My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We celebrate the Fifth Sunday of Easter this weekend. In this weekend’s Gospel reading, we hear how Jesus is preparing His disciples for His departure. The scene takes place before His trial and crucifixion. He invites His disciples to have faith in Him and not to let their hearts be troubled for He is “the way, the truth and the life”.
We will be concluding our Religious Education programs at both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen this coming Wednesday with Mass and May Crowning. May is a special month to celebrate Mary as the Queen of Heaven knowing she is the mother of Jesus. She is the one we consider to be the most important woman of our faith and she continues to show us the way to her Son Jesus.
We would like to thank our Religious Education Directors, staff and our catechists for all they do in sharing the gift of faith with our students. This summer, our Family of Parishes will be offering vacation bible school and the Totus Tuus Program in the months of June and July. Please see our bulletin for more information.
This Sunday, we will be mulching Mary Our Queen’s campus. Thank you all who continue to care for our campus grounds and maintain its beauty. We truly have a beautiful campus because of you.
We removed all the bushes in the Angel garden at St John Vianney and transplanted the day lilies to the area around St John Vianney’s signage. The Angel statue will be relocated to a different area on St John Vianney’s campus. We cleared out the Angel garden due to the lack of attention that was given to that area and also the lack of ability to control the weeds that are growing in that area. The area will be sodded so that we can maintain our campus a little easier. We will be purchasing some easy to maintain plants for various areas on our campus to improve its beauty. We hope to have everything planted and our grounds mulched in the near future.
In regards to the bell tower at St John Vianney, we are still working out a solution to fix the cracks on the bell tower. We are also trying to get estimates to replace the roof that was struck by lightning as well as working with our insurance to document and file a claim for the repairs that need to be done.
The budgets at Mary Our Queen have been approved by the Parish Council. We are currently scheduling a meeting with St John Vianney’s Parish Council to approve St John Vianney’s budget. The budgets will be published in our Bulletin sometime in October together with our end of year reports. Our Financial year begins from July 1st and concludes on 30th June the following year.
One of our priorities at Mary Our Queen, now that we have improved the benefits and insurance for our staff, is to focus on the compensation of our teachers. We have fallen behind our neighboring Catholic schools and our local public-school districts. This gap is not just a number—it presents a growing challenge to retaining the outstanding educators we have and attracting new talent to our school community. Our hope is to invest in our teachers who have provided strong academic growth that helped define our School.
The main priority for St John Vianney is to retire our Parish debt that was incurred with renovating of the Church and the building of the narthex, offices and Parish Hall. We have come a long way in bringing down our debt with the Capital Campaign that was initiated by Fr Reiser through his Christ in His Glory with all the Saints Icon series.
We continue to make improvements and updates to our Parish facilities. There will be more projects that will be mentioned in my Pastor’s column the next few weeks in our Family of Parishes.
Blessings this Easter Season, Fr Marc
