Weekly Letter from the Pastor

Dear Fellow Parishioners of St. Benedict:

School is off to a banner start this week, and seems to be running smoothly. Our new administration team (Nicholas Camarrano and Meghan Gallagher) is making its impact on the school and it looks like we are poised for a strong year ahead. There are still families calling to express interest in attending, and we are fortunate to have openings in some of the grades.

This Sunday marks the opening of the traditional religious education classes. If your child has yet to be registered for RE (grades 1-8) please make contact with Nancy Arkin as soon as possible.

We are in the final countdown -- just two weeks hence -- for the First Annual Family Fun Weekend. The committee has planned many interesting, diverse, and fun activities for the whole family to enjoy at some point in the weekend. Now all we need is good weather and a strong showing. Proceeds go to support the school.

At the same time the parish 50-50 is underway. Ticket sales are swift, and we hope to at least approach the usual cash return. All proceeds go to the parish.

The Eucharistic Revival is underway. We have several fall and spring events planned to enhance and enrich our understanding of the mystery of the Eucharistic presence of our Lord. The first significant celebration will be a more traditional 40-Hours celebration with a different celebration and speaker around adoration and benediction over three consecutive nights. We are holding the celebration on November 5-6-7.

The annual bishop’s wedding anniversary blessing is October 8 at 3 pm, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Robert Bellarmine in Freehold. If you are celebrating 1, 25, 50 or more years of marriage, please consider attending the Mass. Registration is online and the deadline is September 15. Please check the bulletin or call the Parish Office if interested.

It has been one year since we instituted the Sunday 5pm Mass. In general attendance has ranged from 74 (Super Bowl Sunday) to 150 (Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend). Looking at Mass attendance as a whole we are trending positive (though not quite yet to pre-pandemic levels). One thing I was looking for was the distribution of Mass goers with the addition of the evening Mass. My fear was that we would just take the same number of people and distribute them over an additional Mass, which would not then be worth the additional Mass. However, immediately we saw that, while some regular Sunday morning attendees now came on Sunday evening, that instead new people were coming, and those who, having been inconvenienced in the morning for whatever reason, would either have not gone to Mass or gone elsewhere in the evening. To that end, then, it seems that we will continue the Mass into the foreseeable future.

Please consider joining one of the choirs -- although we are in better shape now than we have been in several years -- more voices and instrumentalists are always welcome.

Football season is underway!

Enjoy the week ahead,
Fr. Garry