My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

 

We celebrated the Solemnity of St Joseph on Wednesday with a blizzard.  At Mary Our Queen, a St Joseph Altar was setup in the Narthex since last week.  The tradition at the Altar of St Joseph celebrating St Joseph includes the words “tupa tupa” which is translated “knock knock”.   It speaks of the story of Joseph and Mary searching for shelter and food for the Holy Family.  This tradition was established at Mary Our Queen a few years ago and the food collected from donations from our Parish Community and our School will be donated to our local shelters and food pantries.  Thank you for your generosity for the less fortunate.

 

Mary Our Queen School had to postpone Grandparents Day until Thursday due to the snow day.  It was wonderful to have our Grandparents of our school students present.  We had an All School Mass with our students and Grandparents, and we blessed the St Joseph Altar along with the food at the Mass.

 

During the Season of Lent, both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen Knights of Columbus will be hosting their Lenten Fish Fries at our Family of Parishes.  Please see the times and details in our bulletin.

 

We have reestablished confessions at Mary Our Queen on Thursdays at 5:30pm.  We invite you to use this Season of Lent to make a good confession.  Please also see our bulletin for more details about our Lenten offerings.  Please also note that St John Vianney’s new website is up and running.  We continue to work to improve communication through social media and websites.

 

We had a few rooms in the basement of St John Vianney unavailable for use the last few months due to the installation of the HVAC system.  As most of the work for the new HVAC system has been completed, the rooms have since been cleaned and are now available for use.  We have also cleared up a classroom that was used previously for storage and converted it back to a classroom.  While going through all the spaces, we made an effort to purge items that had not been used for a while or items we could not identify to whom it belonged to.  Please note that if your group needs space to place your things, kindly contact our Parish Office and we will do our best to meet your needs.  Please also note that items left in spaces that have not been allocated to your group will be tossed out on a regular basis.

 

Please also note that here have been quite a few religious appeal mailers that include religious items or cards that have been found left in the narthex of our Churches.  I understand that these mailers are received via mail to those leaving them in our Church.  I know there is a certain guilt about what to do with them should one receive them in the mail.  Please kindly do not leave them in our Church as we too do not know what to do with them.  I can tell you that whenever such mailers are found in our Church, it goes straight to the trash.

 

Also there have been a lot of religious books that are left in our Church with the hope it gets put in both our Churches libraries.  While we do go through them from time to time, most of the books left in our Church are also thrown out.  While it is regrettable, we do not have enough volunteers to help us maintain both our parish libraries.  If that is something you can help us with, I would appreciate it.

God Bless

Fr Marc