Dear Parishioners,
I am in Strasbourg, France this weekend en route to Basel, Switzerland, so I thank Father Joseph
Arulraj, MSFS, for celebrating our Masses while making an appeal on behalf of the Missionaries of
St. Francis de Sales also known as the Fransalians. As mentioned last week, their primary mission is
the evangelization of communities in Asia, Africa, and more recently South America. I will return late
Monday night and hope to be back in the ofÞce sometime on Tuesday.
Father Joseph’s visit is coordinated by our Diocesan Propagation of the Faith OfÞce and provides an
opportunity for us to support the pastoral ministry and missionary activity of the Church. We will have
a second collection at each of our Masses next weekend to beneÞt the Fransalians and their mis-
sions. As always, please make your checks out to Holy Rosary Church so we can count and deposit
the collection, and then forward the proceeds to our Propagation of the Faith OfÞce, who will then
forward the money to the Fransalians.
A Memorial Mass for Sr. Mary John Hotard, CSJ, will be offered this Tuesday evening, June 20, at
5:45 p.m. Father Doug Doussan, Father Tom Ranzino, and Father Bob Stine will celebrate the Mass,
and all are invited to attend.
The church ofÞce will be closed two days this week. On Monday, June 19, we will close for the
Juneteenth holiday, and on Wednesday, June 21, we will close so that the staff can attend a Day of
Revival focused on the Eucharist. Bishop Duca has asked all priests and parish staffs to attend one of
these days of prayer and adoration so that we can share the spiritual resources with all of you.
Dr. Paul Kalanithi was an Indian American neurosurgeon and writer. He was diagnosed with stage IV
lung cancer in 2013 just as he was completing his medical residency. Like Father Than Vu, a priest
of our Diocese who also died from the disease, Paul had never been a smoker. He died just two
years later at the age of 37, but not before writing a memoir on his life and illness entitled “When
Breath Becomes Air,” published posthumously in January 2016.
Remarkably, Paul and his wife Lucy decided to start a family even after receiving this heart-breaking
diagnosis. In weighing the decision, Lucy asked her husband “Will having a newborn distract from
the time we have together? Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more
painful?” Paul answered, “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” He later added, “Lucy and I both felt that life
wasn’t about avoiding suffering.”
Paul ends one of his essays with the following message to his daughter: “When you come to one of
the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself...do not, I pray, discount that
you Þlled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that
does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisÞed. In this time, right now, that is an enormous
thing.”
Those are very beautiful words written by a man who was only able to experience fatherhood for a
brief eight months. And yet he captured the sacred and life-changing love which is placed in a
parent’s heart. Happy Father’s Day to all of the fathers in our parish!
In Christ,
Father Matt
I am in Strasbourg, France this weekend en route to Basel, Switzerland, so I thank Father Joseph
Arulraj, MSFS, for celebrating our Masses while making an appeal on behalf of the Missionaries of
St. Francis de Sales also known as the Fransalians. As mentioned last week, their primary mission is
the evangelization of communities in Asia, Africa, and more recently South America. I will return late
Monday night and hope to be back in the ofÞce sometime on Tuesday.
Father Joseph’s visit is coordinated by our Diocesan Propagation of the Faith OfÞce and provides an
opportunity for us to support the pastoral ministry and missionary activity of the Church. We will have
a second collection at each of our Masses next weekend to beneÞt the Fransalians and their mis-
sions. As always, please make your checks out to Holy Rosary Church so we can count and deposit
the collection, and then forward the proceeds to our Propagation of the Faith OfÞce, who will then
forward the money to the Fransalians.
A Memorial Mass for Sr. Mary John Hotard, CSJ, will be offered this Tuesday evening, June 20, at
5:45 p.m. Father Doug Doussan, Father Tom Ranzino, and Father Bob Stine will celebrate the Mass,
and all are invited to attend.
The church ofÞce will be closed two days this week. On Monday, June 19, we will close for the
Juneteenth holiday, and on Wednesday, June 21, we will close so that the staff can attend a Day of
Revival focused on the Eucharist. Bishop Duca has asked all priests and parish staffs to attend one of
these days of prayer and adoration so that we can share the spiritual resources with all of you.
Dr. Paul Kalanithi was an Indian American neurosurgeon and writer. He was diagnosed with stage IV
lung cancer in 2013 just as he was completing his medical residency. Like Father Than Vu, a priest
of our Diocese who also died from the disease, Paul had never been a smoker. He died just two
years later at the age of 37, but not before writing a memoir on his life and illness entitled “When
Breath Becomes Air,” published posthumously in January 2016.
Remarkably, Paul and his wife Lucy decided to start a family even after receiving this heart-breaking
diagnosis. In weighing the decision, Lucy asked her husband “Will having a newborn distract from
the time we have together? Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more
painful?” Paul answered, “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” He later added, “Lucy and I both felt that life
wasn’t about avoiding suffering.”
Paul ends one of his essays with the following message to his daughter: “When you come to one of
the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself...do not, I pray, discount that
you Þlled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that
does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisÞed. In this time, right now, that is an enormous
thing.”
Those are very beautiful words written by a man who was only able to experience fatherhood for a
brief eight months. And yet he captured the sacred and life-changing love which is placed in a
parent’s heart. Happy Father’s Day to all of the fathers in our parish!
In Christ,
Father Matt