Pastor’s Weekly Letter: September 29, 2019

Pastor’s Weekly Letter: September 29, 2019

27 Sep 2019 | Posted by: chadmin

Dear friend,

Last weekend I gave the annual financial and pastoral update to the parish. Every parish is required each year to send reports to the Diocese on the status of the parish. Each Diocese sends those reports to the conference of bishops for the United States. This allows for some accurate understanding of the state of the Church in the States and our Diocese. I am not one to talk much about money or even the numbers of our parish. People come and go for many reasons. I think our goal as a community is to authentically live the Catholic faith, which results in peace within our hearts and families, while building the community in which we pray. St. Paul wrote Scriptures about the Church as the Body of Christ, the community of believers. The Church, as made up of humanity, looks to Christ the Head for authenticity. There are many messages in the world today about how to live. The moral life as revealed by God is that which brings true peace and fulfillment. My prayer is that all of our parish statistics are an extension of people choosing to live the authentic Christian life. No one is perfect and life certainly is a journey, but our fundamental “yes” to Jesus Christ is the essential path toward heaven and our parish celebration of the sacraments.

While it is our communal “yes” to Jesus that is necessary for the success of the parish, the community clearly has needs to exist within our economy. We run a school to educate our children in the Catholic faith. We run all sorts of parish programs to guide and instruct the faithful in the beauty of Catholic Christianity. We prepare for a better tomorrow by the way we live today. All of these spiritual efforts have statistical evidence that back up the efforts.  While we don’t want to focus on numbers, it does allow us to evaluate our success as an organization. As I shared the parish statistics last weekend, I was struck with the feeling of gratitude for your assistance to our parish operation. As a community we are truly dependent on one another. Our school depends on the church for subsidy. Our parish depends on couples to marry in the Church and raise their kids in the faith. The success of our school flows from the success of evangelization. Without taking care of our young families and baptizing our kids, we risk future school enrollment. Our grandparents supporting the parish directly supports our grandchildren to receive the Catholic Christian faith. It is all one system that must work together. Our spiritual, community and financial efforts all allow for a growing parish that can meet the needs of those that seek Jesus Christ. If you have any questions about the presentation last weekend, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I will be going on vacation this week through next weekend. Fr. Henderson will say the daily Masses and cover any funerals. Fr. Tim Hepner, the Director of Vocations for Peoria, will say the weekend Masses and preach about vocations in the Church.  Have a great week.

God bless,

Father David