Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

          

In this week’s gospel , Jesus commands us to : “love one another’. The command itself is easier said than done. We are called through the Gospel to love as God loves. We may be limited in our understanding of what love means; however, we are called to call upon the Holy Sprit to guide us on how we are to love the people around us. 

Next, there is an ongoing need for food items in our greater community. To assist a greater number of people in need of food, we are asking everyone to bring in donated food items on a regular basis for the St. Vincent De Paul food pantry. The SVD food pantry is always in need of nutritious nonperishable items such as peanut butter, tuna, canned meats, vegetables, pasta, pasta sauce, canned fruit, rice, beans and shelf stable milk. The SVD collection box is located in the narthex of the Church. Thank you for your great generosity.

Next, we are currently providing livestreaming of the 8:00 am Sunday mass here at St. Hyacinth for those who are simply not able to attend. Please go to our website Sthyacinth.org, Facebook page, and or Viemo.com page to view the current livestream mass. This is also a good way to go YouTube to hear the homily that was given for the Sunday Mass or any of the past homilies.   

One of our parish goals in 2022 is to increase the number of families supporting St Hyacinth using electronic giving. Currently we have 212 families using electronic giving and Faith Direct. You can register in less than five minutes by logging sthaycinth.org and pressing the Faith Direct icon on the first page of our website; or go directly to https://sthyacinth.org/online-giving and give electronically on line. 

        

However, I do want to address the approximately the over 1044 registered families here at STHY that we have no record of your giving to the Church. We do acknowledge that many are giving to the Church through the weekend collection; however, STHY needs you start moving toward electronic giving. In this way we can account for all those who are a part of the parish that are truly giving and it is an expense of the church for envelopes to be mailed to registered families. We currently spend close to $10K a year on offertory envelopes and if we could use our electronic giving, this would reduce the expense of mailed offertory envelopes dramatically.

For the past two Saturdays,  we celebrated two first communion Masses. Please give all those who have celebrated their first communion your prayers and congratulations and encourage our young people to participate fully in Mass in the years to come. 

Finally,  please keep in prayer all of  the young people of our parish.  Cardinal Danial DiNardo celebrated the rite of Confirmation  this past Wednesday evening . Please give all those who have celebrated their Confirmation  your prayers and congratulations and encourage our young people in their walk with Jesus. I want to give a  special congratulations to Our Faith Formation team consisting of our Director of Faith Formation , Mrs. Pamella Johnson and the Confirmation team  who have worked hard all year in our Confirmation Program.   

God Bless,

Fr. Reginald Samuels