March 28, 2024

Fr. Ezio Marchetto, Pastor of Holy Rosary Church has announced that the Easter Mass this Sunday will be live streamed vi Facebook.  The mass will be in Italian.   Please visit https://www.facebook.com/Holy-Rosary-Church-595-3rd-St-NW-Washington-DC-321489976992/.  If you do NOT have a Facebook account, simply click “Not Now” at the bottom of the pop up window.

A live stream video will be made available ten minutes before the start of the 10:30 AM Mass.

Below we reproduces Fr. Ezio’s Easter Message

Easter’s Lessons

Dear Parishioners and friends,

In these days, everywhere we turn, all we hear is bad news.  From catastrophic to worrisome announcements about the pandemic, the media is continuously feeding us information ranging from medical to social and from political to financial effects of the Coronavirus. On the radio, television and internet, Coronavirus is now part of every printed or spoken information. Is there anything positive in this global disaster?

One of the many lessons that Easter is teaching us is that, even in the most devastating situation, there is something to learn and a silver lining to discover. The first lesson of these painful circumstances is that the whole of humanity is connected. This virus is teaching us that the real or imaginary barriers that we put up and that we thought were solid and relevant are in reality just paper walls: from monarchs to sports figures, from the powerful to the needy, across races, social stratification and borders, we all find ourselves in the same boat. The second lesson is that now we do have time for ourselves and for our families. “I’m too busy.” “I am always trying to catch up.” “I am the taxi driver for my children, driving them to school, to sports, to other extracurricular activities.” “I do not have time now.” “I’m always tired.”  These were the constant refrains of our daily life. Now all of this came to an abrupt stop. I was teasing a friend saying that now he has time to do the work around the house that he was always too busy to do before. Now we have a precious opportunity to rediscover the beauty of family ties that were always there, but which, at times, were relegated to spare spaces. We now have more time to rest, to talk, to spend time doing things together as a family. We have time to cook breakfast and to enjoy it. There may be moments when we may even be at loss of what to do; but, like the people in Italy that started to sing to each other from balconies, we are resilient, and we will find a way.

A final lesson we can learn is how precious our parish and community life are. Quite a few people have expressed the feeling of the loss they are experiencing by not been able to come to church and to Casa Italiana over the weekend. We took it for granted for so long that maybe we needed something like this to realize how important and how precious this weekly coming together actually is. At times, in the past, we may have missed out on Masses and parish events because we knew that there would always be “next Sunday” or “the next event.” Now we realize how valuable each event and each weekend are.

These are but a few lessons we can take from this difficult situation. Lent was a time to pause and consider. Easter is a time to renew and restart. Let us take advantage of the silver lining of this reality so that we will walk out, eventually, more aware of who we are and of the richness of what we have.

A Blessed Easter.

Fr. Ezio, c.s.