Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

What a beautiful Spring weekend! Welcome to May, the month when we celebrate our Mothers, and most especially the Blessed Mother. With some sense of a return to normal celebrations the school will hold the May crowning this coming Friday, May 7th. We take this opportunity to thank the Blessed Mother for her intercession and protection on our behalf during this time of pandemic, and pray that we will continue to be blessed in the days and months ahead.

The school children in second grade receive their First Holy Communion this Sunday afternoon with a Mass at two and another at four. Along with the many other children from the parish who also have been receiving Holy Communion at the various parish Masses, they and their families are in need of our prayer and support in this journey of their faith.

The vote for the house colors is going well, we will leave that open for a few more weeks to allow everyone to make their choices. “Thank you” to all who have already participated in this drive.

We are slowly inching towards our goal for the Annual Catholic Appeal (ACA). Again I wish to thank everyone who has already contributed to this appeal. The diocese is sending out a second letter of reminder this coming week. Once we surpass the goal we benefit from the additional contributions made.

As more of us are vaccinated it is good to see more and more people getting back into church. As a reminder, the Adoration Chapel is open on Monday through Friday from 10am until 4pm. We are still maintaining strict social distancing guidelines. Hopefully we will be able to return to the perpetual schedule later this summer. In the meantime, we do hold a Holy Hour with Adoration and Benediction on the last Thursday of each month here in the Church.

School enrollment for next year is going extremely well. We are fortunate to be able to open another section of prek-3 year. We will talk about details of where and how in a future missive. For the school this is a significant step forward. I am happy that we have been able to make these changes for the school as we build towards the future. There is still a necessary and important niche for Catholic education, and we are happy to be able to provide that ministry to our parishioners and others in our area. If you know of anyone interested in our school, please have them make contact with the school office.

We are also now well into wedding season and we are grateful to Lori McCahill for all of her work and efforts with couples seeking marriage. This weekend we held Pre-Cana here for some thirteen couples. We seem to be the only parish in the diocese that is having in-person sessions at this time.

Overall, we are feeling pretty good about how things are going in the parish. Could we be doing more – yes! But we are planning for that day when it is masks off and we can remove the ribbons from the pews so that we can return to a normal way of assembling as the Body of Christ and share in the celebration of Mass together without feeling anxious about it.

Blessings and peace,
Father Garry