Cathedral of St. Peter

A Letter from Father Steve St. Jules

Dear Parishioners,

We are coming into Holy Week with the celebration of Palm Sunday and the Mass of the Lord’s Passion.  This is a particularly poignant time for all of us.  We feel our vulnerability and experience, perhaps isolation, fear, anxiety, loneliness.  Our concern is not only centered on ourselves but on all whom we love and cherish.  Our concern reaches out to our whole community, nation, and world.  Our common humanity is being brought before our vision in a dramatic way.  We know that the world has been through such times before, but this is our time now.  

It is especially good to enter into the mystery of Holy Week.  Here is brought before us to ponder the very center of our faith and the reason for our hope.  Our God enters into our humanity at its most vulnerable in Jesus Christ and his passion and death.  This is not just some kind of fate he endured.  Jesus fully actively and consciously took on all the sin of this world and its effects in suffering, fear, separation and death.  There is no deep place we experience that He has not gone down deeper yet in loving vulnerability.  It was no playacting but total gift of Himself.  

This week in our homes we walk with Him this deep mystery of God’s love.  I pray that the circumstances we are under may even deepen our understanding of Jesus’ passion.  It is a suffering not to be able to be present at the Holy Week liturgies, but God works in us through our desire to be joined with Him.

I invite you to join in the liturgy for Palm Sunday by prayerfully watching Bishop Malloy celebrate the Mass filmed in the Cathedral. 

Here is the rest of our Holy Week liturgies which will be celebrated without a congregation:

• Holy Thursday 9:00 a.m. Chrism Mass and 7:00 p.m. 
• Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper
• Good Friday 2:00 p.m. Liturgy of the Passion
• Easter Vigil on Saturday

All these liturgies are available to you at www.rockforddiocese.org  as well as on the diocese’s YouTube channel and its Facebook page.

Easter morning Mass 10:30 a.m. celebrated in the Cathedral by Bishop Malloy without a congregation will be broadcast live on WREX Channel 13 in Rockford and also streamed at https://wrex.com/news/wrex-live-stream and on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/wrextv/

May God bless you,

Father Stephen St.Jules

FORMED is an online service for accessing thousands of Catholic videos, audios and ebooks on Demand anytime, anywhere!

Mass Request Form
Requests for Mass Intentions may be completed on the above form with a donation of $10 per Mass and returned to the church office.