Posts by Fr Jay Scott Newman

Dear Friends in Christ, I have two items for your consideration: 1. Effective immediately we are changing the way we take up second collections, and I want you to know why. The first collection, taken at the beginning of the offertory rite, is for the support of the parish, and several times each year we…

Dear Friends in Christ, Ash Wednesday is ten days away, and this year for the first time since 1945 Ash Wednesday coincides with the secular observance of Valentine’s Day. However, no dispensation from penance, fasting, and abstinence is given for Ash Wednesday, so if you intend to celebrate Valentine’s Day, it will need to be…

Dear Friends in Christ, Christmas was forty days ago this Friday, and that is why 2 February is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. According to Chapter 12 of Leviticus, every Jewish woman who gave birth required a ritual purification from her flow of blood, and a sacrifice was to be offered to…

Dear Friends in Christ, This Thursday, 25 January, is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the Church’s annual celebration of the day when Saul of Tarsus met the Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road — an event that changed Saul’s life and the history of the world. 25 January is also each year…

Dear Friends in Christ, As the Prophet Samuel and the Apostle Peter were both called by name, so we too have each been called by name on the day of our Baptism. In a universal Church of more than a billion people, in a diocese of more than 200,000 people, and in a parish of…