Greetings in Christ, all!
I must begin by asking for your forgiveness. Last Sunday the priest assigned to the noon Mass did now show up. Fr. Le was away and we found a priest who agreed to pray the Mass, but he made a mistake and messed up on his calendar. I was attending to other priestly duties and wasn’t aware that no priest had arrived, so in the end, the members of our Parish Family who arrived for a noon Mass had to celebrate a communion service instead. He and I both feel terrible about this and ask your forgiveness for this error. We strive and sometimes we fail.
Okay, now on to Mass Intentions! A Mass Intention is an ancient practice within the Church whereby we offer a Mass for the soul of a person who has gone before us in death. It is one of the ways we stay connected to the Mass and to our beloved dead. Traditionally, parishes offer a schedule of days when a Mass is available for an intention and people fill in the blanks.
There are a lot of you out there, praise God, and there are only about 550 Masses a year that have openings for intentions. Obviously, Le and I pray more than those 550 (about 100 funeral and wedding Masses a year), but these Masses do not have openings for intentions.
What we are running into is a GREAT problem: so many of you faithful and wonderful people want us to pray Masses for your beloved dead, but we run into problems meeting those needs. We also do not want to run into a situation where someone (with great intentions, excuse the pun) simply grabs every available Mass.
So, we’ve come up with two solutions: One, a new policy that will help us balance the needs of justice within our community in making sure we are praying for as many of our beloved dead as possible.
Two, we are utilizing the resources available to us through Beautiful Fiji! We not only have an amazing priest from Fiji, but we also have connections to priests there who would welcome intentions for the Masses they pray! Basically, we are offshore outsourcing our Mass intentions (hahaha). If you are interested in finding out our new policy, please make sure to let us know at the office.
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