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Fr. Nathan is away on holidays from October 26-30. There will be no Masses, Adoration or Confessions on those days. In case of a pastoral emergency, please contact Fr. Dan Stevenot at 403-808-7101.
For Mass times and dates, and to register to attend, please click here. To register for a guided tour, please click here. In the Town of Canmore, the Mandatory Mask Bylaw took effect on August 7, 2020. You will be required to wear a mask upon entering indoor public premises including the Shrine Church at all times. The only time during Mass the mask is temporarily removed is when consuming Holy Communion to the side of the Communion line. For more information on this bylaw please visit this link. To financially support our parish, please visit the DONATE section of the parish website, mail donations to: Our Lady of the Rockies, 2 Silvertip Trail, Canmore, AB, T1W-2Z7, or bring them to the parish office Tue-Thur 9:00am-3:30pm and Friday from 9:00am-1:00pm. Click here for the current parish financials. Please scroll down this home page for spiritual reflections and homilies by Fr. Nathan. PRIVATE PRAYER AND DEVOTIONS The Shrine Church is open for private prayer and devotion at the following times: Tuesday-Thursday 9:00am-11:30am Friday 9:30am-12:30pm Due to Masses, Weddings and other Sacramental celebrations on the weekends, there are no scheduled times for private prayer and devotion, though if the church doors are open and no celebrations are taking place, you are welcome to visit the church. Out of courtesy to others, please observe reverent silence during these scheduled times of private prayer and devotion. |
ADORATION OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
Adoration will take place on Tuesday evenings from 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm with the Holy Rosary and time for silent contemplation. SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION Confessions will take place on Tuesday Evenings from 7:00 -7:45 pm and by appointment. Please contact Fr. Nathan at frnsiray@gmail.com to arrange a time. Anyone requesting the celebration of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick and the Last Rites for the dying can contact Fr Nathan via the emergency parish line at 403-675-5044. |
Spiritual Reflections from a Priest in the Rockies
To watch Live-streamed Sunday and Weekday Masses from various parishes and at different times in the Diocese of Calgary, please click here
Homily Notes for the 30th Sunday of OT, Year A: Mt 22:34-40
During these Fall months when we still see more and more visitors, I invite you to please consider assisting our new shrine church by signing up not only to attend Mass but also to offer some of your time in a volunteer position to assure the Masses we have scheduled can take place. These volunteer positions are necessary for Mass to occur in this time to be in accord with the guidelines set forward by the Diocese of Calgary for the celebration of the Holy Mass during Phase 2 of the reopening of our province in the midst of this pandemic. All volunteers are guaranteed a chance to attend the Holy Mass they sign up for.
It will only take a small amount of your day to volunteer in this capacity, for example, helping to clean the church after Mass only takes about 15 minutes. But more than volunteering it is a way to offer an act of charity and service to Our Lord and His Holy Mother in assuring we can offer the Eucharist for the Glory of God and the spiritual nourishment of His People.
I invite you to take time today to make a Spiritual Communion, using the following formula or one of your own choosing:
My Jesus,
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen."
St. Alphonsus di Liguori
In Jesus through Mary, Fr. Nathan
To watch Live-streamed Sunday and Weekday Masses from various parishes and at different times in the Diocese of Calgary, please click here
Homily Notes for the 30th Sunday of OT, Year A: Mt 22:34-40
- My final year at Mt Angel Seminary saw the need to complete a capstone project. It was a comprehensive paper based on philosophical, historical, literary and other subject matters from seminary formation. Being a lifelong fan of medieval history, my capstone focused on the Crusades and downfall of the Knights Templar.
- I had spent nearly 4 years studying the Crusades and Templars and was quite confident my project was well researched and comprehensive, but in order to have it approved, I needed to face a panel of professors, one of whom was A Benedictine monk with a PHD from Oxford in Mediaeval History.
- As the panel began to review my work, I waited to see what question Fr Ezekiel might ask, with my ability to answer showing either how well I had studied my topic or if I had left some subject matter unresearched that would prove to be the Achilles heel of my hard work….
- Since Our Lord had a perfect understanding of the Law and Commandments of the People of Israel, as he had written them long ago with his Heavenly Father and given them to Moses on Mt Sinai, He nonetheless faced a formidable scholar of the Law, not unlike my encounter with Fr Ezekiel, in the scribe that asked him what was the greatest of the commandments.
- The Law of God was made of 613 precepts. Half are positive and promise blessings if you follow them, half are negative and result in curses if you violate them.
- At the top of the list was the one you would expect: Love God with all your heart, mind, body and soul. To have said otherwise was blasphemy for any faithful Jew and showed you had no appreciation for what it meant to belong to God’s Holy People. Had Jesus not said this to be the first of all the commandments, his very sanity would be questioned and any claim to be the Messiah quickly dismissed as the claims of a charlatan and imposter.
- But to assert that the second of all the commandments was to love your neighbour as yourself would have caught many scribes by surprise. Technically, in the ordering of the 613 commandments, number 2 on the list was not love of neighbour. It was up there on the list as important but less significant than other precepts on sacrificial rites, ritual purity, wearing certain religious garments and other matters pertaining to living a holy life.
- St. Thomas Aquinas noted that in our Lord’s answer, it is most fitting to say the whole of the Law “can be condensed into two commandments: the first and more important consists in unconditional love of God; the second is a consequence and result of the first, because when humanity is loved, God is loved, for humanity is the image of God” (Commentary on St Matthew, 22:4).
- Thus a person who genuinely loves God also loves others because he or she realizes that they are their brothers and sisters, children of the same Father, redeemed by the same Blood of Christ, but if we love others for their own sake without reference to God, this love will become an obstacle in the way of keeping the First Commandment, and then it is on longer genuine love of our neighbour (The Navarre Bible, St Matthew, Pg. 191).
- Our Lord taught that all you need is love, but a love that is right ordered to God first and the fruit of this love will be genuine love of neighbour. If we omit God from the equation, our love will be sought by human effort alone and fall short of being unconditional, where as a love of God void of loving others will make us liars and hypocrites for failing to show the result of loving God is to love our neighbours, and our enemies.
- Needless to say, this is a difficult commandment to live. To love God with all your being is something we all fall short of achieving, while loving our neighbour as ourselves is no easy task when there are so many unlovable neighbours, or if we experience a deeper underlying problem of struggling to love ourselves and so loving others feels all the more daunting.
- But the humble Christian, who can honestly admit to the Lord that this commandment is very difficult and one we fail to follow time and again is also the one who has opened their heart to God’s grace, willing to change daily how we have been living and focus more intentionally on how to improve our love of God and neighbour.
- Let us not despair in the ways we have failed in the past, but rejoice that God will strengthen us to do better until the end of our life when we learn that living this commandment will bring about our just reward.
- And if you are curious, Fr Ezekiel did ask me some difficult questions for my capstone review, but I had sufficient answers to show him I had done my research well. It was an affirmation to me that The Lord will not abandon those who work hard and trust in God, be it in defending a long paper on the Crusades and Templars, but more importantly, in the task of loving him and others through the manifold workings of life!
During these Fall months when we still see more and more visitors, I invite you to please consider assisting our new shrine church by signing up not only to attend Mass but also to offer some of your time in a volunteer position to assure the Masses we have scheduled can take place. These volunteer positions are necessary for Mass to occur in this time to be in accord with the guidelines set forward by the Diocese of Calgary for the celebration of the Holy Mass during Phase 2 of the reopening of our province in the midst of this pandemic. All volunteers are guaranteed a chance to attend the Holy Mass they sign up for.
It will only take a small amount of your day to volunteer in this capacity, for example, helping to clean the church after Mass only takes about 15 minutes. But more than volunteering it is a way to offer an act of charity and service to Our Lord and His Holy Mother in assuring we can offer the Eucharist for the Glory of God and the spiritual nourishment of His People.
I invite you to take time today to make a Spiritual Communion, using the following formula or one of your own choosing:
My Jesus,
I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally,
come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen."
St. Alphonsus di Liguori
In Jesus through Mary, Fr. Nathan
Our LogoAs a Marian parish, we entrust ourselves to her maternal protection.
Our Lady of the Rockies, Pray for us. |
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Our SchoolOur Lady of the Snows
Catholic Academy Phone: 403-609-3699 Address: 3100A Stewart Creek Drive Canmore, AB T1W 3M6 Website: www.ourladyofthesnows.ca/ |