Jul 02, 2020

Greetings,

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY WEEKEND! Rarely has there been as much to contemplate concerning all that this day was set aside to celebrate. Consider making prayer and reflection an important part of your weekend festivities. Freedom needs regular maintenance. Like an unpainted fence, unless it is constantly tended to, it becomes weaker until it is no longer strong enough to do what it was established to do. It is not a piece of paper or a government that gives anybody their rights and dignity as a human being, but God. And “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

IN OTHER NEWS:

INDEPENDENCE DAY MASS TIME CHANGE:  As is keeping with our tradition for such holidays, the Mass on July 4th will be at 9:00am. Confession will follow at their typical time.

OFFICES CLOSED:  The parish offices will be closed on Friday and Saturday this Independence Day weekend.

UPDATE ON EUCHARISTIC DEVOTIONS:  Thank you to everybody who signed up to cover hours for Eucharistic Devotions. However, there are still a number of hours that have not been covered and so, for the time being, there will not be all day adoration on Tuesday. It is my ardent desire to bring it back, so we will try again in about a month as we see what becomes of COVID. For the time being, however, we will retain the practice of having a Holy Hour on Tuesday evenings from 7:00 to 8:00pm.

TUESDAY HOLY HOUR:  There is a holy hour on Tuesday night beginning at 7:00pm with Exposition, Homily, Adoration, Compline and Benediction. Tuesday night confession are still on hold until there is all day adoration and we return to using the confessionals.

MINISTERS AT MASS:  It came up at Parish Pastoral Council that many of our ministers (EMHC, servers, lectors, etc.) are ready to serve again. For the immediate time being, we will retain the use of seminarians in these roles. I hope that the situation begins to ease in our nation soon and that all will be more comfortable in returning to use of our wonderful volunteers in many of these roles. Our time with our seminarians will come to an end in August so my desire is that sometime toward the end of July, we can have a meeting with those who wish to serve, explain COVID procedures, and begin working all of you fantastic people back into your roles. This will highly depend on what is happening with COVID and any further direction we take as a diocese. So, as they used to say on T.V., “Stay tuned!”

MISSIONARY:  Next weekend we will have a missionary, Fr. Ted Keating who will be giving the homily and telling you about the work of the Marist Missions and taking up a collection for their work.

God bless,

Fr. Valencheck