May
29, 2005
The Feast of Corpus Christi
Setting
Priorities
Chancing
It
There’s
a week to go before our Super Raffle for $10,000. We’re having
a party to pick the big winner on Saturday, June 4th, though you don’t
need to be present to win (it’s just more fun that way).
We still have some chances left and while $100 may seem like a lot for
a chance, it’s really a donation that goes to help us pay some
needed repair bills for our school -- a building which the whole parish
uses. If you’re a graduate of St. Brigid’s School or someone
who has come through our religious education program and you haven’t
had a chance to give something back lately, now’s a good time
to take a chance. You might even be rewarded with $10,000 for your generosity.
Chances are available at the parish office and the school office.
Tech
Help
We’re looking for people to help with our church video cameras
(especially at the Saturday 5pm mass). If you’re in 8th grade
or older and can play video games, you can easily do this! If you’d
like to join this ministry, please let me know.
Catholic
Ministries Appeal
I’ve pledged. Have you?
You can pledge online here!
At
College?
At St. Brigid’s we like to stay in touch through
e-mail “letters from home.”
Once a person has an e-mail address at school (or if he/she uses a personal
address), please let us know what it is so we can include them when
we write.
Here's a handy college link so you
can send this info online.
e-mail Father Ralph:
Past Columns:
May 22: Painting Project
May 15: We are the Church
May 8:Mother of the Church
May 1: On Life and Death
April 24: Habemus Papam
April 17: The Spirit Abounds
April 10: Two men on a journey
April 3: He's baaack!
March 27th: Not the best
news...yet
March 20th: What are You
Doing For Easter?
March 13th: The Stench
March 6: To Tell or Not
To Tell
February 27: Dry Mouth Dry
Soul
February 20: Good to Be
Here
February 13: And he was
hungry?
Ash Wednesday '05
February 6: Ashes Already?
January 23: Catholic Schools
Week
January 16: Continued Charity
January 9: Migration
January 2:All is bright?
Columns from 2004
Columns from 2003
Columns from 2002
When
my friends ask me “how it’s going?” at St. Brigid’s,
I sometimes good-naturedly reply, “It’s like living in a blender.”
Life whirs around so quickly here
and there are so many demands from all directions at once. (Mind you,
I’m not complaining -- this is like being a mom or a dad: their
lives are like living in a blender too.”)
But the challenge of going “round
and round” at fast speed is that it’s hard to see in what
direction the parish is going. Change is always going to happen and sometimes
the change comes from without (like the two new large housing projects
downtown and an additional 1500 housing units at the raceway -- guess
what? We’re getting new parishioners soon!) But some change comes
from examining our priorities and choosing what next steps to take.
I’ve had the best time over
the past few months meeting with a representative group of parishioners
in our newly formed Pastoral Council whose prime role so far was to name
eight priorities for our parish. These are the things that are essential
to who we are as a church family. Next week I’ll be publishing what
the council came up with. But in the meantime I’m asking you to
think about our parish and what it means to you. And if you had to name
eight priorities for the parish, what would they be? Why not jot these
down so that next week when we publish the list you can see how your ideas
match the ones we’ve come up with?
Indeed the next step for the council
is to ask as many parishioners as possible to comment on the priorities.
Did we miss anything? Are we naming the priorities in a good way? We’ll
want to hear from you. We also want to hear from people in our parish
who don’t ordinarily read the bulletin. They don’t get to
church as often as they’d like and they’re often left out
of the discussion. So once our list is published, I hope you’ll
show it around to others who you know and ask them for feedback too. You
see, once we can name the direction we want to go in, we can actually
figure out ways to get there.
In the meantime, make YOUR list,
check it twice....
You are Person
