Purpose: Providing emotional and spiritual support for those suffering the loss of a spouse. Understanding the grief process along with experiencing peer support promotes the healing process and leads to personal growth.
Meetings: Six Wednesdays starting September 6 to October 11 from 1:30 - 2:30 at the Senior Center across from the side entrance to Holy Cross Church on the St. Croix side.
Registration: Those interested must call the Parish Office to register as the group is limited to 12 participants at no cost. Meetings will be led by an experienced grief facilitator.
OUR MISSION:
To make known that the consecration of widows, known since apostolic times, is again being practiced today. "Through the vow of perpetual chastity, as a sign of the Kingdom of God, we consecrate our difficult state of widowhood in order to devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the Church."
OUR CALL:
To be the hands of God’s mercy in supporting grieving widows and helping them to gradually rediscover their new role and dignity in God’s plan for their difficult state of widowhood.
OUR COMMITMENT:
We offer our sacrificial state of widowhood and our life of prayer through our daily Mass, the Prayer of Christians, the rosary, the Chaplet of Mercy and Eucharistic adoration, for the intentions of our Bishop, the sanctification of the priests of our diocese and for widows.
OUR PATRON SAINTS
The Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Widows. Mary was a widow at the foot of the Cross when Jesus gave her to the Church as our Mother. In her, Jesus raised the status of widows to new heights. Mary and the widows in the early Church consecrated themselves to Jesus’ work of mercy and prayed for the needs of the Church. We join Mary in this work of mercy.
Saint Pope John-Paul II in order for widows to fulfill a mission in Christ’s Church he canonically reinstated the Order of Widows of the early church to encourage people to “consecrate the years that remain hidden in the mind of God as new opportunities for prayer and union with God.”