2020-08-09 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

​Thank you all for your prayers as we did interviews this week! In good news, we have a new DRE! Our new DRE may be familiar to some of you, as she served here many years ago. Sister Karen Grusek, C.C.W. will be starting officially on Monday.  We welcome Sister to our parish staff.

I’ve known Sister Karen for many years and have worked with her and many other members of the Carmelite community of the word for many years. I’m very excited at the prospect of having a religious sister on staff here at our parish. Sister brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in religious education. She has worked as a DRE, College Campus Minister, High school religion teacher, and many other jobs in her time in ministry within our diocese. Having met with Sister, I know she’s very excited to begin here and to work with our catechists and families to help our children grow to know, love, and serve Jesus Christ.

I also want to thank our outgoing DRE, Dee Zernick, for her many years of faithful service to the parish.  God Bless you Dee, and enjoy retirement!

I did receive the results of the survey that we sent out to parents. Thank you to everyone who responded.  We had a bit of a mixed result, but the comments were all very helpful and supportive.  I’ll be turning those results over to Sister to help us finalize our plans for the fall.

On the maintenance front, our interviews went well, and offers are currently pending. Once a candidate completes the process, I’ll be able to announce that as well. That process may take a few weeks. I’m very excited that we’ll soon be beginning to work on a lot of routine maintenance that’s been deferred and begin to fix a lot of little things that have needed fixing for a while. I do ask that you please be patient, Rome wasn’t built in a day and there’s a lot to be caught up on. If you’ve pointed something specific out to us, It may take quite a while until the specific item gets addressed.

Meanwhile, we have a few other things going on. Next weekend we have a Holy Day! August 15th is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. Typically, the Assumption is a holy day of obligation. However, this year, due to Covid-19, it will be treated just like a Sunday. Schedule-wise, August 15th falls on a Saturday. That makes things especially interesting. We’re going to try something that I’ve had good experiences with at other places. We will have a Vigil Mass Friday evening, August 14th at 6:30pm at the Church, Saturday Morning, August 15th at 8am at Holy Cross Chapel, and Saturday afternoon, we’ll be having a double-header at the Church with the Holy Day mass at 3pm, a 10 minute break, and the normal Weekend Vigil mass at 4pm. For those who would like, you’re welcome to simply come at 3pm and stay for both the Holy Day and the Vigil mass. If you choose to come only to one or the other, you’re welcome to do so, just please just be respectful of those who have chosen to stay for both. When I occasionally had this happen at other parishes, I was pleasantly surprised how many people appreciated having this option.
 
I know I’ve been pushing it a lot lately, but I really want to thank those who have volunteered as Eucharistic Ministers. Of our 49 shut-ins, we now currently have 32 of them with a Eucharistic minister visiting them, with only 17 left, we’re more than half-way there. It’s a real blessing to be able to bring Jesus Christ to someone who is unable to receive him. 

It’s hard to believe, but our fall Turkey Dinner is also coming up soon, the dinner will be served in take-out containers only, but you have an option to eat in or take out. We’ve also begun accepting baskets for the dinner. The first few have already arrived. Let me just thank you all in advance for how you’ve cluttered up my dining room with baskets, please do it again!

I really want to thank everyone for all the positive comments on the new bulletin last weekend.  It was so good to hear everyone responding at mass again. Please keep responding, as we work together to live our faith in Christ and share it with our town.