Sunday, April 21st 2019
Dear Parishioner,
Happy Easter to you and your family! We had a blessed Holy Week and we welcomed all new members who joined us at the Easter Vigil and this Easter Sunday. The Lord has risen from the death, Alleluia! He has risen from the death and we joyfully share this Good News with you. Today is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad for the blessing on Easter day! We thank the liturgical ministers who assisted us throughout the Triduum celebrations. The decorations of the worship place looked so beautiful, which lifted us up and we thank you for joining us throughout these special days.
We congratulate all the new members to our Church and we would like to ask you to be active and fully participate with our Faith Community. You are cordially invited to join us to serve on the liturgical ministry and many other different ministries within our parishes. I promise you that you will find true joy when you engage and participate in the parish life. You will be able to share with us the joy of being a Catholic and honor our Catholic traditions by being an active member in the parish ministry.
We thank the core team at each parish who organized the Easter Eggs Hunt to support this custom and tradition of celebrating new life, Christs Resurrection. We hope your children enjoyed this event. We thank you for your support by donating gifts for this event. We also thank the benefactor who gave many eggs to pass out after Mass on Easter Sunday at St. Anns Church. This support and your generosity are amazing, making our Easter celebration so special. We had prayerful Triduum celebrations in our regional parishes. We believe our Triduum celebrations are the central focal point to nurture our Faith and we celebrate this throughout the Easter Season. Our parishes have many young families so we have to create many different activities for the children to celebrate Easter. We thank you for supporting these families and we thank them for joining our parishes as active members and they want to be a good steward of their gift to share with our Faith Community.
The Chrism Mass was celebrated on Thursday night, a week before Holy Thursday. It was very special for our priests who had their dinner together before the Chrism Mass. We thank the Sera Club who sponsored this event for this year. This gathering gives our brother priests the chance to catch up and build fellowship, which is important for their fraternity. I was able to meet with many other priests who are serving in different parishes within the Archdiocese of Seattle and we have not had time to catch up with each other, so this was a wonderful event for me to check in with them. Many of them have not seen each other throughout the year, except in a few events such as Priests Day or Chrism Mass.
We thank you for attending the Triduum celebrations with all the new members and we welcome them into our Faith and support them throughout their journey. They are very special for our parish, so I ask you to make them feel at home with us and invite them to join us with the parish ministry and guide them throughout the Easter Season. I had a chance to witness the dedication of the choir members who severed us throughout the Lenten Season, Holy Week celebrations and the start of the Easter Season at each parish. They spent so much time to practice their songs during the Triduum celebrations and the liturgical music throughout this Easter Season. We are very blessed to have many different choirs at each parish, so we are able to witness their responsibility and duty (their dedication in serving our parishes with their ministry). Music is important to our Catholic Church, as it is able to bring joy and peace as we praise our Lord!
We thank Father Patrick and Father Jim, deacons, sisters, seminarians, parish staff, volunteers and others who pray for us, so we can have a blessed Easter celebration. I have heard many people commenting on the Easter Vigil, they love the procession of the light of Christ into the Church, the Scripture reading, the Sacrament of Initiation, and all the decorations. We thank you for taking time to clean the Church for these celebrations. We have a beautiful ground that many volunteers have spent to assist us to maintain. We thank volunteers in the ministry of security for assisting us in the area of parking (directed people on where to park and making sure our parking area is safe during our celebrations). There are many things that we need to do to make sure that those that come to our celebrations feel safe and at home at our parishes.
We hope that you had a chance to read over our parish quarterly report on our ministry and see what your financial support has assisted us with and what we are going to do with the parish mission to support many different parish ministries that we are offering. We thank the Financial Council as well as the parish staff for preparing this special report for us to share with you.
We thank the core team who organized the parish breakfast at St. John of the Woods Church. We thank them for their ministry. We cordially invited you to join us with the Divine Mercy Devotion on the Second Sunday of Easter. There is information for this event. Many people want to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation for this special event. It is hard for our priests with many different liturgical commitments (celebrating Easter Masses), so many of you have already received this Sacrament of Reconciliation during the Holy Week or the Lenten Journey. We thank you for organizing your time to attend this special devotion to nurture your soul.
I will be leaving right after Easter Sunday for the retreat with my support group and I will be back on Friday to be ready for Divine Mercy celebration. There is many different information and I invite you to read our parishes bulletin, website and there are announcements at each Mass. Happy Easter to you and May you have a joyful Easter Season!
Sincerely, Yours in Christ,
Fr. Tuan Nguyen, D. Min
Regional Pastor