Pastor’s Letter: May 21, 2023

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Congratulations to our 8th Grade Class of 2023 who will be graduating from Mary Our Queen School this coming Tuesday.  We wish them the very best on their new journey to High School.  This coming Thursday our school year will be coming to a conclusion.  We are grateful for all who made our school year a success.  We have 2 retirements this year—Karen Bender who has been with us for the last 26 years as Cafeteria Staff and Mary Gonderinger,our 4th Grade Teacher Assistant for the last 10 years.  We would like to thank them for their years of service to Mary Our Queen and wish them the very best in their retirement.  We also have several teachers and staff moving on this year from Mary Our Queen.  We would like to thank them for their service and wish them all the best.

The last few weeks we had been planting some new plants and transplanting some plants around the campus.  We also had the campus mulched last Tuesday and Wednesday.  We would like to thank all who hep make this possible.  Our campus grounds do look beautiful.  I have done my best together with some wonderful volunteers to help shape our landscape in our campus.  I am hoping someone will be willing to help take over our Parish landscape committee/volunteers.  Please contact me at the Parish Office if you can help.

I am grateful for the staff in our Parish Office for assisting St John Vianney in the management of their accounts with the resignation of St John Vianney’s Business Manager. Mary Our Queen and St John Vianney are forming a Family of Parishes on July 1st.  We are currently going through all our contracts at both parishes to see the things we can do together to save cost as well as to support each other through the combination of our offices. We will through the months of May and June be working out the final details on how our offices will function as well as to lay out best practices that would help in our transition.  Please keep our parishes in your prayers.

This year our parish celebrates its 60th anniversary.  We are planning to do a parish wide celebration on August 26 which will coincide with our Patroness Feast Day – the Queenship of Mary.  We are forming a committee to plan our celebrations.  Please stay tuned for more details.

I will be leading a 12 Day Marian Shrines Pilgrimage in October and would like to take this opportunity to invite you to join me in experiencing the miracles of Lourdes, Fatima and Santiago de Compostela. The highlights of the tour includes Lourdes, Basilica of St Pius X, Santander, Fatima, Barcelona, Santiago and Montserrat.  We will be visiting the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Montserrat outside of Barcelona, the Grotto of Massabielle, where Our Lady appeared to Bernadette in 1858, partake in a Rosary and Candlelight Procession in Fatima where our Blessed Mother appeared to three shepherd children – Lucia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco.  We will also visit Santiago de Compostela where the Tomb of St James was discovered, Loyola – the hometown of St Ignatius.  The brochure for the tour can be found in the Narthex or in the Parish Office.  Call the Parish Office if you need any more details.

A stewardship appeal was made at our weekend Masses a few weeks ago. One of the biggest positives is that we continue to grow our school each year and we will have our largest number of students enrolled for our upcoming school year in more  than 15 years.  Unfortunately, while our collection has more or less been the same for the last five years, the cost of running Mary Our Queen has increased significantly.  As of April 20, this year, we are about $255,000 short of Sunday Giving or 15% less of what we need to keep our facilities going.  We are appealing that you will prayerfully consider these 3 things:

  • Increase or make a consistent offering
  • Sign up for our online giving program
  • Determine where you want to be involved or within our Parish.

We will be launching a Stewardship campaign in the near future. Thank you for your continued love for Mary Our Queen and your generosity.

The Raise the Paddle project for the MARQUEE is for a new H/Vac system for the Gym.  This will address one of the needs of our Parish as well as to provide air conditioning for the gym.  The cost for the new H/Vac system is $200,000.  At the time of writing this letter we are at $128,500.  We are inviting you to help us meet our  goal for this new H/VAC system.  You can donate to the Raise the Paddle project online at https://ppay.co/e1Abf13sypc or you can drop off your donation at the Parish Office.  We thank you for your support.

God’s Blessings,

Fr Marc