Active Weather Alert: 1/20/2025

Daily Rosary

We welcome all to join us after each 9:00 AM Daily Mass to pray the rosary. We especially need prayer during these troubling times!

Pray the Miraculous Medal Novena with us following the 9:00 AM Mass in the Main Church from Friday, November 29th through Sunday, December 8th (Excluding Sunday, December 1st).

We will continue this devotion every Monday throughout the year following Morning Mass. Please join us in praying this powerful Novena. You may find the Novena prayer as well as further information about the Miraculous Medal by visiting the Miraculous Medal Shrine website: click here for the website.

We return this week to “Ordinary Time” in our Liturgical calendar, with the return of green vestments as well. For most of the Sundays in this Year C of our 3-year cycle of readings, we will hear from Luke’s Gospel, but this week, we hear from John.

The “Wedding Feast of Cana” miracle story is particularly important for us, as our patroness Blessed Mother title of “Our Lady of Good Counsel” comes from this miracle. Mary tells the waiters, “Do whatever He tells you.” Carrying that Gospel forward, Mary gives you and I the same instruction: “Do whatever Jesus tells us.”

Now comes the hard part: doing that every day.

Having the wine run short at a village marriage celebration was an embarrassment to the couple and their families; it would drop a sense of desperation upon those hosting the celebration, and so many, especially 2,000 years ago, would feel this couple were somehow being punished publicly by God on their wedding day.

What can we take away from this message today? Mary’s warning to Jesus, “they have no wine,” could just as easily mean, “they have no life; they feel abandoned; their hopes before their lives together even start seem crushed. Won’t You do something to lift them up, My Son?’

Jesus does act; He does step into their lives, and He acts in our lives, too. Jesus – and Mary – know that this “going public” with His role as Messiah and Son of God will lead to persecution. Just imagine the conversations a 28-year-old Jesus had with His Mother at the dinner table the past few years, as He grew in the divine understanding of His mission of salvation. He knew of His Passion – He would predict it three times to His Disciples. Mary, His Mother, also knew that a “sword would pierce her heart” (Luke 2:35).

Jesus began His public ministry, not just for the wedding guests at Cana, but for you and for me. Mary instructed Him, perhaps the last of her instructions as a parent, to begin His journey toward Calvary. He did this for our salvation; Jesus takes our sins upon Himself so that we would have life, so that we would never be abandoned, so that our hopes would not be crushed. At each Eucharist, we participate in His sacrifice, as we “do this in remembrance of Me.”

Imagine the “thank you” that the couple married at Cana must have felt for Jesus; how do we express our “thank you” to God, who so loved us that the Father sent His Son to save us for Eternal Life.

- Father Jim

Click on the image below to sign up to recieve the 9 Days for Life Novena daily by text or email.

Please click here to visit the website for the 2025 Jubilee Pilgrimage.

To learn more about the 2024 Annual Catholic Appeal and to donate online, please click here.

Hospice Care Information

Faith at Home

These links provides you with the latest one-page resource for families, Faith At Home; it connects to the theme of the upcoming Sunday Liturgy. This resource is updated each week and can be found on the diocesan webpage at www.dioceseoftrenton.org/faith-at-home and en Español at www.dioceseoftrenton.org/fe-en-casa.

May God continue to bless us and keep us close to Him.

Please support the Society of St. Vincent de Paul so that together we can help local families in need. Those needing help should call the SVDP helpline at 856-291-7313.

Local food pantries include:

Live Civilly: St. Matthew's Church, 318 Chester Ave.

First Baptist Church, 19 West Main St., Moorestown

Bethel AME, 512 N. Church St., Moorestown

SVDP also has Thinking of You cards available. A gift can be given to the poor in the name of someone special at your

request. You will be remembered in the prayers and works of the Moorestown Vincentians. We are so very grateful for your

generous ongoing donations.

Our Promise to Protect

The Diocese of Trenton is committed to the initiatives outlined in the U.S. Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in regard to the reporting and investigation of sexual abuse allegations involving minors. The Diocese has in place a Victim’s Assistance Coordinator, who is available to obtain support for your needs and help you make a formal complaint of abuse.

If you have been sexually abused as a minor by a member of the clergy or anyone representing the Catholic Church, or if you know someone who was, you can report that abuse through the diocesan Abuse Hotline: 1-888-296-2965 or via email at abuseline@dioceseoftrenton.org.

The Diocese encourages anyone with an allegation to also report that abuse to their local law enforcement agency. The Diocese reports all allegations received to the appropriate county prosecutor’s office.