St. Clare of Assisi is, rightly, famous for many things. She was a spiritual sister of St. Francis, a rich and beautiful young woman who desired to live detached from any material wealth or comfort. She was zealously committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and founded a group of women to pray - today known as the “Poor Clares.” We are quite blessed to have a house of Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration at Our Lady of Solitude Monastery in Tonopah. They are our neighbors and one of our former parishioners, Aundrea Garcia, is a novice there. Fr. Brian regularly offers Mass for the sisters and I know they pray for all of us.

You may have noticed that this year we celebrated the Annunciation on April 8, not the usual March 25, as that date fell during the Easter Octave (those 8 days of Resurrection celebration.) We don’t typically move holy days around - so it tells us just how important the Easter Octave is that the Church wants us focused the whole time on Jesus’ resurrection… AND how important that we still celebrate the Announcement by Archangel Gabriel to Mary that the Eternal Son of God would be conceived as a human baby in her womb.

An ancient story, retold famously by St. Jerome, is that in the final years of St. John the Apostle he lived in exile in a cave on Patmos Island. A small community of Christians lived on the coast and each Sunday they hiked up the mountain to pray with and  listen to the Apostle. Every week St. John told them “children, love one another.” The Christians nodded their heads and seemed to take this message to heart.

Happy Easter! For these past 7 days (today makes 8!) we have been celebrating the Octave of Easter and praying as if each day were the Day of Resurrection. This means that we come to Mass today with the same joy as the disciples who found the empty tomb and were gathered in the Upper Room as Jesus came to them to bring them peace (John 20:19).