My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We celebrate the Third Sunday of Easter this weekend. In the Gospel reading we hear an account of Jesus appearing to two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus. In the Resurrection narratives, unless Jesus reveals himself, he is not recognizable. In this case, how Jesus reveals Himself is in the breaking of bread. The revealing of Jesus to His disciples is to build them up and prepare them for their future ministry which is why when He was speaking to His disciples the two disciples felt their hearts burning within themselves as He opened the scriptures to their lives.
This Sunday, we will be celebrating First Communion with our Second Graders at St John Vianney. Last Sunday, we celebrated with our Second Graders at Mary Our Queen. We invite you to keep our Second Graders in our Family of Parishes and their families in your prayers. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our Catechists, our Religious Education Directors, Kelly Peklo and Leia Vranes, and all who were involved in journeying with our Second Graders as they make their First Communion.
We are in the midst of finalizing our budgets for both Mary Our Queen and St John Vianney. Once our Finance Committees at both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen have finalized our budgets, it will be presented to the Parish Councils for approval. Our budgets will be published in our Bulletin sometime in October together with the end of year reports. Our Financial year begins July 1st and concludes on 30th June the following year.
One of our priorities at Mary Our Queen, now that we have improved the benefits and insurance for our staff, is to focus on the compensation of our teachers. We have fallen behind our neighboring Catholic schools and our local public-school districts. This gap is not just a number—it presents a growing challenge to retaining the outstanding educators we have and attracting new talent to our school community. Our hope is to invest in our teachers who have provided strong academic growth that helped define our School.
The main priority for St John Vianney is to retire our Parish debt that we incurred with the renovating of our Church and the building of our narthex, offices and Parish Hall. We have come a long way in bringing down our debt with the Capital Campaign initiated by Fr Reiser through his Christ in His Glory with all the Saints Icon series.
We continue to make improvements and updates to our Parish facilities. There will be more projects that will be mentioned in my Pastor’s column the next few weeks for our Family of Parishes.
Also beginning this fall, we will be publishing the activities and financials of all the major groups in our Family of Parishes. This will provide details on all that they have done and continue to do for us. It will also provide an opportunity for anyone who is expressing interest in joining, but hesitate due to uncertainty, to be able to learn more about our groups and programs so that you are able to make the right investment of your time, heart and faith.
Blessings this Easter Season,
Fr Marc
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