Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary next Friday March 25, day of the Feast of the Annunciation.

As already announced to you at the beginning of Lent, we have been planning to renew our own Consecration to Jesus through Mary at our three Masses on March 25: 7 am, 9 am and 7:30 pm (following the 7 pm Stations of the Cross). On that day, we will unite our prayers to those of Pope Francis and all Bishops, PRAYING FOR PEACE in Ukraine and Russia.

OUR LADY requested in all six apparitions at FATIMA in 1917 to PRAY THE ROSARY EVERY DAY, especially to obtain PEACE . OUR LADY's request is as urgent today as it was 105 years ago when the FIRST WORLD WAR was raging in Europe and COMMUNISM was taking hold of RUSSIA. The whole world is shocked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, attacks on civilian population, threat of the use of nuclear power. May we all pray the Rosary daily for the end of war. Join us at 8:30 am every weekday (before daily Mass) and 7:45 am on Sunday. To help alleviate the current "humanitarian " crisis in Ukraine and Poland (displaced populations within Ukraine, refugees in Ukraine), we invite you to make a special offering through CARITAS INTERNATIONAL (very active in both Ukraine and Poland today): we will have a basket at foot of altar in our church. Your contribution will be passed on to CARITAS POLAND, largest CATHOLIC RELIEF Service in Poland, and assisting Ukrainian refugees. Please donate cash, or make checks payable to “OLHOC”, with memo “Ukraine”. We will forward one single check from our OLHOC parish.

LET US CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR PEACE IN UKRAINE, PEACE IN EUROPE, PEACE IN THE WHOLE WORLD. Let us invoke the intercession of Our Lady Queen of Peace. Let us recite together the ending of St John Paul II 's powerful Consecration Prayer "Act of Entrustment to Mary", which he wrote and which was used on March 25, 1984:

In entrusting to you, oh Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly Heart. Immaculate Heart!

Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!

From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.
Accept, Oh Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with thesufferings of whole societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the "sin of the world", in all its manifestations.

Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love!
May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences!
May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!  Amen

One in Christ,
 

Fr. Alain