At St. Joan of Arc, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Pictured - the joy of being forgiven.)
"As the room turned dark and our eyes adjusted, the light of the more than three hundred lit candles began to appear in a breathtaking beautiful glow. Each of those lit candles meant that the individual holding it had listened to words from the likes of Julian of Norwich and Hildegard Von Bingen plus prayers offered by Julie Madden and other Prayer Partners.
All were awaiting a final blessing and absolution from our new pastor, Fr. Jim DeBruycker.
Patrick Stevens led the Prayer Partners in this Ritual of Light and Candles to celebrate the Communal Reconciliation Service at St. Joan of Arc parish held at 4 o'clock pm, Sunday, December 11, 2005 in the gym at St. Joan of Arc.
This service in various forms began some years ago when The Sacrament of Penance could be given in communal form and was referred to as the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Sunday evening's service left no doubt in anyone's mind that this communal service had far more depth of understanding than the past method which often turned people away because of much undue guilt and fear.
In this service the prayers and stories told us about Purgatory, which Fr. DeBruycker explained was what happens to us when we finally meet Jesus after our death. We look into ourselves and at how we lived our lives. At that time, we will earnestly wish that we had done more to follow the road Jesus laid out for us. We will wish we had done more for others as Christ told us to do." [snip] Read on, link.
I'm verklempt!
(St. Joan's is so all over the blogs today! See my post from 8/28/06 "Nothin' to blog about.")
No comments:
Post a Comment