Message from Tom:

Happy Easter Season!

This Easter Season are  special at St. Joseph's because, on Holy Monday the man who was the pastor here from 1955 until 1985.  Monsignor Charles Blecha, or "Fr. Blecha," as most here call him, went home to the God he served so well.

At 100 years old, he often joked in recent years that all his classmates were dead for a long time already and probably came to the conclusion that he "didn't make it."  Well, I'm sure they won't be surprised to find him in the halls of heaven now, a "saint among the saints," as our Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation phrases it.

It will be quite an adjustment for a lot of us in Menomonie no to have Fr. Blecha physically with us any longer. 

Whether you knew Fr. Blecha or not, we enter the Easter season together with the same challenge as put for by St. Paul in the Epistle Reading from the Easter Vigil: to die to the old self that seeks only to serve itself, and rise to a new self that lives for God. 

That's how Jesus lived, and God raised him up.  That's enough to convince me that's how I'm supposed to live, too.

Peace to you,                               Fr. Tom Krieg