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St. Francis of Assisi began live-streaming our daily and Sunday Masses immediately after the pandemic lock-down in March 2020. This new service allowed our parishioners and visitors to remain connected to the Word of God and the celebration of the Eucharist as best we could in those difficult days. Live-streaming continues to serve people who are homebound, people who live far who want to stay connected to St. Francis of Assisi, and people who like to watch daily Mass from their offices during the week.

We are committed to continue to provide this service to everyone.

We will continue to stream all of our Masses and special events to our website at:

and at our

You can also see an archive of our past Masses at the same YouTube page.

However, staring June 1, 2023 we will no longer stream our Masses to our Facebook page.

We are doing this in an effort to reclaim our Facebook page for posts related to live, faith, spirituality and parish events.  We hope that this will reduce clutter on our page so that our posts are easier to find and see in your feeds.

We are also doing this because livestream has less technical glitches when streamed directly to our website or YouTube.

Don’t worry. We are not going away.  You are invited to watch Mass online as often as you like in these two locations.

Dear Community and Friends of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi,

May the Lord give you peace.

This year our celebration of Pentecost coincides with Memorial Day. We give thanks for the gift of the Spirit always already given. In John’s Gospel, Jesus, in his encounter with the disciples in the locked room, offers them peace and inspires them with Holy Spirit. Jesus empowers the disciples to offer forgiveness in his name. In the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples
praying in the upper room are gifted with the Spirit. They immediately proclaim the Gospel’s message to people of various nations. Each understands the message with no language barrier.
As we link our celebration of Pentecost with the memorial of all those who have died for our nation. We are called again to accept the offer of peace in the Spirit and to embrace the variety of nations with the message of God’s overwhelming love.

Memorial Day is a solemn remembering of the pain and loss that so many have experienced. We remember families and friends who grieve the deaths of Service Women and Men. We keep
memory as we gather to tell their stories and bless them for their shared gifts. We also commit to working for peace as their legacy. The power and dynamism of the Spirit enable us to engage in the work of peace. The gift of the Spirit is God’s presence within and among us. It is the energy of God gracing us to do the good. St. Paul reminds us that we do not even know how to pray as we ought but the Spirit groans within us as our prayer. We feel the groaning for peace, for freedom from fear, and for hope in a future of freedom for all. Our constant prayer is the acceptance of the variety of gifts embodied in the many women and men of our world.

As the diverse crowd that heard the proclamation of the disciples on that first Pentecost, we, a diverse community, hear the message of God’s love for all anew. We each hear in the way that we are able to hear. Often at Pentecost, we pray for the coming of the Spirit, as if God is holding back. I have always wondered why we do this. The Spirit has already been given. Perhaps it would be better to pray that we accept the gift that God offers us, the sharing in divinity that is ours through the breath of God breathed into us as Spirit.

In openness to the Spirit, we embrace and nurture our gifts. We are each uniquely gifted, and sharing our gifts forms the community known as the Body of Christ. As we see in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, each person is essential to the Body. Each gifted person has the dignity of God’s Spirit. We are likewise the Communion of Saints; our Memorial Day reminds us of the grace that links us with all who have gone before us.

May they rest in peace and may we work for peace.

Blessings,

Fr. Tom, ofm

Dear Community and Friends of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi,

May the Lord give you peace.

Our Easter Season is drawing to a close. As we began on Ash Wednesday, I suggested that this is a 90-day journey of transformation for all of us. How are you doing? Our goals were to be more loving, kinder, and to deepen our relationships with the Lord and with one another. We have gathered Sunday after Sunday to attend to God’s Word and be nourished by our sharing
in the Eucharist.

We had incredible celebrations of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. It was amazing to see so many people come to participate in the foot washing. Some folks were so overwhelmed by the experience that they were in tears. (Next year, the friars asked for knee pads!) The veneration of the Cross highlighted our remembering of the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday. The reverence and awe of each person as they approached the cross was very moving. The Easter Vigil was an extravaganza! The fire was spectacular, the new Paschal Candle was decorated for the praise of creation. I hope you have had a chance to look at it. We were blessed with the celebration of baptisms, confirmations, and the First Eucharists.

In the weeks since Easter Sunday, we have listened to the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St. John. As we attend to the Acts of the Apostles, we see the early church modeling what Jesus had done and realize our challenge to do the same. In John’s Gospel, we have accounts of the disciples’ experiences of the Lord’s resurrection. Jesus offers peace, gives the Holy Spirit, and empowers them to forgive. In the encounter with Thomas, Jesus invites him to touch his wounds and believe. We, too, often touch his wounds in the brokenness of our world and are called to believe. The disciples on the way to Emmaus do not recognize the One who recounts the constancy of God’s love until he breaks bread with them. Often, we only realize that the Lord’s grace has touched us in our reflection on our experience.

In the return to the earlier chapters in John, read through the lens of the resurrection, Images of the Good Shepherd, the gatekeeper, and the gate. Jesus identifies himself as the way, truth, and life. Jesus calls his hearers to love and prays for the disciples.

As we prepare for Pentecost, let’s look at how far we have come and give thanks for the support of the community as we have made this journey together. In our reflection rooted in experience and the scripture, we may realize that the Lord has been on the road with us. He lovingly leads us into ever deeper communion.

Peace and all Good,

Fr. Tom, ofm