November
13, 2005
Talents
Galore!
Census
update
Thanks to those who filled in their Census form during the first week
of our new Census. Hundreds of families have already given in their
information. If you haven’t yet filled in and returned your form,
you can pick up a form at church or any of our offices.
A special thanks to all who helped organize and prepare this census:
Our Census Coordinator, Rob Cammarata, our Ushers,
"Pew Angels", Census Helpers who stayed after mass, the Boy
Scouts, our Parish Staff Members and the Census Data Enterers who are
now entering the Census information into our data base.
Thank to all who helped to translate the forms into different languages:
Rose Cangialosi,Sister Bruno, and Maria Teresa Gutierrez, Deacon Manuel
Ramos, and Gonzalo Lopez.
CollegeStudents
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e-mail Father Ralph:
Past Columns:
Nov 6: Our Census Has Begun
Oct 30:Get ready, set...
Oct 23: This Time For Real
Oct 9: Parishioners Don't
Read This
Oct 2: What would Jesus Sign?
Sept 25: New Pastor
Sept 18: Welcome Gonzalo
Sept 11: New Beginnings
Sept 4: Spreading the Faith
August 28:World Youth Day
Words
August 21: Dressing Up
August 14: Harsh
Words
August 7: Tiny Whispering
Sound
July 31: Welcoming Rob
July 24:Wedding Bells
July 17: Summer Weeding
July 10: Ministry to Seniors
July 3: The Painters are
Coming!
June 26: The Last 25%
June19: Sommer in the
Summer
June 12: Great News Anoying
News
June 5: What's Essential
May 29: Setting Priorities
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
This
week Jesus tells a story about three people who receive money from their
master. The master goes away and when he returns he asks how they invested
this money. Because the name of the coins is translated “talents”,
we see that this parable also challenges us to reflect on what we do with
the talents that God has given us.
You may have noticed the question
in our Census that invites people to list their talents. At first people
might think that we’re looking for “churchy” kinds of
things, when we ask for talents. Actually we’re interested in any
talents that you were gifted with. Maybe you’re excellent at playing
an instrument or or good at a sport. Perhaps you are good at artwork,
or at playing video games. Your talent might be needlepoint or gardening,
poetry or barbershop quartet singing, or hosting parties.
Now at first you might not think
that your talent might be helpful to the church community. For example,
many parents of video game “experts” might not know how their
child’s “talent” might help the church. But the video
game skill is exactly what we need to run the cameras in church. Very
soon we’ll be able to stream videos of our masses to homebound folks
and we’ll need extra camera operators who can click buttons and
move joysticks! (By the way this ministry is open to 8th graders and up.)
So as the gospel calls us to consider
what talents we’ve been given, now is a good time to think about
what time and talent we can return to God by sharing with those in our
families and neighborhoods. (Leaf raking comes to mind at this time of
year.) What time and talent can we share with the Church community?
This past week we saw many folks
helping to begin to put up our Presepio; others started to prepare Thanksgiving
baskets; others took time to sit with fellow parishioners to help fill
in the Census; some came over to begin to prepare our Advent mailing;
others spent time this week doing data entry for our Census... I’m
running out of space here. Let me just say it was a week filled with the
sharing of talents galore! May it always be so.
