Dear Friends,

I hope the presentations on electronic giving were clear enough last weekend.  Basically, we have added this option of giving in response to requests from some parishioners to do this.  It was not a campaign for increased offertory giving but a chance to give in a different way, although it might result in more consistent giving.  As I wrote last week, I’m now doing it, so it has to be easy.  Those information sheets which were on the tables last weekend can now be found in all the bookracks.

Since I wrote about the Stewardship of Treasure last week, let me write a little about the Stewardship of Talent today, by way of another Stewardship Alert. 

Thank you to all those who responded to my last Stewardship Alert for new Eucharistic Ministers to bring the Eucharist to the nursing homes on Sunday.  I got a number of responses.  To those who responded, if you have not been contacted as of yet, please let me know and I will see that there is a follow-up.

I want to bring two additional works of the parish to your attention.  We are actually making progress on a ministry (as yet unnamed) to drive the homebound to church for Sunday (Saturday evening) Mass.  I have shared with you how important this was to my parents in the last few years of their lives and what a great comfort it was for them to get to Mass.  If you know of someone who is homebound but would like to get to Mass, please send me their names.  It could be a family member, a friend, a neighbor.  I will pass it on to the ministry.

We are also looking at revitalizing a ministry that has been around for some time.  When Sr. Lucy Sullivan passed, I did some digging in our parish records.  At one time, Sr. Lucy had seventy-five, or so, Pastoral Visitors who regularly visited some one hundred fifty sick or elderly parishioners, often establishing wonderful connections and relationships with them.  They didn’t necessarily bring them Communion, although they might have.  They really just visited them, sometimes doing small errands for them, but always making them feel that the parish community remembered them and cared about them.  Over the last few years, this ministry has gradually gotten smaller and smaller.  Now we would like to bolster it a little.  It is important for every human being to know that they’re cared about, especially by the community that is the extension of Jesus Christ in our world.  So, once again, if you know of someone who would like to be visited, someone whose relatives may live at some distance, or with few relatives, please let me know.  Also, if you would like to join this ministry yourself, please let me know that as well. 

God Bless,
Fr. Ron