The four Sunday Masses this past weekend went fairly smoothly.  Msgr. Rusconi took extra precautions at the 6 PM Mass to keep himself and everyone safe.  We had fewer people attend Mass.  To my surprise, the 12 Noon Mass was the most popular while the 8 AM Mass was the least popular.

     Now that Sunday Masses are mostly stable, we can do some tweaking.  Joe has been instructing the ushers to make sure parishioners maintain social distancing as they enter the church.

     I invite the earlybirds not to arrive so early.  The canopy door is scheduled to open about 15 minutes before Mass.  We've had enough room for everyone at every Mass.  There's no need to rush.

     The Manchester Patch reports that "Gov. Murphy Issues NJ Coronavirus Warning As State Backslides".  The Asbury Park Press posts daily updates for Ocean County numbers.  Here's the July 5th update.  Manchester is at 830 positive cases with 149 deaths for a death rate of 17.95%.  Most towns have a death rate of 8%.  So, we should be more cautious than our neighbors.  If you look at CovidActNow's webpage for Ocean County, it looks like we're trending down again.

     Our focus on campus has been increasing stability.  Yet, we're going to have our first pandemic baptism on Saturday and our first couple confirmations on Sunday.

     After we've been stable a little longer, we'll share with you some financial numbers.  We've been fortunate to have such a good rainy day fund - which we haven't even touched yet.  We will likely dip into it for new fiscal year bills.  But we'll replenish our investment account once we receive a new bequest in another month or so.

     With the new financial numbers, we'll be able to establish a new budget.  Thankfully, our rainy day fund means this isn't urgent.  We'll continue to focus primarily on the sacraments for the next few weeks.  Once confirmations are complete in early August, we'll prepare for post Labor Day.

God love you,

Fr. Jim