July 4, 2021

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

A Blessed 4th of July to all of you.  We celebrate the Declaration of Independence of our Country this weekend.  While  we celebrate this day, we are invited to cherish “the memory of the loved and lost” for all who have “laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom” (Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Mrs Bixby) beginning with our Founding Fathers who initiated the Revolutionary War and framed the Constitution.  We also continue to remember all our members in the military who continue to protect our freedom.

In a follow up to the question regarding who our new Associate Pastor will be, on Friday June 18, I received a call from Fr. Hastings, the vicar for clergy, and was informed that Archbishop Lucas is unable at this time to appoint a new Associate Pastor to our parish.  In our conversation, I requested that Fr. Mario Rapose who is currently living in residence here at Mary Our Queen, to continue to assist us with the Sacraments. We agreed upon this and will continue to be in touch in the coming months.

I will be leading a Pilgrimage to Italy from November 8 to 18, 2021. The Pilgrimage includes visits to Venice, Padua, Florence, Assisi and Rome.  The cost for the Pilgrimage is $3279 per person (based on 2 persons sharing in twin-bedded rooms with private bath).  A detailed brochure is available in the Parish Office and in the Church sacristy. If you have any questions, kindly contact me at the Parish Office.  I will provide an information night on Tuesday July 13 at 7pm for any questions regarding the Pilgrimage at the Trinity Rooms.

There have been several projects going on in our Parish.  We are in the third week of replacing the heating water piping in the lower-level east wing section of our school with a new variable volume terminal unit and a heating water coil in each classroom which connects to the existing ductwork.  More work has been done last week on the grotto which is located on the south side of our gym. We began the installation of our new playground at our Early Childhood Education and Youth Center this week.  We are also started to replace 3 HVAC units in the Parish Offices and Rectory.  These units replaced the ones that were installed back when the building was built.  We will continue to update you on the progress of the mentioned projects and future projects in the near future.

We have opened our Parish for meetings and for groups to gather.  So far things have been going well.  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.   We continue to place the health and safety of all members of our parish community our top priority.

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