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Thirtieth Sunday of the Year
21 October 2011
Dear Friends in Christ,
A few things for your attention:
1. This week all of the priests of our diocese will be on retreat at Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, NC. The sacramental schedule will therefore be modified here this week: there is no Mass at noon on any day this week, no Mass at 7 am on Wednesday and no Holy Hour or Confessions on Wednesday afternoon.
2. RCIA will meet this Wednesday at 6.30 pm, but the Program of Catholic Studies will not meet on Thursday. The PCS will resume on Thursday 3 November with Part Four of the new documentary series “Catholicism.”
3. Tuesday 1 November is the Solemnity of All Saints, a holy day of obligation, and there will be three Masses: 7 am, 12 noon, and 7 pm. Wednesday 2 November is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, All Souls Day, and there will be two Masses: 7 am and 12 noon. If you would like your beloved dead remembered on the altar during November, please write their names on the All Souls envelope and drop it in any collection.
4. Each week in the bulletin we publish the financial report from the previous week and show the cumulative total for the fiscal year which began on 1 July 2011, as well as the current status of capital giving for the calendar year which began on 1 January 2011. Although a quick glance at these figures may suggest that we are falling behind financially, that is not the case. In offertory giving, we are actually ahead of where we were last year at this time, and we are behind our budgeted number only because we increased our target for the current fiscal year from $29,500 each week to $30,500 in order to meet our increased expenses. Moreover, the weeks of summer and early autumn are ordinarily the time when our collections are lowest, meaning that we usually make up the difference in the winter and spring. The same is true for capital giving because December is far and away the time of the greatest gifts to the parish. With that said, please remember our tithing guidelines for stewardship as an essential dimension of Christian discipleship. Ten percent of everything we have belongs to someone else, and that tithe should normally be distributed this way: 5% to the parish in the offertory collection, 1% to the diocese in the Bishop’s Stewardship Appeal, and 4% to charities of your choice, including the capital needs of the parish. If each household in the parish regularly gives according to its means, then we will easily meet our financial targets and be able to sustain all of our programs and maintain our campus. Thank you for your generous commitment to St. Mary’s.
Father Newman