One of the great forms of prayer in our Church is intercessory prayer. So many of us have people & causes that we pray for on a regular, sometimes even daily basis. We pray for people who are sick, people who have died, we pray for peace, we pray for the unemployed, just to name a few. There are many ways and forms that we could ask our Lord’s intercession, one of those ways that we are very familiar with is through the offering of Masses.

As we enter into the month of October, I wanted to look at some upcoming events you might be interested in marking on your calendar.

Hi everyone, it’s Angel again! As we come to the close of this month I asked my dad if I could write to you about something serious. This month of September is National Suicide Prevention Month. I did some reading and I found out that suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States, claiming, in 2020, the lives of roughly 45,000 people. Those are some high numbers!

Over the next few weeks we will be rolling out a new opportunity for you to be able to do everything from share your thoughts & suggestions, to getting information about various ministries & ways to be involved around the parish, (for when someone new visits us) to begin the process of joining our parish family. These boxes will be found, starting with the first weekend of October, October 1st & 2nd, at the doors of the Church.

This weekend, I’d like to extend an invitation to each and every member of our parish family. That invitation is this, to consider how we might be able to help us continue the mission of the Kingdom of God here at St. Vincent de Paul.

St. Theresa of Calcutta once said, “There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.”

Hi, everyone! It’s Angel again. My dad asked me to thank you for reading our bulletin series on prayer. He says that he wants to thank you & that he hopes & prays that you’ve gotten something out of it that has helped you on your spiritual journey. He also wants to thank you because our last form of the 5 forms of Catholic prayer is prayers of thanksgiving.

When we engage in prayers of praise we are praising God for who & what He is. The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph #2639 says that praise, "lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because HE IS. It shares in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in faith before seeing him in glory.”

Prayers of petition are very similar to the prayers of intercession that we looked at last week, with one difference, their focus. While in prayers of intercession we are interceding for the needs of others, when we pray prayers of petition, we are bringing, not the needs of others, but our own needs before God. We intercede for others, we petition for ourselves, I guess that you could say. 

This weekend, we continue our look at the different forms of prayer by looking at prayers of intercession. My guess that this is one of the most familiar prayers that many of us pray. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that, “Intercession is a prayer of petition which leads us to pray as Jesus did,” (2634). Praying for the living and the dead is also a spiritual work of mercy. We offer prayers of intercession every day and every week at Mass.

This week I wanted to start with adoration, simply because it comes first in alphabetical order. In prayers of adoration, we adore the greatness of God and our dependence upon Him for everything. Prayers of adoration also remind us of our own hu- mility. When we take time to focus on how great our God is and all that He is and all that He’s done for us we come to realize just how great our need for God is..

HI everyone, it’s Angel again! My dad says that this weekend’s gospel talks about something called prayer. I wonder if prayer is like when I’m begging dad for treats? Maybe, maybe not? Dad says that we should all be engaging in on a daily basis as a part of our faith journey, prayer. He says that prayer isn’t just a part of our relationship with God, prayer IS our relationship with God. But, why do we pray? What is the point of prayer? I asked my dad to explain it all to me, here’s what he told me.

This Monday, July 4th, is Independence Day. The Parish Office will be closed in observance of the holiday. The Parish Office will reopen on Tuesday, July 5th at 9:00 AM. Please join us for Mass on July 4th at 9:00 am. Have a safe, fun filled holiday weekend.

Hi everyone! It’s Angel here again with another episode of “ Angel’s Angle’s!” My dad has been busy over the past few days packing, so I’m giving him a paw again. He tells me that this Thursday he leaves for something called vacation. Dad says that while he’s on vacation, I’ll be on vacation as well at grandma’s. We’ll both leave this Thursday and we will see you again on July 11th.

All-too-often we are confronted in our country, but also in our world, with terrible acts of hatred and violence. In recent weeks that list has grown to include places like Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. When tragedy and violence strike, one of our natural reactions is to offer our thoughts and prayers to those whose lives have been impacted. Certainly, as people of faith, that is what we’re called to do, bringing before our God the needs of people throughout our world. We must keep praying!

St. Medardus is a Saint who is popular in the northern regions of France, so chances are pretty good that here in the northern regions of Ohio, we’ve never heard of him. Medardus was born into a noble French family around the year 456 and from his youngest years, he displayed a deep care for the poor.

It is with a sense of sadness that I wanted to share with you that, as I shared at the 9 am Mass this morning (June 5th), our beloved music director (or as he preferred to be called, our organ player), MIke Wilson has decided that the time has come for him to step back from his role at St. Vincent de Paul.

Our country and society seem to be becoming more divided and more hostile by the day, if not by the hour. As we see all this taking place, we certainly want to stand form in the truths of our faith and what God has revealed to us, but how do we do that in the face of a society that in so many ways doesn’t want to hear what we have to say? How do we enter into these dialogues and conversations?

This weekend, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension, marking the time when the risen Christ ascended to be with His Father in heaven. But, did you know that while we celebrate the Ascension this weekend, if you had been in a few other parts of the country...Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Omaha, and Philadelphia...you would have celebrated the Ascension on Thursday and today you would have heard the readings and prayers for the 7th Sunday of Easter? Yes, it sounds confusing. Why do some parts of the country celebrate this Solemnity on Thursday while so many other parts celebrate it today?

Fr. John Manning, pastor of SVdP Parish 1994-2019, will be celebrating his 50th Anniversary of Ordination at the 9:00 AM Mass this Sunday, May 29, 2022. Please join us for a coffee and donut/cake reception immediately following the Mass.