My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We began Lent with some not so nice weather conditions.  I do hope everyone has been safe.  Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and concludes with the Easter Triduum.  Please see the bulletin for more information about our Lenten offerings.  Beginning this week, we will be making confessions available at Mary Our Queen on Thursdays at 5:30pm.

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.

St John Vianney hosted a Mardi Gras Party last Saturday.  Thank you to all our volunteers who made the event possible.

We have been working on a new website for St John Vianney the past few months and I am hoping by the time you are reading this column, our new website is up and running.  Mary Our Queen’s new website was launched sometime last year.  We hope that we can use our websites to promote programs and activities in our Family of Parishes.

As usual, more work continues to be done with the HVAC system installation for the Church and basement at SJV.  This week, we met up with Control Services who are working on the controls for the new HVAC system.  As our current controls are no longer supported, we will also be upgrading the control system for the HVAC for the rest of our Campus.  We continue to work to address the lighting controls that need to be replaced for the Church, Narthex and Blessed Sacrament Chapel and am drawing up a plan to update the Church sound system.  More details to follow.  I am talking to our Parish Council at SJV to do a study on our campus facility and identify the needs for our Parish for the future.

As mentioned in the last few Pastor’s Columns, we are currently going through all our spaces in both our parishes.  While going through our spaces, we are removing items that are stored in spaces in our Parish that we cannot associate them with any group or individual.  From what was gathered, these items were placed in those spaces for a while.  If your group needs space to place your things, kindly contact our Parish Office and we will do our best to accommodate 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.

I am grateful for all the sacrifices that have been made to make our campuses in our Family of Parishes of St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen the beautiful facilities that we have and am looking forward to building on the foundation that laid by our founding members.

God Bless,

Fr Marc