Over the next two weeks we will have two opportunities to experience the Eucharist in action. Certainly we will experience the Eucharist in action in our celebrations of the Mass as we receive Jesus; Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Our reception of His Body and Blood within us is what leads us to action. As we receive Jesus into us, we are called to bring Him into the world. I am grateful for the many ways that you already do that. I know how much you love our faith and how central a part of your life it is. Thank you for all that you do and all that you are!

  Next weekend we will have an opportunity to put our faith into action through our annual Catholic Charities appeal. This appeal is very familiar, I’m sure to all, as we do it year in and year out. This year, we hold our appeal the weekend before Ash Wednesday. As we pray about how we are being called to give alms, this appeal presents a wonderful opportunity to be the Eucharist in action. I invite each of us to prayerfully consider a generous gift to this year’s appeal. Your gift goes directly towards helping someone who, perhaps, needs a hand up. Your gift goes directly towards helping to change someone’s life.

  This weekend, you’ll find in our bulletin our annual financial report from both this past fiscal year & the previous fiscal year as well. There were some challenges, which have now been taken care of in getting last year’s report out in time. Even though the year may have already passed I wanted to make sure that those numbers were gotten to you as well. Going forward it is my plan to get this report to you every year well before February, so it’s my hope that you’ll see another report for this fiscal year sometime this coming fall.

  At each Mass this weekend a member of each parish’s Finance Council will be sharing with us after the homily some highlights of our report. I want to thank our Finance Council for all their help in making sure that we do our best to be good stewards of the gifts that you have given to us. Their advice and their expertise are an invaluable resource to our parish! They have helped to guide and support the recent capital improvement projects that we’ve undertaken. We’ve been able to complete the much-needed work of waterproofing the church basement as well as updating our speaker system in the church, helping to enhance our celebration of Mass. (We’ve been able to tear down the Lighthouse, a building that had hosted numerous parish meetings over the years, but that had become unable to be used anymore due to many issues that would have been too costly to repair. We also were able to upgrade the lighting system in the school to a more environmentally friendly & energy efficient system). Thank you too, to all of you for your continued generosity in our offertory. Your support helps our parish continue to be a place where Jesus is made known & encountered. I know and recognize that we’ll be navigating some uncertain waters over the upcoming months as I’ve written and talked about over the past few weeks. I am convinced that if we walk this path together, centered of course in Our Lord Jesus Christ, we will be able to navigate the road ahead.