Parish Update – Friday, Aug. 5
Happy first Friday of the month, my friends, and welcome to the month of August. With that change in the calendar there is a notable uptick in activity around the parish. It’s building slowly, mind you, like perhaps some of us in the morning before we have coffee. We’re moving, yes, but not at full speed quite yet. As the summer begins to fade we will soon resume our usual schedule of parish ministries and activities. ... Some of us, myself included, are sneaking in a final few days of vacation, but before long everyone will be back and the hum of parish life will carry us forward. I look forward to what the new school and parish year brings. The Lord is always full of surprises, but we are in good hands if we trust and follow Him.
As we celebrate the
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time this weekend, we begin a series of four straight weeks where we’ll hear from the Letter to the Hebrews as our second reading at Mass. Usually that reading comes from one of the letters of St. Paul, but sprinkled in now and then are these great passages from Hebrews. … I encourage you to take some time with Hebrews in the coming month, perhaps by making it part of your spiritual reading during your prayer time. It can be dense in places – it certainly doesn’t “flow” like many of Paul’s letters, hence the reason its authorship is still debated among scripture scholars today. Regardless of who wrote it, however, the Letter to the Hebrews has much to teach us about the gift of faith. In fact, “faith” is mentioned six times in the brief passage that we’ll hear this Sunday. I love the definition given in the first line:
“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” May our faith that we cherish so dearly be made manifest in all we say and do.
In other news, legendary Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster
Vin Scully died this past week at the age of 94. From his beginning in Brooklyn in 1950 to his move west with the Dodgers where he continued to call games for 67 years, Vin Scully was the voice of baseball, not just in LA, but in the country. He was beloved by all, perhaps one of the most respected men the world of sports and media has every known. ... He was also a devoted Catholic who cherished his faith. I was happy to learn that before he died he recorded a recitation of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You can hear all four mysteries of the rosary and pray along with it at
www.formed.org, the Catholic web portal I mentioned a few weeks ago. It's free and accessible to all through our CtR parish subscription. ... When you think of the "evidence of things not seen," from Hebrews, well, in a sense, Vin Scully's voice brought to life through the radio the things not seen. I dare say to hear his iconic voice praying the mysteries of the rosary likewise is a feast for not only the ears, but the heart, too. May he rest in peace.
Here’s what’s happening this week:
• We invite you to please join us for Mass this weekend. If you’d like to join us in person, we welcome you on Saturday at 5 p.m., or Sunday at 7, 9, and 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. You can also join us via our
livestream on Sunday at 9 a.m. on both our Facebook and YouTube pages. You can find the link to the livestream at
www.ctrcc.com/live-stream, and in addition, you’ll find there both a worship aid and a link to the Scripture readings to follow along with Mass. And you can make your weekly offertory contribution online at
www.ctrcc.com/donate.
• I remind everyone that registration for
Religious Education is in its final week. I ask you to register your children by August 15 so that we might adequately prepare for the RE year that begins shortly after Labor Day. You can find all the information on the website, or simply call us and we’ll direct you to what you need to know and do. …
Ministry leaders are encouraged to check with the office, too, to make sure we have the correct dates and times on the master calendar for your upcoming events. There are a lot of moving parts at CtR and only a finite amount of room, believe it or not. We want to make sure we have everyone accounted for so that our groups and committees can meet on a regular basis in a space that fits their needs.
• God bless all of our teachers, both in our
CtR Catholic School, and in the local Cy-Fair public schools, who are returning to work this week for the in-service days before the beginning of the coming school year. We’ll have a special blessing for all teachers and students next week at all Masses.
• Speaking of school, thank you for the wonderful response to our recent Operation Backpack school supply drive. You all responded beautifully and we were able to make a sizable donation to not only Cypress Assistance Ministries for students in our community, but we also shared a big portion of your generosity with our friends at Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church in Houston, our twinned parish. Alfred Reeves, who coordinates much of the outreach at OMOM was here on Thursday to pick up the supplies and they’ll be distributed this weekend. … Alfred told me he wasn’t sure OMOM was going to do the distribution this year, but that he received an unprecedented number of calls asking for assistance this year and that he couldn’t bear not doing it. He was so appreciative of our help from CtR and asked me to pass on the thanks of the OMOM community to all who contributed supplies. He assures us it will all go to good use, so thank you one and all.
• Our
CtR Choir resumes rehearsals this coming week in preparation to join us again at the 9 a.m. Mass beginning after Labor Day.
The first rehearsal after the summer break is next Thursday, Aug. 11 at 7 p.m. in Room 111 of the Parish Office Building. New members are welcome to join. Come and lend your voice to help us give fitting worship and praise to God in song.
• I apologize in advance for another long-ish post with financial information, but I feel it’s important once a year to give you a snapshot of the parish’s temporal goods. Last week I shared with you our annual parish budget for the new fiscal year we just started, and this week I’d like to give you the second part of that presentation with a deeper dive into our debt structure and our plan for moving forward. … As I begin my 19th year as your pastor, I am filled with gratitude to God for the tremendous growth we have experienced. When I arrived at CtR in July 2004, we numbered about 3,500 families; today we are double that – 7,000 families. All glory and praise to God for that growth.
The spiritual growth of our parish has been our greatest blessing. Each year we baptize more than 300 children, bring Holy Communion to another 350, confirm in the Holy Spirit around 240, and bring into full communion with the Church usually around 50 or so adults at Easter. Add to that the thousands who are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, the hours upon hours spent in adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and the fraternity that is fostered among the people of God in our myriad of social, educational, and spiritual gatherings each and every day and it all adds up to an amazing parish. Not perfect, mind you. Far from it. But truly amazing. And we continue to welcome new members every day. All are welcome here.
In addition to that spiritual growth we’ve grown physically, too. We’ve constructed a beautiful new church (celebrating 14 years in it this coming November), a new Parish Hall, a renovated Community Center, an Education Building with 40+ classrooms, labs for science and technology, and enrichment rooms for a vibrant Catholic school, along with an auditorium, gymnasium, and expansive Youth Ministry suite in the Redeemer Activity Center, and so much more. It’s more than $35 million in capital improvements to serve the needs of our parish community. … Everything we’ve ever done has been in response to one question, and one question only – does it help bring souls closer to Christ? All along the way the people of CtR have responded enthusiastically “yes.”
Our current debt is $8 million ($8,053,498 to be exact). Of that, $1.3M is remaining from the construction of the Parish Life Center (the Parish Hall and Education building). That loan is through the Archdiocese and we are addressing it in a methodical manner. The other $6.7M is the debt from our Redeemer Activity Center (RAC), which is celebrating its 4th anniversary this week. We continue to find new ways to utilize all spaces of this beautiful facility for our many ministries, parish events, school, and community events.
As a way of review, you may recall that with the counsel of our Finance Council and the blessing of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, we entered into a swap note with Frost Bank for the PLC loan that has enabled us to lock in a fixed portion of our note at a very attractive rate of just 3.1 percent. We have a healthy balance sheet of roughly $4M in savings and will use that to pay the debt service on the loan for the next few years. It will eventually run out, of course, and we will undertake a Capital Campaign at that time to manage our debt service. … All of our buildings on campus were designed to be multi-generational, and just as a typical home mortgage is 15, 25, or 30 years in length, so too will we take time to retire our debt. We’ve reduced it by about $2M the last three years alone – during a worldwide pandemic, mind you – and so we are trending in the right direction at a very good pace.
Note also that we have received about $500,000 from the Archdiocese as our portion of the roughly $1.5M that the parishioners pledged to the Ignite Capital Campaign for the Archdiocese. Last October we invited everyone to make a pledge to that campaign that went to refurbish the aging St. Mary’s Seminary and replenish the disaster recovery fund that had been exhausted in wake of Hurricanes Ike and Harvey. We receive $1 for every $3 paid, so please continue to make good on your pledges. … We have begun the design work on the new Marian Shrine and Prayer Garden on the east side of the church and I hope we can break ground on it by the end of the year. Stay tuned for further details about that in the coming weeks.
So what do all these numbers mean? It means we have done great work for the Lord, and the people of CtR have been generous in making that work possible. Thank you! It also means we have miles to go before we sleep. … I humbly ask you to continue your Capital Campaign payments, and if you have finished, I ask you to restart those contributions. I humbly ask you to continue and complete your capital campaign payments. If you have already finished (and I thank you for that), please consider making a new or recurring gift to help ensure and secure our thriving parish mission. I understand this is above and beyond our weekly tithe in the offertory, which is about $74,000 a week for general operations only (pastoral support of ministries, utilities, salaries, benefits, etc.), and I am grateful for this additional sacrifice. … If you are new to the parish, you have a responsibility, too, in helping us maintain our growing community. Now, it is your turn to pay it forward. It’s only fair that we all do our part. Some can do more, some need to do less, but we can all make a sacrificial gift of some proportion.
All this information will soon be on our website, and I’m happy to visit with you at any time or answer any questions you might have. I’m grateful for your support and I am with you as not only your pastor, but also a parishioner who himself contributes to the weekly offertory and debt service. And I do so gladly, for I know first-hand the blessing that CtR is to so many. Together, we can continue to be a source of spiritual nourishment for all those who call CtR home both now and for generations to come.
• I’m off this coming week as I go in search of some cooler weather, but Fr. Vincent will hold down the fort. Fr. Steve Sellers will join us to celebrate a few masses in my absence. We’ll take a break from the weekly Flocknote and Facebook update next Friday, and resume on Friday, Aug. 19.
• St. John Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, whose feast day was yesterday, pray for us! … I have a great love for St. John Vianney, the 19th century priest known as the Curé d’Ars, i.e., the curate of Ars, France (near Lyon), not only because as a diocesan priest working in a parish he’s my patron saint, but also from my two years as a vicar at the parish in Houston named for him. ... As I mentioned to some of my priestly confreres yesterday, he wasn’t the most handsome, or debonair, or erudite guy, but he was there in the trenches, day in and day out, alongside his people. That alone makes him the perfect saint for we who work in the parishes. That’s where you find the face of God!
Peace, Fr. Sean