Greetings in Christ, all! Here we are, finally in the new Church. Fifteen months, lots of donations, tons of hard work and sacrifice, one million decisions and 20 million prayers later: can you believe it?
This happened for one reason above all: God’s grace and goodness. Your prayerful and sacrificial spirits made it so we could build something to honor God and draw us deeper into His love.
It’s funny, when we started, we thought we’d be completed in July…isn’t that wild? The virus obviously killed that hope, but in the end, even this turned out to be a significant blessing for us. Check this out:
Had we finished in July, we would’ve incurred fairly significant debt, but as it is, we are in great shape and it’s possible that we won’t have any debt at all.
How did we go from finishing our Church with potentially $800,000 in debt to this? A few pretty huge factors:
1. God. This last Sunday, I was able to go to confession and my confessor invited me to share with you all that we cannot forget that, without God, this simply never would’ve happened or, had it happened, it would’ve been a torturous process. We did this for God and He has honored us with His care.
2. You. So many of you finished your pledges or finished them early. A bunch of you ADDED TO YOUR PLEDGES…holy cow! It is simply a blessing beyond words how ridiculously generous so many of you have been.
3. Our “Digital Parish” – when the Quarantine started, we were in prime position to live stream; in fact, we started live streaming Mass a month before the Virus hit our country. Once it hit, we already had people praying Mass with us over Facebook. Beyond that, we began offering an online show called “Quarantine Catechesis.” The fruits of that have been beyond what we could ever have hoped. It is not an exaggeration to say that donations and gifts have come in from all over the planet. It’s insane and I just can’t wrap my head around it.
4. Budget cuts – the hard-working men and women of our Finance Council, as well as Brian Kita and Kevin Neugent, took a lot of bullets for us. No one wants to deal with the effects of a parish tightening its purse strings, but we simply had to. I can’t tell you how moved I am by our two Business Managers and our Finance Council. I’ve heard from my office the abuse they’ve taken, the tears they’ve shed…all of it. They took those hits so that we could function well and be respectful of your financial sacrifices.
Brian was here temporarily and Kevin is only here for a year. After that it appears we will need to find another Business Manager and, despite my tendency to worry, God has taken such good care of us with these two holy and smart people that I know we will be okay. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to thank them for their beautiful and diligent work in making us healthier.
So…I think I’m out of room. I pray that the joy of this new structure compels us to dig deeper into our relationship with Jesus and draw us closer to His Sacred Heart.
I am beyond grateful for the blessing of being your priest.
Fr. Joe