Pastor’s Letter & August 9 Bulletin

Pastor’s Letter & August 9 Bulletin

7 Aug 2020 | Posted by: chadmin

The August 9 bulletin is now available online. 

Dear friend,

Happy Feast Day of St. Philomena on August 11! The concept of a Patron Saint allows us to entrust ourselves to God through the intercession of particular saints. Every organization, trade, occupation, or person can entrust themselves to different saints for particular reasons. Our parish is entrusted to the intercession of St. Philomena by the Bishop naming her our patron. When children are born we entrust them to saints by giving them a saint name. At Confirmation, each student researches the saints to discover one that meets the desire of his or her heart, a particular prayer intention or the inspiration of the saint’s life. We celebrate the saints not just because of their success and their prayers for us, but that we ourselves can become saints by imitating their holiness. Happy Feast Day!

This Thursday we will celebrate a Confirmation and graduation Mass for our graduating 8^th graders. After our school closure, we postponed Confirmation until August. While graduation doesn’t have the same spiritual indelible mark on the soul as Confirmation, gathering as a community to celebrate their accomplishments is important to moving on to high school. We plan to have a Holy Hour in church on Wednesday for the graduates in order to help them prepare for the Thursday night celebration. Please keep them in prayer this week.

Plans continue to reopen St. Philomena School on August 18 are progressing. The Diocese of Peoria sent a reopen plan to all the schools. Each school has made particular additions to the Diocesan Reopen Plan to fit the particular circumstances of each building. All of the adaptions for Covid-19 protocols are additions to all of the normal safety protocols we have at St. Philomena School. I am personally excited to welcome the kids back to school. Our team of administrators, staff and teachers have worked extremely hard to prepare for this school year. I am confident with all the additional cleaning protocols that we will have our healthiest year ever! Please continue to pray for our parents, students, teachers and staff. Everyone has different concerns related to the virus. We all want to do our best to serve one another as one parish family, doing our best to offer our faith in Jesus Christ to the next generation.

God bless,

Father David