Responding to the pastoral need, Most Rev. Claude Hamelin, Bishop of St. Jean – Longueuil, assigned Fr. Michael Nguyen Dinh VINH, CSSp, a Vietnamese and religious priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans) as full time pastor of our parish. His appointment is effective Oct 1, 2023 and will remain until September 30, 2025.

The Pope's Intentions for August 2025
For mutual coexistence 

Let us pray that societies where coexistence seems more difficult might not succumb to the temptation of confrontation for ethnic, political, religious, or ideological reasons. 

Message from Fr. Vinh Michael Nguyen

August 24, 2025

Stepping Through the Narrow Gate to Enter Heaven 

The Word of God for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C says the way to the Kingdom of Heaven is open to anyone who wants to enter. In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah presents God’s intention that he wants to gather all peoples and nations into one single people, to come together and enjoy eternal happiness. In the second reading, Saint Paul says that God wants everyone to be his children. In the gospel, Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven to a grand wedding banquet, to which everyone is invited, but cannot easily enter without making the effort to enter through a narrow door. 

The narrow door Jesus mentions is not a physical door, but a metaphor for the challenges, thorns and obstacles that each believer must overcome, must fight to enter the narrow door. Because the door to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is narrow, anyone wanting to pass must accept giving up everything cumbersome that hinders their being. One cannot carry worldly things to pass through that door. Only those who have humbled themselves, only those who have given up all allure, only those who accept to be trimmed to become light and graceful can pass through the narrow door. And only the little ones will pass through first to attend the banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven, for, ‘Yes, there are those who are last who will be first, and those who are first who will be last’ (Luke 13:30). 

Thus, the message of today’s Word of God reminds us that our being must be completely free, not entangled by things belonging to the world. Jesus himself, on the cross, is an example of giving up everything, leaving only a naked body. It is precisely this bruised and naked body that helps us, as humans, to easily pass through the narrow passage to reach eternal glory and happiness. May the Holy Spirit awaken us, so that we can escape from fleeting worldly values. May He grant us the grace to courageously accept giving upbad things, so we can pass through and reach glory.