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We hope your week is going well and you are finding time in prayer during these 50 days of Easter to grow in your relationship with Jesus!
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
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Welcome Pat Kieny as PWC’s
new Executive Director
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We welcome Pat Kieny to our church staff. Pat has assumed the role of executive director on a part-time basis from Father Dale. FD will remain as senior pastor but will now be off on Thursdays and Fridays. Pat will handle church finances and administration. Please welcome Pat -- and thank you, Pat, for your willingness to serve.
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This Saturday, April 18:
9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
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Topic: Dare to be Uncommon #2
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All men are welcome!!!
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Women of Faith Bible Fellowship
Women of PWC and your friends,
please join us!
We continue our series on 2 Corinthians
9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.:
This Saturday, April 18
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Sunday Morning
Bible Study with Fr. Dale
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This Sunday, April 19 & April 26
8:45 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
in Building 4:12
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We had a wonderful first session!
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Our apologies!
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On Sunday our internet was down due to construction by the City of Chandler. This prohibited us from broadcasting our 10 a.m. Service on Facebook, as well accessing the internet. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We look forward to being back on Facebook next Sunday, April 19 for our 10:00 a.m. Service.
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Our Weekly Online Reflections
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Check out a new reflection from Monday, April 13 on The Mystery of Divine Mercy. Here is the link:
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Tickets are on sale now, during the week at the church office (please see Tami Heinl), or on Sundays.
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Mary Jo West,
Mother’s Day Speaker
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Pastoral Counseling is available at PWC
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Fr. Mike Lessard is available for pastoral counseling on Wednesdays at PWC. Please call the church office to make an appointment at 480-649-0300.
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Important Children's Ministry Information
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We will not meet on Pentecost Sunday, May 24. Our final meeting for the school year is on Sunday, May 31.
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There will be no meetings in July, July, and August. We will start back up in early September.
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The Blessing of Cremains of Billy Templeton:
As many of you are now aware, our friend and artist Billy Templeton recently passed away. Our prayers for healing, comfort, and peace are with his family and friends. On Sunday, May 17 at 12:00 p.m., we will have a prayer service in which we will honor Billy and bless his cremains. All are welcome to attend this service.
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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.
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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!
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Here are the different ways you can tithe to PWC:
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• Mail in your gift to: Praise and Worship Center, 2551 N. Arizona Avenue, Chandler, AZ 85225.
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• 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.
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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:
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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.
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A Reflection by
Ronald Rolheiser
Mystic or Unbeliever
A generation ago, Karl Rahner made the statement that there would soon come a time when each of us will either be a mystic or a non-believer.
What’s implied here?
At one level it means that anyone who wants to have faith today will need to be much more inner-directed than in previous generations. Why? Because up until our present generation in the secularized world, by and large, the culture helped carry the faith. We lived in cultures (often immigrant and ethnic subcultures) within which faith and religion were part of the very fabric of life. Faith and church were embedded in the sociology. It took a strong, deviant action not to go to church on Sunday. Today, as we know, the opposite is more true, it takes a strong, inner-anchored act to go to church on Sunday. We live in a moral and ecclesial diaspora and experience a special loneliness that comes with that. We have few outside supports for our faith.
The culture no longer carries the faith and the church. Simply put, we knew how to be believers and churchgoers when we were inside communities that helped carry that for us, communities within which most everyone seemed to believe, most everyone went to church, and most everyone had the same set of moral values. Not incidentally, these communities were often immigrant, poor, under-educated, and culturally marginalized. In that type of setting, faith and church work more easily. Why? Because, among other reasons, as Jesus said, it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
To be committed believers today, to have faith truly inform our lives, requires finding an inner anchor beyond the support and security we find in being part of the cognitive majority wherein we have the comfort of knowing that, since everyone else is doing this, it probably makes sense. Many of us now live in situations where to believe in God and church is to find ourselves without the support of the majority and at times without the support even of those closest to us, spouse, family, friends, colleagues. That’s one of the things that Rahner is referring to when he says we will be either mystics or non-believers.
But what is this deep, inner anchor that is needed to sustain us? What can give us the support we need?
What can help sustain our faith when we feel like unanimity-minus-one is an inner center of strength, meaning, and affectivity that is rooted in something beyond what the world thinks and what the majority are doing on any given day? There has to be a deeper source than outside affirmation to give us meaning, justification, and energy to continue to do what faith asks of us. What is that source?
In the gospel of John, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth are a question: “What are you looking for?” Essentially everything that Jesus does and teaches in the rest of John’s gospel gives an answer to that question: We are looking for the way, the truth, the life, living water to quench our thirst, bread from heaven to satiate our hunger. But those answers are partially abstract. At the end of the gospel, all of this is crystallized into one image.
On Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdala goes out searching for Jesus. She finds him in a garden (the archetypal place where lovers meet) but she doesn’t recognize him. Jesus turns to her and, repeating the question with which the gospel began, asks her: “What are you looking for?” Mary replies that she is looking for the body of the dead Jesus and could he give her any information as to where that body is. And Jesus simply says: “Mary”. He pronounces her name in love. She falls at his feet.
In essence, that is the whole gospel: What are we ultimately looking for? What is the end of all desire? What drives us out into gardens to search for love? The desire to hear God pronounce our names in love. To hear God, lovingly say: “Mary”, “Jack”, “Jennifer”, “Walter”.
Several years ago, I made a retreat that began with the director telling us: “I’m only going to try to do one thing with you this week, I’m going to try to teach you how to pray so that sometime (perhaps not this week or perhaps not even this year, but sometime) in prayer, you will open yourself up in such a way that you can hear God say to you – I love you! – because unless that happens you will always be dissatisfied and searching for something to give you a completeness you don’t feel. Nothing will ever be quite right. But once you hear God say those words, you won’t need to do that restless search anymore.”
He’s right. Hearing God pronounce our names in love is the core of mysticism and it is, too, the anchor we need when we face misunderstanding from without and depression from within, when we feel precisely like unanimity-minus-one.
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Please pray for peace in our hearts, our families, our community and in our world. May the Prince of Peace abundantly reign!
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Love,
Fr. Dale & Pastor Mark
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Please do not reply to this email;
the sending address is not monitored.
Please reply to: [email protected]
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Chris Pfund PhD, MBA, BSN, RN
President Homestead Health
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phone: (602) 755-4508
fax: (602) 691-0283
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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.
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