Dear Parishioners,

There are a couple items I would like to bring up this week:

First, the picnic went very well last week. It was a beautiful day and people had a chance to hang out and enjoy our grounds here. Thank you to all who participated. And especially thank you to Fran Burke for organizing it and all the other helps: the Knights of Columbus, the young people with their quiz table, and all the various people who brought food. We don’t get many chances to just build community, so I’m glad we were able to do this. We might have another one in the spring.

Second, last week was respect life Sunday. I am sorry for not making a bigger deal about it! As you all know, I am personally very pro-life and I encourage you all to be as well. We cannot have a just society unless it protects the basic rights of all people, especially those who are most defenseless. May people’s hearts be turned from our culture of death and instead turn to life in Christ. I’ll be sure to write more about this in a future article.

Third, this Sunday is Deacon Appreciation Sunday. We are blessed to have two very hard-working and faithful deacons: Bob Cerefice and John Klincewicz. The deacons are very helpful with their monthly preaching, preparing the liturgies, performing funerals, preparing people for baptism, bringing communion to the sick and training the servers. So, I thank them for their service and you should do the same!

Lastly, as I mentioned before, we have many opportunities for education and spiritual renewal in the parish coming up. We have the retreat from Immaculee Ilibagiza, the Epic Bible Study and the CARE classes. All of these are great events and I encourage you all to participate in them.

God bless!

Fr. Carter