October 4, 2026
Saturday, October 3 NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
4:00 PM Olympia Pasicznyk- Ss. Peter & Paul Women’s Society
Sunday, October 4 NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
8:30 AM God’s Blessings & Good Health for All Parishioners
Saturday, October 10 TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
4:00 PM Generational Healing for Walski/Kormas Family
-Diane, Janice & Rita
Sunday, October 11 TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
8:30 AM God’s Blessings & Good Health for All Parishioners
Now a good means of walking in God’s presence is to picture Our Lord as present with us wherever we may happen to be. We may think of Him at times as a little babe in the crib of Bethlehem; as a poor exile on His way to Egypt; as an apprentice in the workshop of Nazareth; a man of sorrows who was condemned a criminal to suffer and die; as scourged and crowned and crucified. St. Teresa praised this practice very much. It is necessary to observe, however, that in this pious exercise we must avoid all straining of the imagination, which is apt to be very fatiguing and might possibly be injurious.
Seeing With the Eyes of Faith
Another and better means of walking in the presence of God is based on the truths of holy faith. It consists in seeing God with the eyes of faith and being thoroughly persuaded that He is present and a witness of our actions. It matters not that we are unable to see Him with our bodily eyes; we cannot see the air around us, and we never doubt for a moment that it exists and that without it we could not possibly live. We do not see God, but faith tells us He is everywhere present. The Apostle St. Paul says: “In him we live and move and are.” (Acts 17:28). This is an easy practice and is not tiring to the mind. It is sufficient to make little acts of faith such as the following: My God, I firmly believe that Thou art here present. With this may be joined acts of love, of conformity and of good intention.
Seeing God In His Creatures
Still another beautiful practice is that of seeing God in His creatures. The beauties of nature such as the rising and setting of the sun, a magnificent landscape, a majestic river, a garden of beautiful flowers are so many reflexes of the beauty of the Creator. The thought of a learned or handsome or holy man can lead us to admire the wisdom and beauty and sanctity of God and return Him thanks for permitting His creatures to share in His holy attributes.
Beholding God Within Ourselves
The most perfect method, however, of keeping alive the thought of God’s presence consists in beholding God within our very selves. It is not necessary to ascend to Heaven to find the Lord God; we need only to recollect ourselves, and we shall find Him within us. He who, at prayer, pictures the Lord at a great distance from him is preparing for himself a source of abundant distractions. St. Teresa says: “I never really knew what it meant to pray well until the Lord Himself taught me the proper way to converse with Him. I entered within my very self and found this practice exceedingly profitable for my soul.” God is within us in a different manner from what He is in other creatures; in us He dwells as the Lord in His temple and in His house. “Know you not,” says St. Paul, “that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). And our Divine Saviour Himself has said: “If anyone love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.” (John 14:23). Endeavor, therefore, to reanimate your faith in this consoling truth. Humble yourself profoundly before so exalted a Majesty who deigns to dwell within you. Excite yourself to frequent acts of confidence, of oblation and of love towards the boundless goodness of God. St. Catherine of Siena tells us that she built a little cell in the innermost part of her soul; there she entertained herself in loving converse with her God. Once, when speaking of this presence of God in our heart, St. Teresa said: “Those who withdraw into the little heaven of their soul, where He who created them is enthroned, can be certain that in a brief space of time they will have advanced far on the road to perfection.” The happiness of the elect in Heaven consists in seeing and loving God. Our happiness here on earth must likewise consist in loving and seeing Our Lord, not indeed face to face as the Saints and angels do, but by means of the light of faith. Thus we begin in this valley of tears, this earthly exile, the life of the blessed in Heaven, a life of endless joy in the fruition of the vision of God. This article is taken from a chapter in The School of Christian Perfection by Saint Alphonsus Liguori which is available from TAN Books.
PRAYER FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE CHURCH
O glorious St. Michael, guardian and defender of the Church of Jesus Christ, come to the assistance of the Church, against which the powers of hell are unchained, guard with especial care her august Head, and obtain that for Him and for us the hour of triumph may speedily arrive. O glorious Archangel St. Michael, watch over us during life, defend us against the assaults of the devil, assist us especially at the hour of death; obtain for us a favorable judgement, and the happiness of beholding God face to face for endless ages. Amen.
When St. Anthony, the hermit, saw the world full of the snares of the devil, he cried out : “Who can escape so many dangers?” He heard a voice say, “Anthony, humilty alone walks securely; he who goes with head bowed down, need not fear to fall into these snares.” In a word, if we do not become children-not of course in age, but humility-we cannot, as our Savior said, enter the Kingdom of Heaven. “Learn of me, for I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29) The proud man has no peace nor rest, for he is seldom, if ever is treated in a mannercorresponding to the exalted opinion he has of himself.
Who Is Our Lady of Kibeho? The Apparition That Prophesied a Genocide
On the evening of November 28, 1981, in a small Catholic boarding school in the hills of southwestern Rwanda, a seventeen-year-old girl named Alphonsine Mumureke was serving tables in the school dining hall when a voice called her name. She walked toward the corridor to see who was there, and she encountered a woman of extraordinary beauty — a young, luminous Black African woman surrounded by radiant white light, who spoke to her with a gentleness that Alphonsine would spend the rest of her life trying to describe. That encounter was the beginning of one of the most remarkable and theologically urgent events in the history of modern Christianity. Over the following years, two more of Alphonsine’s schoolmates — Nathalie Mukamazimpaka and Marie-Claire Mukangango — would receive their own apparitions. Thousands of witnesses would attend the public ecstasies and emerge shaken. The visionaries would describe visions so terrible that observers who heard their accounts wept and prayed aloud. And ten years after the visions ended, approximately 800,000 people would be slaughtered in Rwanda in one hundred days — a genocide so precise in its horror that those who remembered the Kibeho visions recognized in it exactly what the Mother of God had shown her visionaries and begged them to help her prevent. Our Lady of Kibeho is unique in the history of approved Marian apparitions in several ways. She is the first and only officially approved apparition in Africa — confirmed by Bishop Augustin Misago in 2001 and recognized by the Vatican. She appeared not as a European woman but as a young Black African woman, in the face and features of the people she came to. She did not give a message of gentle consolation; she gave a message of urgent, prophetic warning that the world — and Rwanda in particular — faced catastrophic consequences if it did not repent. And she gave a specific devotional request that had fallen into neglect: the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, a profound prayer meditating on the suffering of the Mother of God that she said was urgently needed for a world in spiritual peril. The specific devotion Our Lady requested at Kibeho — the Chaplet of the Seven Sorrows — is a devotion oriented entirely toward suffering. It asks its practitioner to sit with the sorrows of the Mother of God, to enter into them, to meditate on them, and to find in them not escape from suffering but a way of bearing suffering with love and without despair. This is a specific theological gift to a Rwanda that would need to bear enormous suffering in 1994 and afterward — and to a world that needs, in every age, a way of bearing the suffering that comes to men who love truly in a world broken by sin. The Seven Sorrows is not a prayer for the removal of suffering. It is a prayer for the transformation of suffering. It asks the practitioner to stand with Mary at the foot of the Cross, where the worst thing in the world is happening and where love does not abandon its post. That is what Rwanda needed in 1994 — people who could stand at the foot of their particular cross and not run. And it is what every person in every situation of suffering needs: not the promise that it won’t hurt, but the company of a mother who has been through the worst and who is still standing.
The Relevance of Kibeho’s Message Today Our Lady’s message at Kibeho — repentance, prayer, penance, love, and the urgent need for conversion before catastrophe — is not dated by time or place. Every element of it speaks with equal force to the contemporary world. The warning about a world moving away from God, about the organization of common life in ways that exclude love and dehumanize neighbor, about the consequences of ethnic hatred and the failure of reconciliation — these are not messages for 1981 Rwanda alone. They are messages for every society, in every era, that has organized itself along the lines of fear and hatred rather than love. The mother who came to Rwanda in 1981 with tears on her face is still weeping. She is still asking for the same thing she asked for then. She is still available to those who ask her for help
The Altar Candles for the month of October are requested by Gail and Bobby Miles IMO Randy Yanoshak.
The is no request for the Sanctuary Light this week.
WOMEN’S SOCIETY RUMMAGE SALE: The Women’s Society women’s society rummage sale was held on Friday and Saturday. Thank you to all who supported it. A second sale will be held in two weeks, Oct 16th, 17th and 18th. As always, help will be needed.
– Additional household items will be accepted this week.
-Flyers are in the back of the church, if you know of a business that will display it, please take one.
-Pass the word to your friends and family
-Come to the sale, we will be making soup, haluski and baked goods
MOVIE: WHY not have another movie afternoon at Transfiguration of Our Lord Church? The movie is The Monuments Men. Children are welcome. THE MOVIE DAY IS NEXT Sunday, October 11 after Divine Liturgy at Transfiguration of Our Lord Church about 11:45AM. The movie will begin about 12:30PM and runs about 1 hour & 45 minutes. If you would like to donate a potluck, please let Lisa know at 570-574-1016.
Petitions & Prayers for Our Parishioners: Donna Winsock, Sonia Dempsey, Catherine Halloway, Charles Hallaway, Louise Hubiack, Frank Udiski, Paul Hoover & James Bencho, Reader John Fedorko. Keep them in your prayers. If anyone would like to be included in the prayer list drop a note in the basket, email the church or text Michalene Ostrum at 570-704-7079.
ALTAR CANDLES & SANCTUARY LIGHT: There are many weeks available for sanctuary lights and months for the altar candles. The lists are in the back of the church. They are a special way to remember our dearly departed loved ones or for special intentions.
ONE MILLION CHILDREN PRAYING THE ROSARY 2026: From October 1 to 7, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) is inviting children, families, schools, and parishes around the world to take part in “One Million Children Praying the Rosary.” This year, the initiative will unfold as a worldwide week of prayer, beginning with a vigil in Rome on October 1 and culminating on October 7, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
STRIVE TO BE ONE IN A MILLION!
OCTOBER BOOK: School of Darkness, Bella Dodd. Bella Dodd’s 1954 autobiography School of Darkness was written at the urging of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, and it recounts her conversion to Catholicism after a lifetime in the Communist Party, culminating in her baptism by Archbishop Sheen in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York.
CEMETERY: Please make sure that summer items are removed from the cemetery prior to the ground freezing in preparation for the Feast of the Nativity.
HOAGIE SALE: St. Nicholas Church, Glen Lyon, will be holding a Turkey, Ham & Cheese and Italian Hoagie Sale on Thursday, October 31st from 11:00am to 2:00pm. The cost of each hoagie is $8.00 and a quart of vegetable soup is $9.00. Orders can be placed by calling Debbie at 570-736-6908 by Sunday, October 23. A bake sale will also be held with the soup and hoagie sale. A Basket Raffle is also being held to Benefit Ukraine and the church.
NOTABLE DATES: Daylight Savings Time Ends(Sunday, November 1); Thanksgiving(Thursday, November 26); Myasopusna(January 31);Lent Begins(February 14), Good Friday (March 26), Easter (March 28).
Prayer to the All-Holy Theotokos
By One Who is in Trouble and Affliction
O mine all-good Queen, mine all-holy hope, receiver of orphans and assister of strangers, helper of the unfortunate and protection of the afflicted! Thou seest my peril, Thou seest my tribulation: I am beset by temptions on every side, but there is no one to help me. Wherefore, do Thou Thyself help me, for I am sick; feed me, for I am a stranger; guide me, for I am lost; heal and save me, for I am beyond hope. I have none other help, I have none other intercession or consolation, save Thee, O Mother of all who are troubled and heavily burdened. Wherefore, look upon me, a sinner in affliction, and cover me with Thine all-holy omophorion, that I may be delivered from the evils which compass me round about, and may continually praise Thine all-hymned name. Amen -From the Akathist to the Protection of the All-Holy Theotokos
