Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

A most blessed Pentecost to everyone! We are reminded this weekend of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and most certainly as he guides our church. This brings an end to our Easter season. Tomorrow we return to ordinary time, although we know that nothing about the time is really ever ordinary. Indeed, it feels in someways that we live in extraordinary times. Not necessarily good times, nor really bad times, but our time. What we do with this time that we have, how we transform the world in which we live, how we respond to the needs of others, lays groundwork for the future. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in and through us that we, as Catholics, believe that the kingdom of God advances in the world. Let our prayer then be this Pentecost Sunday that the Holy Spirit will continue to enkindle in us the power of his love.

This is the last week of the Saint Benedict school year! And what a year it was. We are hopefully at the end of the pandemic protocols. Our school ends with 423 students, which is a very healthy number of students for our school. Enrollment for next year is looking even more favorable than that. We are grateful for the guidance and direction of our principal Mr. Donahue and the entire staff and faculty of our school for their hard work not only in educating our students and forming them to be young men and women disciples of Jesus Christ prepared to take on the world in which they live, but also as they promote our school as probably the best ambassadors for Saint Benedict and Catholic education.

As the summer begins we have a few projects that we will be planning to work on, however, nothing too dramatic this year. There are always general needs and maintenance around the school and church property and we will tend to what we can over the summer given the limited resources with the supply chain issues and in response to the inflationary cycle which we are currently enduring. Hopefully we will see an easing of both of those burdens as the summer goes on.

I want to congratulate the students from our school who were graduated on Friday evening. I was also able to attend the baccalaureate Mass for Red Bank Catholic high school this past Wednesday. I attended the baccalaureate Mass and participated in the graduation ceremonies for Christian Brothers Academy. I also celebrated the baccalaureate Mass for Saint John Vianney high school and participated in their graduation ceremonies as well. We have many students from our school that attend all of these schools and I am happy to be with them during their commencement exercises. As a reminder next weekend we will have a special blessing for all of our recent graduates, high school, college and graduate school. As we go forth into the world we need to continue to be strengthened by our faith and call upon our heavenly Father and the angels and saints to guard, protect and keep us safe and faithful in all that we do.

I am looking forward to a bit of a relaxing summer, as I still do feel I need to recover from the surgery that I had over the winter.

May the Lord bless all of us this week and keep us in his care.

Father Garry