My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This weekend is the national celebration of Catechetical Sunday. The word “catechesis” refers to the teaching of the faith, and this weekend we are introducing a new approach to lifelong faith formation throughout our family of parishes. For the next year, formation for all ages will focus on a shared theme: Loving God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength. This topic will be explored with students in our religious education programs and school, and with adults during faith formation events and in parish bulletins and emails. There is also a new Faith Formation Guide which has more details and can be found in the narthex. This new Faith Formation Guide will present all the offerings that you can get involved in.

As part of this parish theme, we will begin Masses with a new parish prayer to Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength. This prayer will be prayed as a start to our Masses beginning this weekend.

You will also notice that our bulletin this weekend has a new layout that presents the offerings of our Family of Parishes.

Mary Our Queen hosted the Fall Festival last Saturday beginning with an outdoor Mass at 4pm. I am grateful for Dave and Angie Mills for chairing our Fall Festival and for all our volunteers who made our Fall Festival a success.

We started a new Alpha program at St John Vianney on Tuesday, September 8 from 6 to 8pm. Alpha is a series of interactive sessions designed to explore life, faith, and meaning in a friendly and open environment. Each session features a meal or refreshments, a talk, and an open discussion where you can share your thoughts or just listen. It is free to attend and open to anyone who is curious, regardless of their background or beliefs. Please join us.

We have also begun a new OCIA session (previously called RCIA). If you or a loved one or perhaps a friend is interested in learning more about the Catholic Faith, kindly call Ann at 402 578 9846 or email ocia@moqhurch.org for more information. Our OCIA program meets every Sunday starting at 9am..

Our Religious Education Program at both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen began on Wednesday September 9. It is still not too late to register your child for the program if you have not been able to do so. Please call our Parish Office for more details.

I am looking for a few gardening angels to help us maintain various mulch beds on our campuses of both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen. We do our best to make it easy to maintain our grounds with spring and fall cleanup and growing plants that are perennials. However, there some of our mulch beds are prone to weeds that need some pruning during the course of the year. There will be a signup genius in the next week or so that will indicate the areas that need some TLC. I hope that you will be willing to make time to help us keep our Parish grounds beautiful.

I am also hoping to plant some new trees at both St John Vianney and Mary Our Queen campuses. If you are able to help us defray some of that cost, I would appreciate it.

Blessings,

Fr Marc

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