Jul 28, 2024

Greetings,

Next weekend is our Annual Parish Festival, a three day event to mark the founding of our parish in August of 1928. The first two nights are ticketed events but Saturday,
August 3 is a whole parish event. It will begin with 4:30pm Mass followed by a procession with the statue of St. Sebastian down the center of Mull Avenue to the Festival grounds where there will be food, drinks, games and your parish family to enjoy the evening with. I look forward to seeing you there! Even if you can’t come to the 4:30pm Mass, stop by as you can.

IN OTHER NEWS:

ONE HUNDRED AND TEN!: No, that was not the temperature this week, that was the number of attendees at our Vacation Bible School! In addition there were our student camp guides, seminarians and volunteers. Thank you to everybody who made the week a success!

GREENHOUSE: Perhaps you noticed on the back lawn of the rectory the foundation of the parish greenhouse being poured. If all holds to schedule, at the beginning of this week they should have been placing the brick down for the base of the structure so that when the actual greenhouse structure arrives from England, it may be constructed sometime in August.

BALLET & ORCHESTRA: On Friday and Saturday of this weekend, the Ohio Contemporary Ballet Company will be performing in Forest Lodge (Elm Hill) Park on the giant stage. Then on Sunday at 7:30pm the Akron Symphony Orchestra will be performing an evening of light, classical music. Feel free to park in the Zwisler Hall parking lot and walk over with your lawn chair or blanket.

SERVERS: We have a had a lot of servers for Masses lately. We generally have two of our veterans and two trainees so that the experienced servers can pass their expertise on to the next wave of recruits. We have also had four seminarians on regularly so there were always plenty of hands on deck to cover all of our
bases. The seminarians, however, are leaving us to return to their studies at the seminary in about a week and our newer servers no longer need older mentors meaning the number of servers assigned will be fewer at each Mass. So please be attentive to the schedule and make sure that you are present or find a substitute when you are scheduled to serve Mass. You have been very attentive over the summer months for which I thank you. Now please keep it up when it will matter even more!

NATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS: The 10th National Eucharistic Congress took place last week in the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana as part of the Eucharistic Revival. The last National Eucharistic Congress was 83 years ago in Cleveland at the Municipal Stadium when thousands of people formed a living monstrance on the playing field. Attendance estimates for this latest Congress was between 50 and 70 thousand people! (I’m not sure why it didn’t make national news.) What a great thing to celebrate at a time when we constantly hear about a lack of belief in the Eucharist! Christopher Villarreal was one of two seminarians here this summer who was in attendance! Look elsewhere in this bulletin for the article about his experience.

God bless,
Fr. Valencheck