concord,
and brings down the mighty.
(The Exsultet – The Solemn Proclamation of Easter)
April 17, 2022
Dear Friends in Christ,
The above lines, taken from the Solemn Proclamation of Easter, known as the Exultet, remind us of the incredible power of Christ’s resurrection. With all the distractions that fill our every waking moment these days, the sacred liturgies we have celebrated this past week provided a much-needed pause to remind us that we must keep our hearts and minds totally focused on Christ and the power of His resurrection. Staying focused on Christ can be challenging whether we are recovering from the pandemic, dealing with personal or family tragedy or pain, or whether we are worried and discouraged as we watch the horrific news and images coming out of Ukraine. Yet, through it all, we need to trust that Jesus is walking with us and that He will use the power of His resurrection to bring us joy and, most assuredly, bring light into the midst of the darkness around us.
Remember that Jesus promised He would never leave us orphaned or abandoned. Stay close to Him! Bring Jesus into your hearts and homes, unlike any other time in your life. And reflect on the ultimate message of these days, namely that every Good Friday, every cross that we bear, brings about an Easter Sunday. We may not know when that Easter experience will shine forth, but we need to trust that Christ will see it through because of His great love for us!
May we be like the early disciples of Jesus, who used the power and grace of the resurrection to transform lives. In Christ’s name, may we go forth to bring peace to our family and friends, may we go out and bring mourners joy, and most importantly, may we go out and help dispel all kinds of darkness and evil so that the Kingdom of Christ may continue to grow in our midst. There is, indeed, great power in the resurrection of Christ. It’s up to us to use it! That power is in our hands!
Happy Easter!
With best wishes and prayers for you and your family, I remain,
Sincerely yours in Christ,
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3) Marriage Rescue Weekend - April 29 - May 1, 2022 |
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4) Life in the Spirit Seminar Starting April 19 |
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5) Divine Mercy Sunday Celebrations |
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6) Rachel's Vineyard Retreat Weekend: May 13-15, 2022 |
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7) Ukraine Relief Efforts |
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If you are interested in supporting the Catholic Church's relief efforts for the people of Ukraine, please click here to donate through our OSV Online Giving Platform. |
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8) This Sunday's Readings - April 17, 2022 - Easter Sunday |
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9) Sunday Reflections by Jeff Cavins |
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Jeff Cavins reflects on the readings for Easter Sunday:
First Reading: Acts 10:34A, 37-43
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
Second Reading: Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6B-8
Gospel: John 20:1-9
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10) Bishop Barron's Reflection for Easter Sunday |
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Friends, a very blessed and happy Easter to you all! The Resurrection of Jesus is the be-all and the end-all of the Christian faith. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then all bishops, priests, and Christian ministers should go home and get honest jobs. If he did rise from the dead, then he's the full manifestation of God, and he must be the center of your life. In light of that, I'd like to look at three great lessons that follow from this strange and decisive truth of the Resurrection. |
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11) Grow+Go for Easter Sunday |
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Grow+Go, content is designed to help you understand what it means to be an evangelizing disciple of Christ. Using the Sunday Scriptures as the basis for reflection, Grow+Go offers insight into how we can all more fully GROW as disciples and then GO evangelize, fulfilling Christ's Great Commission to "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 28:19) The concept behind the weekly series is to make discipleship and evangelization simple, concrete, and relatable.
Click on the button or image below to download a PDF copy of this Sunday's Grow+Go.
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12) Giving to SJA:
I'm truly grateful for all of your support of SJA during this pandemic. Your support means so much. The increase in electronic giving has been tremendous. Giving electronically, whether on a one-time or recurring basis is pretty simple. For more information on online giving, please click on the following button.
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13) Tire Tracks in the d’Arc |
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Connections: It was September 2017, and I had been a priest for just a couple of months when I got an emergency call late one night. My pastor was out of town that week and I had done 3 or 4 funerals and had a very busy week. But a lady had been killed instantly in a car crash and she was at the hospital still, with her daughter and future son-in-law who were getting married in two weeks time. Mom had been making many of the wedding arrangements. Her husband was in the same room, connected to an EKG machine because the doctors were concerned about how all the stress was affecting him. Their son had been told to come home from out of state, but didn't know why. I was trying to negotiate between the family and the hospital to keep her body there until her son arrived, but it was a Friday night and they needed the emergency room cleared and the medical examiner was expecting the body to be available as soon as he arrived. To not have the body ready was going to be a real problem. When the lady’s son arrived, now having been told to come to the hospital rather than home, he was obviously distraught, screaming and kicking the wall. It was a really difficult scene. Eventually I went with the family to another room and I spent four hours praying with and talking with them and then came home to work on a funeral for that morning and to begin looking at my weekend homily at 2 AM, since I had not had time all week.
On Saturday, a couple of weeks ago, we had a very large funeral, but I was hearing confessions during the funeral. I was walking out of confessions as the funeral was getting out and a man came-up to me and asked if I had been at St Fabian. I recognized him right away and then his wife came up too and thankfully I recalled both their names. I couldn't talk long because I had a baptism five minutes later. But that evening I received this email…
Hello Father Andrew – I wanted to reach out you and say what a pleasure it was to see you again. Sarah and I were attending a funeral for a very important friend of ours Mr. Joseph Paluzzi, Jr. I am not sure if you ever had the pleasure of meeting him but he was an amazing man with an incredible family. He attended 10am mass regularly at St. Joan of Arc. He will be dearly missed and we ask that you keep his wife Marlene and the Paluzzi Family in your prayers.
I am overwhelmed with emotion reaching out to you. When I saw you after mass yesterday I could feel God’s power. It is amazing how life works and we could not have crossed paths at a more important time in our lives. Seeing you and having a brief moment together assured me that God and Mary Lou are watching over us.
Sarah, Stephen and Dennis are copied on this email. After 4 1/2 years we have not forgotten the compassion you showed us the day Mary Lou passed away at Henry Ford West Bloomfield. You mentioned you have a homily that speaks of the night we first met and the following weeks of your life. We would love to attend one of your masses and hear it. Please let us know when the next one might be.
I hope all is well in your life and I look forward to seeing you again. Max
Knowing that this young couple were so close to their wedding day when this tragedy had happened, I had often thought of them. I tried to send them a card for their wedding but could not locate them since the family was not from my parish. It was so good to receive this email and have a chance to connect with them again.
I am far from being a hoarder, but believe it or not, the day I received the email, I found a note written one week after their mom had died. Her husband had called our office to give me the funeral arrangements. I could not attend, but my secretary had left me this information and his number and I could see on the note that I had recorded calling him back and leaving a message the same day.
It’s really amazing as a priest when you get to hear the continuation of the story of someone’s life, who you may have only interacted with once, and maybe only for a short time in a specific moment of need. Often we don’t hear the rest of the story. But we just have to trust and hope that we did what we were called to do to accompany someone in these difficult moments of life and that it was helpful to them. I can only imagine the size of the cross Max and Sarah were staring at and the Lord was asking them to pick-up and carry that Friday night at Henry Ford Hospital, just two-weeks from their wedding day. But together with the Lord, they accepted it and picked it up and went on. Our suffering makes all the more real the suffering of the cross Jesus carried. Even He needed help. The fifth Station of the Cross reminds us that Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus carry His cross.
We never know how Jesus is going to ask us to share the cross of others. But when you willingly accept and bear some of the weight yourself, know that you are joining that suffering to the cross of Jesus, who willingly accepted His. And then be confident that you helped in some way to bring new life to another person. We are blessed that when it comes to the cross of Christ, we have been able to witness for ourselves the rest of the story. And there is no doubt that from this cross has come new life. We are the recipients of that new life.
Today, the tomb is empty. Jesus has been raised. He died and is risen, not for His own sake, but for YOU and ME! He did this for His Father, to make the ultimate connection—to allow us to never again be separated by our sin from the God who made us, who loves us and who refused to accept us as lost.
Crosses will come, but there is none so powerful to bring good out than the cross we willingly accept in solidarity with Jesus. We have no need for any part of our lives to now remain entombed behind the stone. By the power of the cross we are raised to new life and by the grace of the sacraments we are re-connected to the Father. Let’s live that way!
Happy Easter!
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You are in my prayers this week.
Fr. Andrew
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14) Ascension Presents: Father Mike Schmitz |
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Fr. Mike's Easter Special
For this first week of Easter, Fr. Mike wants us to know how important we are to Jesus. When Jesus rose from the dead, the first people he encountered were Mary Magdalene and his disciples—the ones who believed in him. This Easter, because we believe in him, he comes to us first as well, and he tells us to go spread the Good News to the rest of the world.
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15) Words on the Word: April 17, 2022 - Jesus Lives!
Speculation has started to gather momentum; it is increasingly looking like there will be a sequel to the monumental 2004 movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” which recounted the final hours of Jesus’ life, including his passion and crucifixion.
A specialty website ran an article a few weeks ago, updating a story that had originally appeared in 2020, creating a new sense of urgency around the creation of a sequel. The story re-printed and updated that information from a couple of years ago indicting that, at that time, a script was still being drafted and revised. But it also quoted the actor who played the title role in the first film as saying the movie, which would focus on Jesus’ resurrection and its aftermath, is “going to be the biggest film in world history.”
Perhaps that’s hyperbole; perhaps not. After all, the 2004 film was, indeed, a huge box office hit.
Regardless of a sequel’s level of success – indeed, regardless of whether a sequel is ultimately made or not – we Christians can and do rejoice in the reality of what happened more than 2000 years ago.
“At daybreak on the first day of the week the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb,” we hear in the gospel passage from St. Luke, read during the Vigil mass.
“But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them. They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.’”
And so, film or no film, we celebrate.
Christ is risen. He is truly risen. Alleluia!
© 2022, Words on the Word
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16) The Bible in a Year Podcast by Father Mike Schmitz |
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If you’ve struggled to read the Bible, this podcast is for you.
Ascension’s Bible in a Year Podcast, hosted by Fr. Mike Schmitz and featuring Jeff Cavins, guides Catholics through the Bible in 365 daily episodes.
Each 20-25 minute episode includes:
- two to three scripture readings
- a reflection from Fr. Mike Schmitz
- and guided prayer to help you hear God’s voice in his Word.
Unlike any other Bible podcast, Ascension’s Bible in a Year Podcast for Catholics follows a reading plan inspired by the Great Adventure Bible Timeline® learning system, a groundbreaking approach to understanding Salvation History developed by renowned Catholic Bible teacher Jeff Cavins.
Tune in and live your daily life through the lens of God’s word!
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17) FORMED Pick of the Week: |
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Our parish has a subscription to FORMED, a premier online platform filled with over 4,000 Catholic studies, movies, audio dramas, talks, e-books, and even cartoons for our children. FORMED has content from over 60 apostolates, including Augustine Institute, Ignatius Press, and the Knights of Columbus, with material that is professionally produced, engaging, and solid in its catechism. Best of all, this material is free to you because of our parish subscription.
You have easy access to all of the material on FORMED to support your own faith journey and that of your family members.
You can enjoy FORMED on your computer or on your television with an inexpensive Roku device or Apple TV. You can even listen on your phone as you commute to work or do chores.
To gain access to all of FORMED’s content, follow these simple steps:
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Go to https://signup.formed.org/
- Enter our parish’s zip code 48080 or enter St. Joan of Arc
- Enter your name and your email address
That’s it! You’re in. Now you can get the free FORMED app for your phone by searching FORMED Catholic in your app store.
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Are you looking for a one-stop app for prayer and meditation? Look no further than Hallow. Hallow is an awesome prayer app. Hallow is a Catholic prayer and meditation app that helps users deepen their relationship with God through audio-guided contemplative prayer sessions. The app launched 2 years ago and is already the #1 Catholic app in the world.
We have a number of parishioners who are already using the app and loving it (my mom being one of them and she is on the app most of the day). Great for praying alone or together with your spouse/family, Hallow truly has something for everyone, no matter what you are going through (see below for their different content categories).
Hallow is free to download and has tons of permanently free content, as well as a premium subscription, Hallow Plus.
To get started, simply click the button above/below to activate your free account on the Hallow website. Make sure to select “Sign Up with Email” when registering. For step-by-step instructions, you can visit this process guide. Enter the code stjoanofarcmi to obtain a discount on individual pro plans.
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19) Mass Intentions for the Week: |
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Monday, April 18, 2022, Monday within the Octave of Easter
7:00 a.m., Esmenia Salomon Silva and a Special Intention for Rosa Silva
Tuesday, April 19, 2022, Tuesday within the Octave of Easter
7:00 a.m., Michelle Levigne and Mary Fleming
Wednesday, April 20, 2022, Wednesday within the Octave of Easter
7:00 a.m., Raymond Johnson and Yvonne Manchester
Thursday, April 21, 2022, Thursday within the Octave of Easter
7:00 a.m., Phyllis DeMars
Friday, April 22, 2022, Friday within the Octave of Easter
7:00 a.m., Phyllis DeMars and Mary Miller
Saturday, April 23, 2022, Divine Mercy Sunday (Vigil)
4:00 p.m., William Voss, Ann Marie Rogier, Joan Weber, Dr. Lori Karol, Dale & Isabel Hollern, Bonnie Batche, Frank Bradley, Terry Laframboise, and Special Intentions for the Thomas Family, and for the J. Champine Family
6:00 p.m., John & Harriet Armaly Sr.
Sunday, April 24, 2022, Divine Mercy Sunday
8:00 a.m., For the Intentions of Saint Joan of Arc Parishioners
10:00 a.m., Al Schaller Sr.
12:00 p.m., James Oberliesen, the deceased members of the Krul Family, John A. Boyle, Thomas Pillar, and Special Intentions for the Rogier & Dettloff Families
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20) This Week on St. Joan of Arc LIVE: |
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This week's LIVE Stream
Schedule at St. Joan of Arc:
Monday (April 18):
7:00 AM - Mass
Tuesday (April 19):
7:00 AM - Mass
Wednesday (April 20):
7:00 AM - Mass
Thursday (April 21):
7:00 AM - Mass
7:00 PM - Holy Hour
Friday (April 22):
7:00 AM - Mass
Saturday (April 23):
10:00 AM - Funeral for Doreen Oster
12:30PM - Baptism of Vivian Anne Luca
1:30 PM - Baptism of Brandon E. and Jacob B. Yurgalonis
2:30 PM - Baptism of Nadia L. Harper
4:00 PM - Mass
6:00 PM - Mass
Sunday (April 24):
8:00 AM - Mass
10:00 AM - Mass
12:00 PM - Mass
Please note that all of our masses and events can be accessed through the ARCHIVE section of our Live stream page if you are not able to watch it live!
We also have our own ROKU Channel. Search for "CATHOLIC" in the ROKU channel store, and you will find SJA's channel. A Fire TV Channel is also available.
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21) SJA's Bulletin for Sunday, April 17, 2022 |
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Click on the image below
to download a copy of the bulletin
for April 17, 2022
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22) Weekly Bulletin Mailing List |
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Sending the bulletin has been greatly received by so many people. If you are getting the bulletin online and would prefer that it not be mailed to your home, please click on the button below to be removed from the mailing list.
At the same time, if you are NOT getting the bulletin and would prefer to get it, click on the same button and ask to be ADDED to the list.
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Read the latest from the DETROIT CATHOLIC
Click on the image below.
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