Mar 31, 2022

Greetings,

Next weekend is Palm Sunday. We are in the home stretch, rounding third and heading for home for our Celebration of the Resurrection. The last time we have open confessions in which Fr. Bozek and I will be in the confessionals for as long as it takes is Saturday, April 9, at 9:30am until 10 or until we finish with the last person, whichever comes last. Please plan your Easter Duty well.

If your lent has been going well, stay strong! If the wheels have wobbled or come off the cart, start afresh, do not be discouraged. Get back up, dust yourself off and go at it again. And if you have been putting off getting started, don’t give this year a pass yet thinking it is too late. Engage it all the more vigorously and together let us wrest from what remains of this holy season all the graces it has to bestow on us.

IN OTHER NEWS:

RETREAT:  This weekend our second graders will be having their “Jesus Day” retreat in preparation for their First Holy Communion! Please keep them in your prayers.

UKRAINE UPDATE:  There were a number of donations mailed in for the Ukrainian Benefit Concert held here two weekends ago. The director sent the parish a wonderful thank you note for hosting the concert and in it he updated the total funds raised. It is now just a little over eleven thousand dollars!

COMING CANDLE COST:  This week we received a heads up from our candle supplier that the cost of candles is going up 27%! That’s huge. Karen Spangler, our head sacristan, is attempting to put off this inevitably price hike by stockpiling more candles than we typically would. (She asked if we could use some stacks of boxes as ottomans around the rectory.)

At some point in the future, you will notice an increase in the requested donation on our vigil stands. At current request of $2, the parish would be subsidizing the candles in the shrines, so there will need to be an increase. Also, please participate and be generous with the Sanctuary Society when they have a fund raiser. This group, the oldest in the parish, is responsible for supplying all the needs we have in the sanctuary including all of the candles. Thank you, Sanctuary Society, for all that you do!

We are currently attempting to get a couple more vigil light stands. They are supplied for free in limited numbers by the candle company. In return for this price hike, we will try to get a couple more for the side shrines that do not yet have them.

CHESTER:  For those of you who haven’t heard, Chester, the rectory dog, is no longer with us. He learned the ropes from Sebastian, his predecessor, and took over the reins, or perhaps better, leash of the rectory bringing comfort to the stressed, joy to the depressed and making his owner stay better in shape by taking daily walks.

Down and out, he was found on a porch in Tennessee and moved to Ohio through the Northeast Ohio Lab Rescue. He discovered St. Sebastian and converted to Catholic rectory life and took the name Chester after G. K. Chesterton, an early 20th century prolific, Catholic writer whose cause is up for canonization. A somewhat shy dog, when he came here he was so sickly that you could put your fingers in-between his ribs, his fur felt like straw and when he tried to sit, he’d fall over! Thank you for all of your love and treats which fattened him up and completely changed his personality into a wonderful rectory dog.

God bless,

Fr. Valencheck