From the Pastor's Pen - Evangelization

Evangelization Formation - We had a wonderful gathering of people who responded to this request. I’ve been talking the last few years about our need to reach out to those around us with the Good News of Jesus, risen from the dead. The harvest is plenty. We’ve done a couple of starts to establish a group in the parish to move toward this; this feels like it will “take”. With over 20 people, we reviewed our efforts, and materials and plan provided by the Archdiocese. Fr. Steve helped us last year to recognize the need to have some training for this work. We began looking at the goals of this work as written by our U.S. bishops, and I’m in touch with the Archdiocese as they plan a new season of sessions to equip us for this work commanded by Jesus: “Go and make disciples of all nations!”

The forms are in church to renew or start receiving the St. Louis Review. There is much that goes on in our diocese every week, besides national and international Catholic news. We get a wide range of questions about our parishes, the bishops’ statements, and the Pope’s movements, that are answered in the Review. For the very modest price, I urge you to sign up to get the local Catholic newspaper and at least browse it every week. You’ll be surprised at how much it answers for you.

Last week we celebrated Catholic Schools Week. I like to think it’s partly scheduled by the feast of my

patron, St. Thomas Aquinas. A lot of activities are held at each school, including an Open House to invite more people to take a look. We had the most people looking at our site out of the 3 parishes. This first year of our All Saints Academy (ASA) partnership, it was good occasion to see how many good things are continuing from our own parish school before, and how many new things are being added because of our part in ASA. We also reviewed the parish’s finances for the year in light of our new

school administration, and it’s a real plus for us that way too. We’ll have a brief report on this next week.