Greetings in Christ, all! I’m typing this on Tuesday, the second day of the Winter Apocalypse, apparently…wow!
I’ve had some questions and comments about the Mass schedule at our two parish families, as well as some questions pertaining to our schedules as priests. I want to take time to address those to give you all a greater sense of how things are currently working.
How do you determine who does which Mass on the weekends?
Basically, once Fr. Bill moved in, we divided the weekends up in the following way:
A: Saturday morning Mass at Holy Family, then 8:30 am and 10 am at Holy Family on Sunday, along with the confessions between them.
B: 4:00 pm at Holy Family on Saturday, along with 9:30 am at St. Mark and 12:00 pm at Holy Family
C: 4:30 pm confessions and 5:30 pm Mass at St. Mark on Saturday, along with 5 pm at Holy Family on Sunday and 8:00 am on Monday
The key to all this is to give one guy an “easy Sunday,” knowing he won’t really get Monday off.
Why do you all take Monday off?
Basically, none of your priests started our assignment in the customary way: each of us came here after the usual assignment schedule. Because of that, we built our days off around our last assignments and we tended to build that off when we could meet with our support groups. For almost every priest I know, that day is Monday. Many parishes don’t even have a Monday Mass simply so that the priest can get his “weekend” on that Monday, as well as get prayerful and emotional support from his group.
I waited but didn’t get to confession on Sunday!
I know…I know…I’m sorry. Basically, when we set up the Sunday confession times, it was with the idea that the priest would basically hear confessions from 9:30 until the 10 am Mass and 11:30 until the noon Mass. There are a couple challenges with that: first, we can’t really hear confessions all the way up to Mass time because we need to get back to the sacristy in time to vest and prayerfully “change gears.” Second, I tried to get everybody in and then heard complaints that I wasn’t greeting people after Mass. I’m going to try to refocus my efforts on hearing confessions at 9:30 and 11:30 and ending promptly at 9:50 and 11:50, respectively, and more or less “moving those confessions along” as best I can.
For your part, please try to get there before or at the start time of confessions and (I hate typing this) but help me move the confessions along so everyone can go. This year is a year of transition and next year may be also: we simply don’t know what the future holds. Will we keep Fr. Bill and pick up another parish? Will Fr. Bill be reassigned away from us? How long do we get to keep Fr. Peter? All these are great questions and I have NO idea what the answers to these questions are. Until we have a clearer sense of the plans, we’ll stick with what we are doing and give you every bit of love, prayer and energy we can. It simply pains me that I don’t get to pray with all as much as I want to and, as soon as we have a greater sense of the future, we will come up with a plan that fits it.
Now…on to the big update:
What about the building project?
We’ll start with a review. When I first spoke with the Bishop about being assigned here, he explained to me that my top priority was to “get the building project on track.” Originally, Holy Family worked with the diocese on the Witness to Hope campaign. From that, Holy Family raised a little over $4 million, of which, our cut was about $2.7 million. Msgr. Vincke worked with the building committee and created a plan for renovating the Church that came in at over $4 million.
When I got here in July, we saw the gap between what we raised and what was envisioned was growing monthly and was moving toward the $5 million range. At that point, we pushed forward with another fundraiser: the Restore the Temple campaign.
That campaign is over and, between the two campaigns, we have raised approximately $3.5 million dollars in pledges and gifts. Obviously, we cannot afford the plan that we had.
I met with the building commission and we are working on a redesign of the plan within the confines of our budget and we will continue meeting to do so. Over the next five or six weeks, we will be finding out the costs for the new plan and then meet once we have hard numbers to see if the new design is feasible. If the plan we have is good and we can get the permits from the city, we will bring out those plans, show them to you all and begin work on our renovation this year.
I’m so grateful for your support and patience. When I arrived last July, I promised to give you my best and to put this project on the right track. Thanks to our amazing building committee, we are moving forward and I pray you notice how much we are striving to communicate with you faithfully, both in terms of the campaign we just ran and the project we are working to begin. Pray for us and know that I am excited that we are going to start soon.
Thank you so much for letting me be your priest. I love being here and I thank God for you.
fjk
