Pastor’s Weekly Letter: November 4, 2018

Pastor’s Weekly Letter: November 4, 2018

2 Nov 2018 | Posted by: chadmin

Dear friends,

As we began the month of November, we celebrated the Solemnity of All Saints and the feast of All Souls. These two feasts of the Church challenge the way we live our lives and our thoughts about eternal life. The Bible is an invitation to know and love God. Our love of God impels us to love one another in daily life. Christianity is an invitation to sainthood, which is achieved through daily loving God and neighbor. We celebrate “All Saints” because we want to be like them and we want their prayers for us. We remember “All Souls” because we know that we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. The remembering of every soul that has passed from this life to the next invites us to invoke the mercy of God. Whether we pray for deceased family and loved ones or for people we only know by name, we pray the love of Christ concurs sin and death while inviting all into the kingdom of Heaven. The reality of Purgatory, as a place of purification for those who die with attachments to this world, calls us to pray for forgiveness. May the Lord have mercy on all the faithful departed.

This weekend, I will play a new St. Philomena School promotional video at all the Masses. We are blessed with a great parish family and a solid school enrollment. However, we can always be growing our community. Christianity, in essence, is a religion of evangelization. We teach the faith because we are called to witness what we hold to be true to those who don’t know Christ. Our parish school offers great academics, but its primary focus is to ensure we raise kids to know Christ. In our desire to present who we are and grow our school enrollment, we produced a video about our parish school. Parishioner, Tom Schmidt, a professional videographer with Caterpillar, volunteered his time and talent to produce a video that displays the excellence of a St. Philomena Catholic Christian education. We enlisted the help of alumni (SPS 2014) Grace Fahey and Jack Murphy to narrate the video and sell our programs. Parishioner, school parent and Education Commission chairman, Kris Coulter, lent her talents in coordinating the project and keeping us on task. Special thanks to all those involved in the production of this video. I hope it helps us continue to grow our school while celebrating all the good of our faculty and staff.

We also recently completed a new website. The web address remains www.stphils.com. Parishioners Rich and Heather Randolph, owners of Web Design309 and 309Marketing (and whose ads you can see on our bulletin as supporters of this publication), produced the website. Many people helped with the development of the site. Special thanks to our development director, Rhonda Parker, for her tireless efforts to guide the finished product. Our desire is that the new website will be a good source of current information and help us to communicate well with current parishioners and those seeking Christ. Please visit the new site often to receive church and school current information.

God bless you,

Fr. David