If you're interested in serving as a lector or usher at either of the Sunday masses, we'd live to have you. Serving is easy and it's a wonderful ministry to assist with worship. If you're interested and willing to be scheduled once a month, please contact the parish office or email Kate Williamson at katewilliamson@mac.com.

We'll be kicking off our planning for this year's Blessing of the Fire Trucks shortly after Easter, and we're going to need plenty of volunteers to help plan and organize the event. If you're interested in helping, please contact Kate Williamson at katewilliamson@mac.com.

April 13, 655 (traditional date): Martin, pope from 649 to 655, dies in banishment. History remembers him as the last pope venerated as a martyr.

April 13, 1534: Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, refuses to take the oath to the English succession. One year later, Henry VIII indicted him for treason and had him beheaded.

April 13, 1598: France's Henry IV signs the Edict of Nantes, granting extensive political rights to the Huguenots (a Protestant group he once belonged to). The Huguenots retained the right to practice their religion until Louis XIV revoked the edict in 1685.

April 13, 1742: Handel's famous oratorio Messiah premieres in Dublin's Fishamble Street Musick Hall and is met with critical praise.

April 13, 1829: In the Emancipation Act, the English Parliament grants freedom of religion to Roman Catholics. Within three weeks, the first Catholic was elected to Parliament.

April 13, 1986: Pope John Paul II visits a Jewish synagogue in Rome, marking the first such visit by a pope in recorded history.

April 14, 1759: George Frideric Handel, composer of the oratorio Messiah, dies at age 74 in London.

April 14, 1775: America's first society to abolish slavery organizes in Philadelphia.

April 15, 1415: Jerome of Prague, a friend of Bohemian reformer Jan Hus, is seized by church authorities meeting at the Council of Constance. Under duress, Jerome recanted his Wycliffe-influenced beliefs and accepted the authority of the pope. However, when a crowd was assembled to hear him repeat the recantation, he changed his speech and eloquently defended both Wycliffe's teachings and the recently executed Hus. Jerome was subsequently burned at the stake.

April 15, 1452: Italian painter and scholar Leonardo da Vinci is born in Florence, Italy. Among his most famous religious works are the Virgin of the Rocks, The Last Supper, and St. John the Baptist.

April 15, 1638: The castle of Hara, located on the Shimabara Peninsula, Japan, falls to invaders. Masuda Shiro Tokisada defended the fortress with 37,000 Christians, 17,000 of them combatants. They fought valiantly to the end-even the women and children. After the battle, all of the survivors were subsequently beheaded, save one Judas (Yamada) who had plotted to open the castle gate to the enemy.

April 15, 1729: Johann Bach conducts the first and only performance of St. Matthew Passion during his lifetime at a Good Friday Vespers service in Leipzig, Germany. The choral work has been called "the supreme cultural achievement of all Western civilization," and even the radical skeptic Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) admitted upon hearing it, "One who has completely forgotten Christianity truly hears it here as gospel."

April 15, 1889: Belgian Roman Catholic priest Joseph Damien, a missionary to lepers on Molokai, Hawaii, dies from the disease.

April 16, 1879: Bernadette Soubirous, who at age 14 became famous for her visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, dies in Nevers, France. In 1933 the Roman Catholic church declared her a saint.