Hello Everyone…
Today we celebrate the Sixth Sunday in the Easter Season. Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms. Yesterday evening we celebrated our First Communion Mass. Sixteen 2nd graders made their first Communion yesterday…congratulations to them as they begin to grow deeper into an intimate relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are also in the middle of our first cinnamon roll sale. The Cinnamon Roll fundraiser is for the purpose of raising funds for our youth program. This summer we have 11 middle school students and 1 high school student planning on attending Extreme Faith Camp. Extreme Faith Camp is a week-long camp in June filled with faith, fun and fellowship. The camp is intended for middle school age kids, but is really run by high school students. It is an amazing and very powerful week of faith and fun for these kids. Your support of our youth is greatly appreciated!
Welcome to our newest member in Christ! William McGuire, son of Michael & Mary (Konkol) McGuire, who was baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit on Saturday, May 1, 2021 by Father Kanna. Congratulations!
Father Maria is doing well in India. He is spending time with family and friends. We continue to pray for his safety and the safety of his family and friends in India. We look forward to his safe return. Please to continue to pray for Father Maria.
We also continue to give gratitude and thanksgiving to God for sending us Father Kanna to celebrate the Sacraments with us while Father Maria is on holiday. Please continue to pray for Father Kanna as he continues to adjust to life here in the United States.
This Thursday is the Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension. This traditionally has been a Holy Day of obligation. However, in the Diocese of Superior and many other dioceses across the US, this solemnity has been transferred to the following Sunday, May 16th. Therefore this Thursday is not a Holy day of obligation and the readings for next Sunday’s Mass will be the readings for the Ascension.
Our Gala is May 21 from 6:00-9:00 PM and tickets are going fast. This year we are going with a Mexican theme. As a thank you for supporting our school, there will be no cost for tickets, however we are limited to only 125 people. Tickets will be available from the school office beginning Monday, May 3rd. Donations are being accepted. Monetary or gift card donations will be used to purchase auction and raffle items. Contact the school office if you are able to help out. Thank you for supporting St. Francis Catholic School!
We continue to finalize the plans for repaving the parking lot and redoing the sidewalk in the front of the church. The details are not finalized yet but it looks the total cost to do the parking lot and sidewalks is going to come in around $70,000. This is a major improvement for our church. If you haven’t taken a good look at our parking lot and sidewalk please do so. They are in very rough shape and if they are not a safety hazard at this point…they will soon be a safety hazard. I will send out a letter to all our parishioners in the next week with the details of the project. In the meantime, please take some time to pray about financially contributing to this project. We are receiving a substantial discount from the paving company and the masonry company to do these projects so it would be a huge waste if we missed out on this opportunity to do this due to a lack of funding. Without the discounts we would be looking at about $105,000 to do this project. We are saving close to $35,000 if we can do this project this summer. Once again…thank you for your generous support of our parish! Donations can be made by credit card to our website by clicking here. Please select Parking lot/Sidewalk project under Direct Your Gift.
All of us go to Mass because we love Jesus Christ and want to follow him more closely…right? We are all convinced that true joy…the joy that our hearts yearn for cannot be found apart from our friendship with Jesus Christ.
Some of us love Christ with a mature, deep, passionate love, and some of us love him sincerely…but we still resist his will in some areas of our life.
No matter where we are at in our spiritual maturity, there is one danger we all have to watch out for…thinking that we can do it on our own.
The fuel for our Christian life doesn't come from ourselves…it comes from God.
We can only love God as he should be loved if we first experience his love for us.
That is what St John means in our Second Reading, "In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins."
The fuel of our Christian life comes from God.
This week, let's renew our dependence on God and let's renew our confidence in him.
We can do this is by renewing our commitment to the Eucharist.
In the Eucharist, God himself becomes our strength and nourishment.
How can we begin to live this more deeply? Well, we can look forward to receiving communion during the week. We can also be sure to repent of our sins and selfishness before receiving Communion. And if we have fallen into mortal sin, we give our souls a washing by going to confession before receiving Communion. And then, we can dress in a special way for Mass, using our best clothes to express our awareness of the special encounter that happens every time we receive Communion. We can come a few minutes early to Mass…to take some time to pray. And we can even try to come to Holy Communion once or twice during the week.
When a visitor comes over to our house, we spend time getting the house ready for the visit.
In every Holy Communion, the most important visitor comes into the house of our soul.
This week and every week, let's make a pointof getting ready, so that we can show true Christian hospitality to the love of God that wants to come in and transform our lives.
