Next Tuesday, February 4th, 2025, at 5pm, we will be honoured to welcome the relics of Venerable Michael J. McGivney to St. Joseph’s Church, Elko. This is a moment of historical importance and an extraordinary moment of grace and blessing for our faith family.

Every first Saturday, Mass and Confessions will start at 8am.

Saint Blaise was a physician and bishop of the town of Sebastea in Armenia. Although the Roman empire had provided for freedom or worship, in Armenia many Christians were still being tortured for their beliefs.

Healing Mass with Sacrament of the Anointing will take place on Friday, February 7th at St. Joseph’s.

No Sin is Beyond God’s Unfathomable Mercy, says Bishop Thomas on the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade As chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, Bishop Thomas offered the following reflection on the 52nd anniversary of the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide...

No habra una mejor manera para comensar el Ano de Jubileo, el Ano de Esperanza. Vamos a reunir el Jueves 26 a las 6pm en Mater Dei Hall para este taller importante. Por mas informacion, habla con el Despacho Parroquial. Todos sean bienvenidos…

Many of us grew up believing that being a Christian simply meant going to church and saying grace before meals, but being a follower of Christ isn’t about going through the motions. It’s about having a deep, personal friendship with Jesus—a relationship that gives purpose and meaning to every part of your life. Meeting the Messiah will take you on a scriptural journey through the lives of men and women who met Jesus in person and whose lives were forever changed. Curtis Martin and Dr. Edward Sri invite you to encounter Jesus face-to-face through His word and hear the personal message He’s been telling you all along: You are not alone. You are beloved. You are His.

What is a plenary indulgence during Jubilee Year? 1. A plenary indulgence is a grace granted by the Catholic Church through the merits of Jesus Christ to remove the temporal punishment due to sin. It cleanses the soul as if the person has just been baptized. 2. The Holy Father declares that the gift of the Indulgence "is a way of discovering the unlimited nature of God’s mercy. Not by chance, for the ancients, the terms ‘mercy’ and ‘indulgence’ were interchangeable, as expressions of the fullness of God’s forgiveness, which knows no bounds" (Spes non confundit, 23). The Indulgence, therefore, is a Jubilee grace. 3. You can use this Indulgence for souls in purgatory. A plenary indulgence obtained for them would obtain for them the release from purgation and the entrance into heavenly glory. 4. To obtain either a partial or plenary indulgence, a person must be baptized, in the state of grace (at least at the end of the spiritual work to be done) and not excommunicated, and must have the general intention to actually obtain the indulgence itself.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2025

Tuesday, February 4th, at 5pm, we will be honoured to welcome the relics of Venerable Michael J. McGivney to St. Joseph’s Church, Elko. This is a moment of historical importance and an extraordinary moment of grace and blessing for our faith family. The Venerable Father Michael J. McGivney was born on August 12, 1852.. He was a Roman Catholic priest and founder of the Knights of Columbus. He was the son of Irish immigrants. Father McGivney entered Saint-Hyacinthe's Seminary in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada in 1868. He finished his studies at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland in 1873, but had to leave the seminary and return home to help finish raising his siblings, due to the death of his father. He later returned to the seminary and was ordained a priest on December 22, 1877, by Archbishop James Gibbons at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On February 2, 1882, while an assistant pastor at Saint Mary's Church in New Haven, Connecticut, McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus with a small group of parishioners. McGivney died from tuberculosis on the eve of the Assumption, August 14, 1890, when he was only thirty-eight years old. The order now has over 1.7 million member families and thirteen thousand councils. During the 2004-2005 fraternal year, $134 million and 68 million man-hours were donated to charity by the order. On March 15, 2008 Pope Benedict XVI approved a decree recognizing the heroic virtue of Father Michael J. McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus. The pope’s declaration significantly advances the priest’s process toward sainthood and gives the parish priest the distinction of “Venerable Servant of God.” If canonized, Father McGivney would be the first American born priest to be so honored. vfmcg.jpg

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, I am reaching out to invite you to attend this year's Reno Diocesan Conference. This year’s theme “Missionary Discipleship”, invites us to examine our faith and the evangelization of it in our world. As people following Jesus Christ we are called to bring forth our faith by example and welcome those around us to recognize their faith. As recipients of the Eucharist, the real presence of Jesus, we are meant to be transformed to become what we receive – the very presence of Christ in the world. This means our lives as individuals in the Church must be directed toward the good of others as ministers of Christ’s mercy, love, and compassion. Our conference program is in support of our journey as Catholics. It is developed for us to gather together, to learn, and grow in our faith, so we may build up the church in northern Nevada. You will find very timely and important information shared in each session, specifically chosen for us to progress in our mission as Catholics. These sessions are designed for all parishes, parishioners and invited guests to be inspired so that we may flourish as a diocese. As we welcome in the very special Jubilee Year of 2025, Pilgrims of Hope, it is my prayer that we, together, can become the living, breathing example of what we receive from our Lord. Conference is the perfect time for us to reflect and refresh in this commitment by practice. Please join us and register for the sessions that call to your heart. All of the keynotes and general sessions are complimentary to all. Please know that I keep you and your loved ones in my daily prayers. God Bless you always! With every best wish and assurance of prayer, I remain, Yours in Christ +Most Reverend Daniel H. Mueggenborg Bishop of Reno

Celebrate your sacrament with the world When: 2nd Sunday of February every year What is World Marriage Day? World Marriage Day (WMD) honors husband and wife as the foundation of the family – the basic unit of society. It salutes the beauty of their faithfulness, sacrifice, and joy in daily married life.

In the fall of 2011, my husband Patrick and I had been married for eight years and our family was rapidly growing. Our oldest child had just turned six and we were expecting our fifth child in December. John Paul was born on December 6, 2011. We knew immediately that something was very wrong. The delivery itself was traumatic, during which his arm was broken. When he was finally delivered, he didn’t make a sound. He couldn’t breathe. He was barely moving. He was whisked away to the neonatal intensive care unit. In the days and weeks that followed, we gradually started to understand the severity of John Paul’s condition. When he was 5 weeks old, he was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). We learned that SMA was a genetic, progressive, and terminal neuromuscular disorder. Gradually, every muscle in John Paul’s body would weaken and eventually waste away. Usually, death is caused by complications from a common cold because of respiratory weakness. You can imagine how we felt being told that our son would die from complications of a common cold, knowing that we had four children at home, several of whom were not yet adept at covering their mouths and noses when they sneezed or coughed. Of course, Pat and I were devastated. We were trying to wrap our heads and hearts around the reality that confronted us. At the same time, we were also quickly falling desperately in love with our son. We saw his first smiles and he could even hold my finger in his hand. During our time in the NICU, it was a rollercoaster of singing lullabies and whispering sweet nothings one minute and the next using emergency procedures to bring his oxygen saturation levels back to normal because he couldn’t clear his airway the way most people do by swallowing or coughing. We had gleaned some hope from families that we had been put in contact with who had children with the same diagnosis. They were living at home with their families, growing, learning and loving despite their weak bodies and many medical issues. In many cases, they were living way past what doctors were anticipating. We desperately wanted that for JP. We wanted our other kids to get to know their new brother and we wanted JP to feel the love and joy of a home and his family. When he was 7 weeks old, JP had surgery for a G-tube, to enable us to feed him with a feeding pump and a tracheostomy because he required constant breathing support from a ventilator. When he was 3 months old, we brought him home. It was beautiful to see the other kids interacting with him. Joey learned to use the suction machine and would practice reading to him, Liam loved learning to do his physical therapy exercises with him, Madie danced for him, and Ben would kiss him and play peek-a-boo. At every meal, they would fight over whose turn it was to give him his medicine or hook up his bag of formula to his g-tube port. This was our “new normal” and we loved it. We also had some pretty major struggles in getting adequate nursing care and ended up doing much of his 24-hour care ourselves, taking shifts through the night on weekends, frequently jumping from bed to assist a nurse in clearing his airway and helping him recover his oxygen saturations to normal levels, taking him to appointments with just about every specialist you could name. He was hospitalized several times for infections. We also observed him quickly losing strength. Within a few months of his homecoming, he had lost the ability to smile, what little movement he had in his fingers disappeared and he was increasingly losing eye control. Having a child who was so medically fragile introduced new challenges to our marriage as well. Never before was communication so critical. In some ways, it was easier to understand where the other was coming from. We were more sympathetic and patient because we were both going through the same sleep deprivation, emotional exhaustion, and tension of caring for a child whose life was not a given from one moment to the next. We were more unified and accommodating, and we literally knew where the other was at any given moment. John Paul gave us opportunities to love each other in new ways, like delaying waking the other when it was time for the 2 a.m. shift change or making sure the other got “snuggle time” with JP. We were reporting to each other when we needed to step away from John Paul’s side so that the other was “on call.” We also literally didn’t have the emotional energy for petty fighting. Did both of us snap sometimes in exhaustion, stress or frustration? Absolutely, but neither of us put that much weight on it. We both knew we were as vulnerable to the same weaknesses. Things that weren’t critical to the mission were quickly forgotten. In other areas, our communication was more difficult than it ever had been. We had to make decisions about the future of our family and about how to do what was best for our son who was on life support, and we didn’t always agree. Little by little we learned that even when we disagreed quite strongly about the course we felt our family should take, we had to respect and trust the intentions and heart of the other. Resolutions were not always made overnight. Ultimately, because we both truly did have the interest of John Paul and the entire family in the forefront, when action needed to be taken, we were able to see eye to eye with time and prayer. In February of 2013, we learned that much of John Paul’s brain had wasted. There were also new concerns that he had developed a type of nerve cancer. With a lot of prayer and peace, we discerned that God was calling John Paul home. On February 20, 2013, our parish priest said a Mass in our family room and, surrounded by family and songs of praise, JP joined the saints in heaven. It has been a little over a year since John Paul died. Pat and I are learning how to support each other in the different ways we grieve. We are learning to be better listeners and better sharers. There is a deeper bond between us now. I can only compare it to what I imagine the bond is like between two soldiers who are fighting in the trenches together. I say “fighting” because even though John Paul isn’t with us now, the war is not over yet. It won’t be until we are both reunited with our little boy. There are plenty of battles left to fight and only God knows what they will involve. They may include more children with SMA. They may include more healthy children with other struggles. They will include the challenge of helping our children get to heaven. Many times in the last two years, it took getting to that breaking point, whether it was feeling like getting adequate nursing care was impossible, receiving yet another call with bad test results from a doctor, or snapping at my husband in exhaustion, before I surrendered the circumstances to God. Ultimately, God did work everything out, but had I trusted Him with it sooner, perhaps I could have appreciated His hand in those moments rather than in retrospect. There are many statistics about the damage the death of a child can do to a marriage. Sadly, I don’t doubt their validity but it is a number that is unnecessarily high. When God gives us more than we can handle, it is because He wants us to entrust it to Him, and let Him take care of it. We can only fail if we try to do it alone. Of course, the myth is in thinking that we can do anything without God. Whether it is sharing the last piece of cake or burying a one-year-old son, we constantly rely on the grace that God gives us in our vocation to get our spouse and children to heaven.

Catholic Mission Trips for Young Adults. At the recent SEEK Conference in Salt Lake City I came to learn about Catholic Mission Trips. A wonderful group who equip Catholics in the call to be missionary disciples. Established in 2008, Catholic Mission Trips had its beginnings in 1998 with one youth minister and 10 teens. Inspired by St.Teresa of Kolkata and Pope St. John Paul II, Steve Nasche, a Youth Director for a Catholic Parish, wanted to do a mission trip to let American youth experience the culture and spirituality of Mexico, as well as assist the people by helping to build homes, chapels, and schools. Soon after, Steve had other Catholic parishes joining him. Thus, the concept of Catholic Mission Trips began. They have since grown into a full-service ministry and lead mission trips for young people all over the world. I understand that there are lots of people out there who would love to go on a mission trip, but just don’t have any connections or think it’s too difficult to plan. That is where Catholic Mission Trips, comes in. They do the planning and handle all the logistics for you. All the parish group needs to do is sign up and come. They handle everything else. They make it as easy as possible for groups to have a life-changing mission trip experience. They have been a part of mission trips to Mexico, Costa Rica, Cameroon, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, Honduras, Haiti, Belize, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, India and Louisiana. If you are interested why not make contact with the parish office.