St. Mary Parish held our second Light of the World Retreat last weekend with 25 people taking part.

The 8th Annual Lenten Fish Fry was another great event and evening for the St. Mary's community and beyond.  We are so grateful to the Fish Fry Committee for all the hard work and time that they put in during the weeks leading up to the FishFry.  Thank you to those that cooked the over 700 delicious meals and to those that served our guests. [READ MORE]

Through the generosity and support of St. Mary Parish parishioners, great progress has been made in rebuilding the chapel in Bokolo. Here are a few photo updates we received from Fr. Serge from a recent celebration.

We will host the 8th Annual Lenten Fish Fry. on Friday, March 9th! The event was started by parishioners Bob & Judi Terry. They lived in Pittsburgh, PA for many years and attended the Lenten fish dinners hosted by various churches in the area. When they moved to Shrewsbury, they noticed that the Friday Fish Dinners were not as common and decided to bring the tradition to St Mary’s.

The best team in football. The best song of the year. The Grammy Awards and the Super Bowl determine the best artist and football team. It was Bruno Mars last week - will it be Tom Brady this weekend? These much anticipated annual events certainly spark a great deal of interest and publicity. The excitement is built upon competition as so much in our world seems to be. Everyone seeking to be the best - the greatest - the one and the only. Winners and losers are everywhere.

St. Mary Parish is proud of its longstanding commitment to quality music for our liturgical celebrations. Our Sunday Masses, weddings, funerals, Christmas & Easter would not be such faith-filled and joy-filled celebrations without music and without the organ.

Fr. Marcin, St. Mary's former associate pastor, stopped by for a visit on Saturday and con-celebrated the 4:30pm Mass with Fr. Mike.

Our school community was honored to welcome Sister Judith Dupuy, Director of the Diocese of Worcester Haitian Apostolate, and students from Haiti to our school on Thursday. After a photo with Trax and lunch (hamburger, chips and fruit!) with our students, our special guests visited our classrooms, learned about our curriculum, our traditions and our commitment to our faith, thanks to Sister Judith's detailed translations.

Despite the frigid weather this past Saturday, sounds of clicking needles and warm conversation amongst the Prayer Shawl Ministry filled Mary’s room in the Pastoral Center. The purpose of this ministry is to offer a symbol of God's love for those who are ill or others who are in need of comfort and prayer through the gift of a prayer shawl. From the first moment a new shawl is started, the knitter begins praying for the recipient. Once completed, they are blessed and placed in a bag with a beautiful tag and prayers of comfort. Recipients are then wrapped in the prayer shawls that are created with love and intended to give its wearer a big hug from God through their hands.

Christmas & Epiphany: Gifts Given...and Received Today’s Feast of the Epiphany is the 12th Day of Christmas, so there is still time to give someone a Christmas gift if you haven’t had the chance. The season of Christmas will officially end tomorrow as the Church celebrates the Baptism of the Lord. But for most of us, all the gifts have been given and received, and we are now packing away Christmas for another year. [READ MORE]

The reconstruction of the Bokolo Chapel is well underway.  This chapel is one of the 11 chapel communities served by Fr. Serge and St. Michel's parish in Roche-a-Bateau, Haiti. The chapel had been completely destroyed in Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016.

Members of our 5:30 Mass Contemporary Ensemble reunite each year for Christmas Eve. Check out the photos and a short video of their rehearsal last week!

It seems that the season of Advent has just begun and already it is almost over. Especially with Christmas being on Monday making the Fourth week of Advent the shortest time it can be. Even though the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve fall on the same day, they are two separate liturgical days and are also separate days of obligation. Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Advent will follow the normal Sunday Mass schedule except there will be no 5:30 pm Mass. Listed here are Mass Times for this weekend.

On Saturday, December 16th, St. Mary's held its first Simbang Gabi Mass.  The Simbang Gabi tradition was introduced to the Philippines by the Spanish friars to allow the farmers to hear Mass before going to the fields early in the morning. More...

The Diocese of Worcester recently launched a new Communications Ministry for parishes that includes partnering with eCatholic to provide beautiful, mobile-friendly websites that are also integrated with Flocknote. We are excited to share that we just completed our conversion to the eCatholic platform we hope you like it!

Make Plans to Join Us for Christmas The Christmas Mass schedule will remain as it has been for the past several years with the additional 4:30 pm Vigil Mass at St. John’s High School where there are more handicapped parking spaces and easy accessibility.

LIGHT OF THE WORLD RETREAT Parishioners who attended our first Light of the World Retreat weekend were truly renewed in their faith and are now taking part in four post retreat sessions. We are grateful to Clare Ossman, Karen Coleman, Alfonso Martinez who came from the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois to lead our retreat along with Dennis Featherstone from St. Mary’s in Uxbridge. Talk to parishioners who participated and they will share their experience with you and encourage you to attend the next retreat in the Spring of 2018.

Our annual Senior Luncheon is a long standing St Mary School tradition and a meaningful way for our school to thank the Seniors within our community for all they do to support our school. With our students serving as greeters, servers and entertainers, it was a lovely day to celebrate friendship and share gratitude for our St Mary community. Special thanks to Mary Beth Kolosi Connors and our parent volunteers for hosting this special event!

On Monday, our Pilgrims (First Graders) welcomed our Natives (Kindergartners) for our annual Thanksgiving Feast. The morning was filled with prayer, welcoming songs, kind words of thanks and favorite foods shared with friends!

Cardinal Chibly Langlois, the bishop of Les Cayes, Haiti, the first Haitian cardinal in the Catholic Church and Bishop of Les Cayes visited the Diocese of Worcester the weekend of September 2-3, to renew the twinning relationship between parishes in the Diocese of Worcester and the Diocese of Les Cayes, Haiti. Accompanied by Bishop McManus, Cardinal Chibly visited St. Mary's and concelebrated the 4:30 Mass with Bishop McManus.