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On Divine Mercy Sunday (April 11th), we have a Holy Hour starting at 3:00 to pray Divine Mercy Chaplet and finish the Novena. Please check the Mass Registration page to attend.
You will be required to wear a mask upon entering the Shrine Church and wear it 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.
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 during regular office hours. Click here for the current parish financials. Please scroll down this home page for spiritual reflections and homilies by Fr. Nathan. PRIVATE PRAYER AND PILGRIM VISITS
The Shrine Church is open for private prayer and devotion Click here for Drop In times. 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 Tuesday: 7:00pm-7:45pm 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. |
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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 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday), Year B: Jn 20:19-31
When Christ, to earthly sight made plain
The glad Apostles see again.
The wounds, the riven wounds He shows
In that His flesh with light that glows,
In loud accord both far and nigh
The Lord’s arising testify.
O Christ, the King who lovest to bless, To you our hearts and souls possess;
To you our praise that we may pay, To whom our laud is due for aye.”
During these Spring 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 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday), Year B: Jn 20:19-31
- Parents know the great joy of hearing their little children ask them "how much do you love me?” As an uncle to 3 nephews and 2 nieces, anytime I have been asked this question has filled my heart with incredible joy and the chance to tell these little ones I love them very much because each of them is so very awesome and most excellent.
- Alongside these words of love, those gestures and affirmations of love that parents and adults offer also their children when asked how much they love them leave a lasting impression on both them and anyone seeking to be affirmed they are loved and cared for.
- On this Divine Mercy Sunday, we recall how the Risen Lord both told and showed the Apostles the depth of his love for them and all humanity.
- Among those words of love were when He told the Apostles peace be with you. He was offering the Shalom from the Most High, a peace much greater than the deliverance from worldly concerns or conflicts, but a perpetual peace that would sustain the Apostles in the many tribulations they would soon face.
- “Peace be with you” was an affirmation that with this peace would come an outpouring of love, most notably in the coming of the Holy Spirit, whose gentle fire would enkindle in the hearts the Apostles and every subsequent follower of Christ that the love which unites the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, would never abandon those who would proclaim the Good News.
- Furthermore, when Jesus told the Apostles they were now given the power and responsibility to forgive sins in his name, he was further telling them how much he loved them and us that he would provide a sacramental way for us to be unbound from the hate, pain and misery that comes from sin.
- Is not to hear someone say I forgive you but one manifestation of saying I love you, that though we did wrong and fell from grace we are still worthy and capable of being loved and loving in return?
- This ministry of reconciliation that Jesus entrusted to the 12 and later to every ordained priest of his church was yet another way that we could know just how much God loves us, that He will again and again and again forgive us for the very sins that put him to death.
- But the encounter with the Risen Christ was not just to hear words of how much we are loved. It was also discovered in a gesture of love.
- That gesture of love was so profound that it was marked and branded upon the very body of the resurrected one!!!!
- Though his resurrected body could no longer feel pain, experience sickness, and was not even bound to the physical laws of this material world, hence why he could appear and disappear instantaneously and walk-through closed doors while still able to be touched and experienced in the flesh, the gapping wounds remained in his hands, in his feet and in his side.
- Certainly, Our Lord could have willed for the 5 Sacred Wounds to be made anew and his hands, feet and side restored, yet the most beautiful feature of the newly resurrected Christ was precisely the wounds of his passion, for they are the perpetual sign of just how much he loved us and continues to love us, always and forever.
- It is not surprising that many saints and sinners have found such consolation and refugees in the 5 Sacred Wounds. Many saints wrote of the perpetual peace and joy they found in knowing those wounds remain open for all time that they might mystically hide within them and take shelter in the one who loved us with an everlasting love. This is not sentimental piety they spoke but a lived experience of being loved by God within the very wounds that showed us just how much he loves us.
- With that thought in mind, allow me to leave you with the poetic words of St. Ambrose of Milan who nearly 1700 years ago spoke of the love he experienced from the Resurrected Christ and His 5 Sacred Wounds.
- “In this our bright and Paschal day,
When Christ, to earthly sight made plain
The glad Apostles see again.
The wounds, the riven wounds He shows
In that His flesh with light that glows,
In loud accord both far and nigh
The Lord’s arising testify.
O Christ, the King who lovest to bless, To you our hearts and souls possess;
To you our praise that we may pay, To whom our laud is due for aye.”
During these Spring 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/ |