News - November 2019 RSS Feed

Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope and pray that each of you has the opportunity to spend time with people whom you love and to give due thanks to our Heavenly Father for the many blessings he has bestowed upon you, your families, and our country during this past year. Of course, for some of us these days are more difficult than they are easy. You may not even be feeling all that grateful given the circumstances and situations in your own lives or in the life of our country and our world. Yet gratitude, even in the midst of fear, sadness and even despair, can help to turn our hearts and minds around, even just a little. Read more.

Our parish is one noted for the generosity of the community. The many efforts and hard work of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society here is amazing. We are ever-grateful for the generosity of the time of our many volunteers, and certainly for the donations of food, household and personal items, and money that is donated to the food pantry each week. As the Advent season approaches we will again be offering opportunities to provide for those who are in need. More details will be rolling out in the next few weeks. The annual Raine Foundation Thanksgiving dinner will be on the Monday before Thanksgiving (Nov. 25). All of this serves as a lead-up to a huge note of thanks to the parishioners of St. Benedict’s who have contributed to the Annual Catholic Appeal this year. Finally, after a few weeks of just being under, we have passed the $100,000 mark this year! Many parishes have this year struggled to meet goal and we are grateful to be now $10,000 over goal. Read more.

As a follow-up to last week’s launch of “Called By Name” we wish to thank those of you who offered to call a Zacchaeus out of his tree, and certainly if you find or know of any more out there, please let us know. This is not an easy time to consider a religious vocation, and a religious vocation is itself never easy, but then nothing great is ever done by only taking an easy road. We are all on the journey to eternal life, and we need the assistance and support of a community of faith – a family of faith – to help us to get to Heaven. Read more.

As Zacchaeus is called out of his tree in the Gospel passage for this weekend, so each and every one of us is also in our own trees. We go there for many reasons. Sometimes we are there to hide from God. Sometimes we are there to hide from the crowd. Sometimes we are there to get a better perspective in life. Read more.