Please pray for:
- Lori Nines, whose memorial Mass is on Saturday, March 3 at 2:00 PM
- Bill Bergstrom, who died recently. Bill was a member of the Lakeway Church, however, given the impact he had among so many in the Lakeway community and his work as a family counselor for Weed-Corley-Fish funeral home, he was very present to and supportive of the Emmaus parish community as well.
- Tom Walsh, who is having surgery this month.
- The Confirmation Students, who are on retreat this weekend of March 2-4.
- The men who will be participating in the first Welcome Renewal Retreat weekend on March 3-4. Welcome Renewal retreats are the successors to Christ Renews His Parish retreats.
Fr. Rito and Fr. Samuel will be away…
…from Thursday afternoon, March 8 until Saturday midday, March 10. We are attending a special diocesan meeting on the new marriage catechumenate. More about that once we find out what it is.
Upcoming events
Friday, March 2
- 5:00 PM KC Fish Fry in the Great Hall
- 6:30 PM English Stations of the Cross in the Church
- 7:30 PM Spanish Stations of the Cross in the Church, Divina Misericordia follows
Saturday, March 3
- Men’s’ Welcome Renewal Retreat through Sunday afternoon. There are a few spaces still available. Register on line at the parish website – click here.
Sunday, March 4:
- 9:45 AM Welcome and Registration Event in the Great Hall
- 10:30 AM Family Mass
- 12:15 PM Family Mass (Spanish)
Preparing your children for the Family Mass
I have spoken to parents whose children are able to respond to my questions when I have them gathered with me in the altar area of the church, and there is one common denominator. They all have read and discussed the readings with their children before Mass. I have also noted that the children who have that preparation are the ones who are smiling most during the brief time I keep them there with me. This weekend we have the Old Testament account of the Ten Commandments. Then the Gospel reading refers to Jesus as the embodiment of the New Law of Love confronting the money changers in the Temple. If you would like to help your children to be more prepared (and be more prepared yourself) you can access this Sunday’s readings on the USCCB website – click here. Just click on Bible and then Today’s reading. You will then see a calendar on which you can click for Sunday’s readings – we are in Year B.
Count on Me
Last weekend I presented to you our annual offertory appeal, Count on Me. This is simply my request that you make a commitment to support offertory for the coming year. We ask that you fill out a card so that we use that information for planning our annual budget. When we receive your card I will send you a thank you letter. We do not follow up after that or check on your giving compared to your commitment. We just assume that you will do your best. Making the commitment is important. We all share in the call to support our parish not just in ministry but also by helping the parish to meet our financial needs. We are a large parish and it does take financial resources not only to keep the lights on (and air conditioning) but also to provide the ministries and services that help you to live life in the best possible way.
In addition to my presentation at the end of Masses last weekend, you will soon be receiving an information packet on this year’s offertory renewal campaign. As I mentioned last weekend, this campaign always includes a special gifts category. This year we ask that all special gifts be dedicated to debt reduction. With the need to build new facilities for our growing parish the more we can reduce current debt the better. I am very proud of how we have reduced our debt in my years here but I want to see it reduced even more. In my personal life I have learned to keep debt to a minimum. I believe that to be necessary for a parish as well so that we can use more and more of our resources for ministry and service.
Benevolence collection this weekend
On the first weekend of every month we ask you to support our ministries to the poor. The funds that you donate enable us to support local agencies such as Lake Travis Crisis Ministries. In addition they enable us to provide help to individuals and families in need. Those include both people within the Lake Travis/Spicewood communities and parishioners. That assistance is very often with rent, utilities, needed medications and dental care. At Emmaus we offer such assistance through our Office of Parish Social Ministries. At Queen of Angels Chapel we have a St. Vincent de Paul Society. They work together to serve the poor. I asked the St. Vincent de Paul Society to give me a story of someone whom they recently assisted just to give you an idea of how a little help from us can help someone in need in a very big way. The following is such a story:
Francisco is an elderly gentleman who lives in a small RV in a local trailer park. When members of our St. Vincent de Paul Society visited him they found that he is suffering from advanced prostate cancer, complicated by type 2 diabetes. His primary income is a small social security check. He has supplemented that by taking on small handyman jobs when he can find them. When he was younger and healthy he worked for years in construction. He is not a US citizen although he has lived in the US for over 20 years so he cannot qualify for any sort of government assistance. We helped him by covering the cost of the rental space for his RV for the month. In addition we suggested to him that he post a card on our jobs board announcing his availability for small handyman jobs.
Francisco is not unusual. There are many in our community who, after having worked hard all of their lives, are struggling to get by on very little. The small ways in which we can help them makes a huge difference. Please help us to continue these works of mercy by supporting our Benevolence special collection this weekend, March 3-4.