October 2, 2022
Dear Friends in Christ,
I am writing this letter on Tuesday, and the parish Fall Festival occurs Saturday, Oct. 1st. This will be the 1st festival I have experienced since arriving as your pastor. Unfortunately, Covid forced the last 2 festivals to be online. I am looking forward to the festival, as is so many parishioners are also.
Thank you to all who have worked so diligently and so hard with the festival. There are so many to thank, but I will limit it to the primary chairpeople: Joy & John Onorato, Dana & Guy Pike and Patrice & Kye Krus. Say some prayers of thanksgiving for them & pray for all their intentions.
Pray for our high school students who will be receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation on Wednesday at 7 pm with Bishop Italo Dell’Oro as celebrant. Pray that they may always be open to God’s graces, they will continue to seek God’s graces & live out the Catholic faith as fully as possible and they will always have a desire to enrich their faith by learning more & participating actively in the Church. Thank you to all the parents who are the first teachers of faith, as well as to all the parish catechists & the sponsors.
On Thursday, Oct 6th, I will be leaving for a week off & returning on Thursday, October 13th. It is a challenge to find priest replacements. Msgr. (Fr.) Adam McClosky will be hearing confessions on Saturday 3 pm-4:30 pm & the celebrant at the 5 pm Saturday Vigil Mass. Fr. Michael Scherrey will be the celebrant at Sunday’s 8 am & 12 Noon. Fr. Michael has a 10 am Mass commitment at another parish, but he willingly volunteered to come back for the 12 Noon. Fr. Ron Cloutier will be the celebrant at the 10 am Mass. Pray for Fr. Ron who is celebrating his Golden Jubilee of priesthood ordination later that Sunday on Oct 9th with Cardinal DiNardo. Fr. Ron was ordained a priest on Sept. 9, 1972. Pray in thanksgiving for Fr. Ron’s 50 years of priesthood service. All 3 priests filling in for me are active retired priests! We are grateful that they are capable & willing to celebrate the Holy Eucharist in their retirement.
With “supply chain” problems with securing certain items, I have been told that hopefully the locking mechanisms for the front doors will be repaired finally in October. The equipment was ordered on June 24th at a cost of $28,650. Yes, very expensive. But all 6 front doors (3 sets of 2 doors each) will have to be taken down and the inner rod & its mechanisms, as well as the panic door handle will be replaced.
We are hoping by this December, prior to Christmas, all the lights inside the church will be replaced with LED lights. Yes, supply chain challenges! We signed the contract about 6 weeks ago for a total of $89,085, with the approval of the Finance Council. Yes, that figure is very high! But $49,000 alone is going to replace all the dimmer panels in the electrical room. Why? Those panels that were installed when the church was built are not LED compatible. When we install LED lights & if we attempt to dim the lights, then the lights will begin to flicker.
This lighting company is on the archdiocesan preferred list of vendors. They recently completed the replacement of lights at St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Spring. When we compare our bid less the cost of our dimmer panels, that amount is similar to the cost of light replacement only at St. Ignatius. This company is now working with Prince of Peace Church nearby to replace their lights.
The above bid does not include the replacement of lights in the chapel / its entrance way, the outside lights on the roof top or in the walkway in front of the church. That will be an additional expense. Everything is expensive!
Recently I was looking at some photographs of the inside of our church when it was much newer. Notice how bright the lights were in the picture below, as compared to how dark the church is now with so many light bulbs burnt out. I shared this picture with the lighting company & said “This is our goal with how much light there should be in the church once all the lights are working again.”
St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us!
Fr. Lawrence W. Jozwiak
Pastor
“The Cross is the school of love.”
"The most deadly poison of our time is indifference."
—St. Maximilian Kolbe
“There is no greater love, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.” John 15: 13
