Though we were not able to be together for most of Lent or for the celebration of Easter, many of you have joined us for weekend Mass since the last weekend of May, which was the feast of Pentecost that brought the Easter season to an end. The last couple of weekends found us celebrating two other great feasts which always follow Pentecost, namely, the feast of the Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi (the Sacred Body & Blood of Christ). This weekend the flowers and white banner beneath the crucifix disappear and the green vestments reappear as we celebrate what the Church calls “Ordinary Time” for several weeks (all the way up to the beginning of Advent in late November). It’s good to see so many of you back to the weekly celebration of the Eucharist and we welcome others who will join us as they feel more comfortable in a public environment.
Trying to plan for the reopening of school in late summer is quite challenging this year as we have to have 3 plans in place: one with the normal reopening of school, one with remote teaching without the children being in the school building, and one where only 1⁄2 of the students are here at a time so we can keep social distancing possible in the classroom. But I am grateful for the hard work of our Principal, Mrs. Denise Burns, and the flexibility of our teachers and parents who are just doing their best to plan for such an uncertain future. Our enrollment numbers continue to look very solid for both the Preschool and Elementary school. I miss our children and hope to see and hear them again when the summer months are over.
I continue to be deeply grateful to you for your continued financial support of the parish during this time. Due to our online giving opportunity (called “WeShare”) and the fact that so many of you drop off your envelopes to the rectory office when you can’t be here yet for Mass, allows us to keep paying the bills and taking care of our property. In addition to this, I am especially grateful to three of our parishioners who have very generously donated $5000.00 each to our landscaping efforts. We will be acquiring a statue of St. Francis of Assisi and will be installing a light & fountain by our Marian shrine this summer, both made possible because of these donations. So a big shout out to each of them as we thank them for their gifts to all of us.
I also want to thank the “By the Hand” Foundation who gave us a donation of $1000.00 when we begin to live-stream all of our Masses. We have since received another $2500.00 from them which will allow us to purchase a camera made specifically for this purpose. Their website is vafbythehand.org and I hope you can find out more about them but also send them a note of thanks for the unsolicited donation. This camera will be installed in the ceiling at the back of the church and will be able to zoom in to the various areas of action in the sanctuary. It will also greatly improve the sound quality of the video as it will be connected directly to our sound system. This should be installed very soon so I’m anxious to see it in action.