Throughout Lent, as we prepare to welcome the joyous season of Easter, we pause to consider how we can make our minds, bodies, hearts and souls good and strong so that we can create a life as solid as rock, following the way of Jesus and the Gospel.

With prayer and faith, we consider how we can uphold what is right, forgive, forget, move forward and build anew in ourselves, our families, our communities.

We invite you to join us in prayer during our Easter Octave of Masses, beginning with the glorious Feast of Easter Sunday, continuing for eight days and concluding on the second Sunday of Easter.  This year we will once again be celebrating the Easter Octave of Masses here at Our Lady Queen of Angels Chapel in Ossining, New York. There, you and the intentions you send to us, will be remembered in prayer.

The Maryknoll priests and brothers offer our prayers as a gift to you, along with the Easter Cards you received in the mail. We hope that you will pass them on — with your own loving prayers — to the special people you want to remember in our Easter Octave.

We also ask you to pray for the people we are serving all over the world who are suffering from the deep despair of poverty, hunger, homelessness, sickness, violence and death that make it difficult for them to survive and flourish.

Maryknoll priests and brothers are working every day, on every continent, to alleviate all kinds of suffering with the power of compassion and programs that foster progress. For Father James Eble, M.M., making our Church in Tanzania solid as a rock means staying focused on the people who ask for so little and tackling their needs: life and death issues like getting clean water, medication and sanitation.

Father Eble’s Transfiguration parish has grown to 4,000 parishioners, one person at a time. His two Masses on Sunday morning draw 700 people each in a church that can hold only half as many worshipers. The overflow must stand outside to listen. The parish also attracts many curious non-Catholics and to accommodate his growing community, Father Eble is building a new church that will seat 800 people. 

As the only Catholic priest in this part of Tanzania, Fr. Eble also is constructing a rectory which he hopes one day will house more than one priest while continuing to minister to the day-to-day needs of his flock.  

Our fellow sisters and brothers in Tanzania and all over the world are blessed by the Maryknoll priests and brothers — and people like you — who are devoted to caring and providing for their needs.

So please send your special Easter offering today, knowing it will strengthen men, women and children who need someone to watch over and attend to them so that they can escape the perils that often threaten their very survival.  When you send out your Easter cards, please also send us the names of the persons receiving them by clicking on this link and sending us an e-mail (Please type Easter Card Names in the Subject area of your e-mail.)  Or leave their names in the intentions section of the online donation form.  This will ensure that their names are included in prayer during our Octave Masses.