Our Forty Hours celebration this year was a deeply spiritual experience for everyone who participated. I was very pleased with the attendance and I was especially proud of our altar servers. They are on their way to becoming great Catholics. I extend a joyous welcome to our new servers (see their names in the adjacent column) and look forward to their service in our sacred celebrations here at St. Peter’s. We also congratulate our new senior servers! Regarding our speakers th

Although Maria Esperanza had frequent visions and locutions of Jesus, Mary and the saints, something very unusual occurred in Betania on March 25, 1984. Around 150 people, including Maria Esperanza’s entire family and many of her spiritual sons and daughters were at a tropical sugarcane farm called Betania (Bethany), about 50 miles south of Caracas. It was a Sunday, and the group was gathered there to enjoy a day of relaxation and fraternity. As the children were playing in f

Catholic author Michael Brown once stated that Maria Esperanza is one of the greatest mystics of the twentieth century. In many ways, she was like her spiritual director, Padre Pio. For example, among Maria Esperanza’s spiritual gifts were the discernment of spirits, prophesy, speaking in tongues, counsel, and locutions and visions of Jesus, our Lady, and the saints. Additional gifts she manifested included: the gift of healing, the ability to read souls, deliverance prayer,

Michelle and Jason Bowers are former parishioners. They now live in Bay Head, New Jersey. Their youngest son, Jaxon, was admitted to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on February 25, 2010. He was three months old and rapidly succumbing to swine flu. Just a few days earlier he was a healthy newborn, receiving the total attention of his four older brothers at the Bower home. And now, the doctors and medical staff at CHOP were trying to bring Michelle and Jason to acknowledge

We will be celebrating our Forty Hours Devotion this year on October 9, 10, and 11 in the usual style. The theme will be “The Servant of God Maria Esperanza Speaks to St. Peter’s Parish”. Maria Esperanza visited our parish twice in 1999. Since then, her beatification cause was opened in the Diocese of Metuchen. In combination with our usual solemn liturgical celebrations, we will be hosting the daughter of Maria Esperanza, Coromoto Marrero, and Michelle Bowers, whose son was

Today, August 14, the Eve of the Immaculate Conception, is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe. He is the Polish Franciscan priest who is best known for offering his life in Auschwitz, in place of a family man who was condemned to death in the starvation bunker. At the age of 21, Kolbe earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Gregorianum in Rome and a doctorate in theology there by age 28. He organized the Militia Immaculata in Rome to work for the conversion of sinners and the

Dear Friends, As you read this article, I am in Caracas, Venezuela! I make this pilgrimage every August to celebrate the anniversary of the passing of the Servant of God Maria Esperanza. She died in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, on August 7, 2004, and we celebrate this day each year with a solemn Mass in the chapel of Cemetery East in Caracas. The Betania Choir sings for the Mass and hundreds of people attend. After Mass we process to her grave, pray the rosary and sing hymn