December 5, 2021

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We now enter the Second Sunday of Advent. We hear the words “Prepare the way of the Lord.”  The second Advent Candle that we lit this weekend represents faith. This candle is called the Bethlehem Candle and it invites us to reflect of the journey that Mary and Joseph made to Bethlehem and the sacrifices they had to make to bring Jesus into our world. Last week, we emailed to you Advent Resources from our Parish to help you grow in your faith and welcome Jesus in your heart as you prepare for his birth. One of the opportunities for faith growth is our Advent Mission from Sunday, December 12 to Tuesday, December 14 at 7pm each evening. We are grateful for Fr James Rafferty from the Institute for Priestly Formation for speaking at our Advent Mission. It will conclude with a Reconciliation Service on Tuesday.

If you enter our narthex, you will see four TVs mounted on the walls. These will be used for our digital display signage that will promote events and programs in our Parish, Religious Education and School. We would like to thank our Knights of Columbus for donating our digital display signage. We are hoping to go live in the near future.

Looking forward in regards to the upkeep of our facility, we are making plans to replace the HVAC units for the Church and the Cafeteria.  The current air handlers for the Church and the Cafeteria date back to the time when it was first built in the 1960s and the condenser units are close to 20 years old.  Given the current supply shortage of HVAC equipment (about 4 to 6 months waiting period), we want to be proactive in replacing these units.  We are hoping to replace the HVAC unit for the Church while the weather is still cool in the spring so that our Church services are not disrupted and to replace the cafeteria HVAC unit in the summer.

We started to address the heating of our school given that all the steam pipes are over 50 years old.  The current estimate to upgrade the system is $340,000 ($85,000 per wing of each floor).  We replaced the hot water piping of the lower-level east wing of the school last summer with a variable volume terminal unit with a heating water coil in each classroom which connects to the existing ductwork. This included new temperature controls for the rooms and extension of the heating water piping from the lower-level mechanical room to each coil.  We are hoping that the proceeds for our upcoming MARQUEE Raise the Paddle will help us upgrade the lower-level west wing hot water piping.

We continue to pray for all those affected by COVID-19.  We also continue to do our best to keep everyone safe.  We have opened our Parish for meetings and for groups to gather.  While the mask mandate of our city has been lifted, we have made available the left side of our Church for those still wanting to social distance.  We continue to request that mask be used when coming forward to receive Communion. Thank you for kindly working with us.  We will reevaluate these protocols on a week to week basis.  As a reminder, please monitor COVID-19 symptoms.  As always, if you or a family member has a fever, chills, body aches, headache, sore throat, cough, and loss of taste and smell, they should stay home from school or church until symptom free.

Please check out our Weekly Updates via email.  If you have not received an email, kindly call our Parish Office and we will add you in our email mailing list.  Thank you again for supporting us during this time. We continue to keep all those affected by this virus in our prayers.

God’s Blessings,

Fr Marc