|
|
|
|
|
|
We hope your week is going well! Thank you to all those who signed up for the Mother’s Day Brunch this Saturday. It is sold out. We are so looking forward to it! Also, no PWC Men’s Fellowship on Saturday morning. The guys are helping out at the brunch!!!
Just a reminder…Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 10.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This Friday, May 1,
6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
|
All married couples are welcome to attend.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This Sunday, May 3
9:45 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
|
Please contact Helen Dipree for more information about the Children’s Ministry @ [email protected]
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our Weekly Online Reflections
|
Check out a new reflection from Monday, April 27 by Kevin McGloin. Here is the link:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pastoral Counseling is available at PWC
|
Fr. Mike Lessard is available for pastoral counseling on Wednesdays & Thursdays at PWC. Please call the church office to make an appointment at 480-649-0300.
|
|
|
|
|
|
National Day of Prayer
|
Thursday, May 7 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thursday, May 7,
4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
|
(Please note the new day: Thursday, May 7, 2026)
|
|
Please call Tami Heinl at the office for more information.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pentecost Worship Nights
Wednesdays, March 13 & 20,
7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mark your calendar for this sacred event
|
The Diaconate Ordination of:
Sunday, May 24
@ the 10:00 a.m.
Service Pentecost Sunday
|
Please keep these soon to be deacons in your prayers as they begin their ministry as a deacon to the PWC community.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Important Children's Ministry Information
We will not meet on Pentecost
Sunday, May 24.
Our final meeting for the school year is on
Sunday, May 31.
|
There will be no meetings in July, July, and August. We will start back up in early September.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Blood Drive @PWC
Monday, June 22,
9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
|
To schedule your appointment or for more information, please call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or visit redcrossblood.org and use Sponsor Code: PraiseandWorship
|
|
|
|
|
|
Blood Pressure Checks take place at PWC on the first and third Sundays of the month
from 11:00 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
Our medical team is providing the blood pressure checks.
|
|
|
|
|
|
At PWC
your tithing & generosity allow us to minister to so many who come through our doors with their spiritual, emotional, and physical needs.
Thank you for your tithing and
commitment to PWC!
From pastoral counseling to grief support, to bible study and adult education, to providing food through Matthew’s Crossing for families who are economically struggling, to Marriage Enrichment and our funeral ministry -- your consistent giving makes a difference, a big change in people’s lives!
|
|
Here are the different ways you can tithe to PWC:
|
|
• Mail in your gift to: Praise and Worship Center, 2551 N. Arizona Avenue, Chandler, AZ 85225.
|
• Sign up for monthly giving with a credit card or voided check. Just call the office at 480-649-0300 or stop by the office.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Do you want to be inspired again by Fr. Dale or Pastor Mark? You can listen to Fr. Dale or Pastor Mark’s sermons on our podcast page. Here is the link:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Are you homebound? If so, Deacon John Null can bring you communion. The only exception is if you have or are recovering from COVID. The best way to get in touch with Deacon John is by contacting the church office, at 480-649-0300, and leaving a message.
|
|
|
|
|
|
A Reflection by
Ronald Rolheiser
Managing an Ascension
A friend of mine, somewhat cynical about the church, recently remarked: “What the institutional church today is trying to do is to put its best face on the fact that it’s dying. Basically, it’s trying to manage a death.”
What he’s suggesting is that the church today, like a person struggling to accept a terminal diagnosis, is trying to reshape its imagination to eventually accommodate itself to the unthinkable, its own dying.
He’s right in suggesting that the church today is trying to reshape its imagination, but he’s wrong about what it’s trying to manage. What the church is trying to manage today is not a death, but an ascension. What needs reshaping in our imagination today is the same thing that needed reshaping in the imagination of the first disciples in the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. We need to understand again how to let go of one body of Christ so that it can ascend and we can again experience Pentecost. What’s at stake here?
Among the elements within the paschal mystery, the ascension is the least understood. We are clearer about the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. We have less understanding of the ascension.
The forty days between the resurrection and the ascension were not a time of unadulterated joy for the first disciples. It was a time of some joy, but also of considerable confusion, despondency, and loss of faith. In the days before the ascension, the disciples were overjoyed whenever they recognized again their risen Lord, but most of the time they were confused, despondent, and full of doubt because they were unable to recognize the new presence of Christ in what was happening around them. At one point, they gave up completely and, as John put it, went back to their former way of life, fishing and the sea.
However, during that time, Jesus slowly reshaped their imaginations. Eventually they grasped the fact that something had died, but that something else, far richer, had been born, and that now they needed to give up clinging to the way Jesus had formerly been present to them so that he could be present to them in a new way. The theology and spirituality of the ascension is essentially contained in these words: Refuse to cling to what once was, let it go so that you can now recognize the new life you are already living and receive its spirit. The synoptic gospels teach this to us in their pictorial rendering of the ascension, where a bodily Jesus blesses everyone and then rises physically out of their sight. John gives us the same theology but in a different picture. He does this in his description of the encounter on Easter morning between Jesus and Mary Magdala when Jesus says, “Mary don’t cling to me!”
Today, the church is trying to manage an ascension, not a death. I can easily see where my friend can be confused because every ascension presupposes a death and a birth, and that can be confusing. So where, really, is the church today?
Edward Schillebeeckx once suggested that we are living in that same despondency that was felt by the early disciples between Jesus’ death and their realization of his resurrection. We are feeling what they felt, doubt and confusion on the road to Emmaus. The Christ we once knew has been crucified and we cannot yet recognize the Christ who is walking with us, more alive than before, though in a new way. Hence, just as those first disciples on the road to Emmaus, we also frequently walk with faces downcast, in a confused faith, needing Christ to appear in a new guise to reshape our imaginations so that we can recognize him as he is now present to us.
I think Schillebeeckx is right about this, except that I would put it in another way. The church today is in that time between the resurrection and the ascension, feeling considerable despondency, with its imagination attuned to a former understanding of Christ, unable to recognize Christ clearly in the present moment. For many of us who grew up in a particular understanding of the faith, our former understanding of Christ has been crucified. But, Christ is not dead. The church is not dead. Both Jesus and the church are very much alive, walking with us, slowly reshaping our imaginations, reinterpreting the scriptures for us, telling us again: Wasn’t it necessary that the Christ (and the church) should so suffer...
For many of us today, to live in faith is to be in that time between the death of Christ and the ascension, vacillating between joy and despondency, trying to manage an ascension.
On the road of faith, there’s always bad news and good news. The bad news is that invariably our understanding of Christ gets crucified. The good news is that Christ is always very much alive, present to us still, and in a deeper way.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Have a wonderful week. Please pray for peace in our world.
|
|
|
|
Love,
Fr. Dale & Pastor Mark
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Please do not reply to this email;
the sending address is not monitored.
Please reply to: [email protected]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chris Pfund PhD, MBA, BSN, RN
President Homestead Health
|
|
|
|
phone: (602) 755-4508
fax: (602) 691-0283
|
|
|
|
|
Homestead Health is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to helping adults live safely and independently at home. We offer a range of in-home and virtual medical services, including concierge medicine, palliative care, transitional care, and geriatric care management. We believe everyone deserves access to compassionate and affordable healthcare.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
