*Please note that there are no confessions on Holy Saturday. The parish office will close on Thursday, April 1st for the Easter holiday and will reopen Tuesday, April 6th. Regular Adoration will close on Thursday, April 1st and will resume on Tuesday April 6th at 10:00am. Following Holy Thursday Mass on April 1st, the Blessed Sacrament will be reposed in St. Joseph’s Chapel and will remain there in reposition until 10:00pm. There will be no morning Masses on Thursday, April 1

Q. Why does the peacock appear in some works of Catholic sacred art? A. The peacock held symbolic value in Christian art because of its associations in ancient pre-Christian cultures that were adopted by Christian artists and writers. For various peoples, the peacock was viewed as a guardian of royalty or a bird associated with paradise and the Tree of Life. The Greeks believed that the flesh of the peacock did not decay after death (a theory that St. Augustine once tested).

We will pray a bilingual Chaplet of Divine Mercy Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 3:00pm in the church for the feast of Divine Mercy.

Q. During previous seasons of Lent, you’ve provided in this column some interesting Lenten trivia, such as the medieval origins of pretzels as a penitential Lenten food, and the revelation that in some parts of Michigan, instead of fish fries during Fridays in Lent, some Catholic parishes have muskrat barbecues! Any other interesting Lenten trivia? A. Well, it might be interesting to note that the twelfth-century Welsh chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis, in his Itinerary of Archb

Q. In a detail in one of the appendices of his Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien notes that the destruction of the One Ring and the defeat of Sauron took place on March 25. Did he intend any religious significance in assigning it this particular date? A. J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was a devout Catholic, and his writings were deeply influenced by his religious convictions. Scholars who have studied his works speculate that March 25 was chosen as the date of the destruction

Dear St. Catherine Parish Family, As we are approaching the end of the third quarter of our fiscal year, I wanted to give you a quick update on the stewardship of our parish. As you know, we have returned to our full Mass schedule, and most of our parishioners have returned to Mass in person, with a number also continuing to watch Mass online. The number of people coming to Confession also continues to remain exceptionally high. With regard to faith formation, our Families

Q. What is the ancient book called the Didache, and why is it significant? A. The Didache, or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a short treatise on morals and Church practice written in Greek by an early unknown Christian author. The book is significant both because some of the early Church Fathers highly esteemed it and because of its early composition. Though scholars have disputed the exact date, many believe that it was written in the first century, perhaps even as

Q. If angels don’t have bodies, how can they sing? A. Do angels actually sing? Countless Christmas carols feature singing angels, yet nowhere does Scripture explicitly refer to “angels” singing, even at Jesus’ birth. Luke’s Gospel tells us that the angels were “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest …” (Luke 2:13–14a). Even so, the Book of Revelation seems to refer to singing angels without identifying them explicitly as such. St. John tells us about the “four