News - October 2022

Regular readers of this page in our weekly bulletin know that we always present an honest assessment of our parish finances, and our goals for our shared future.

‘A December to Remember' is a catchphrase in a commercial for a brand of cars. However, for us, November is 'A Month to Remember.' November is special for us as Catholics. It is a month for us to remember who we are as a people and who we are as a church. On November 1, we come together to celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints – (a holy day of obligation), a day which hon- ors the more obscure saints and the saints each of us has known. On November 2, we observe All Souls' Day – a day to remember all those who have gone before us. The church has always encouraged praying for the dead.

Remember how the basilica ceiling looked in 2017? We know that the last few years have been especially trying times for our parish finances from a major capital repair perspective. We were faced with the sudden and unexpected need to replace the basilica ceiling during 2017/2018, then to make more extensive than expected repairs to the bell tower during 2019/2020 and now to make extensive repairs to the east and west transepts of the basilica, extending into 2023.

The Gospel of this weekend and last are all about prayer. Last week we were encouraged to persist in prayer, and this week we are offered guidance on how to pray. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus prays a lot. More so than any of the other Gospels, Luke’s is the Gospel of prayer. In his Gospel, there are more descriptions of Jesus in prayer than in all the other Gospels combined.

We talk about stewardship as time, talent and treasure.  Let’s talk about time. COVID restrictions are mostly an increasingly distant memory. Vaccinations are routine, school is in full session, work routines have become more flexible to adapt to people’s desires for more work from home. New experiences are planned and yet we remember the traditional need to return to our basilica for worship...

Every language in the world has a way of saying "thank you." This is because gratitude is an inherent quality that resides within each human being and is triggered and expressed spontaneously in various contexts. Gratitude crosses all boundaries—creed, age, vocation, gender, and nation—and is emphasized by all the great religious traditions.

Here is how our parish campus looked in 1955, when all our buildings had been erected except for the new church. Then, as now, all those other buildings were in heavy use as important parts of a healthy and vibrant parish, including squeezing Masses into multiple cramped spaces in the Keene and Lemont buildings.  Solving that situation was the final piece and crowning glory of our parish’s early years.