We are all invited to share our gifts, skills, and talents here in the Catholic Community of Sacred Heart. I wish to thank all those who answered the call to assist us in our Lenten and Holy Week journey: altar servers, cantors, greeters, readers of the word, ushers, environment decorations, musicians, laundry, Easter Fire, landscape workers, Easter Baskets to our homebound and assisted living facilities, operating the technology for a/v and live streaming; our Pastoral Planning Team (PPT) for the survey; and so much more. When everyone takes a part it all fits together for a memorable spiritual and religious experience for us all.
I also thank all of you who participated in our in-pew survey at the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. That is part one of our effort to rethink church as we slowly maneuver from the pandemic. Next, the members of the PPT will be gathering the information from the surveys and assisting people to gather in smaller interest groups. We will then be in touch with those who were away Easter weekend and give all parishioners a chance to share how the Holy Spirit has guided them during Lent 2022.
We now enter the glorious season of Easter. As Catholics we have 40 days of fast, prayer and acts of Charity during Lent and the wonderful gift of 50 days to celebrate what God has done and is doing in our lives during Easter Season. The out-pouring of sacramental grace through Baptism, First Eucharist and Confirmation are all celebrated during this season. We will be honoring our graduating seniors, and some of us will also be finally traveling to Germany for the passion play in Oberammergau that was postponed due to the pandemic from 2020.
I am hoping also to be able to gather us together after a 9:30 Mass sometime in May for a “Town Meeting” to dialogue and share our insights of the future mission of the Church that Pope Francis has invited us all to participate. I know “Synod on Synodality” is church language; he just wants our wisdom so that our input from Catholics throughout the world is collected and discussed in 2023 we will have contributed our wisdom in the process. Stay tuned!