Expect blessings aplenty, In Twenty-Twenty

Dear sisters & brothers in Christ,

I pray that you are blessed and I hope this year is off to a great start for you. With the Advent & Christmas season over we all take a very quick collective breath and then immediately start planning for Lent & Easter. (To be honest, some of us began back in Advent.)

Besides the usual events, like the Fish Fry, we are planning a very special event focused on the life of Jesus Christ. Fr. Tom Santa, who is our local rector, has been working on this for several years. We, along with our parish in Kansas City, will be the first to experience these five evenings of theological reflection on the life of Jesus. It will take place here at St. Alphonsus the week of March 15th. Please put it on your calendar, and I hope you’re able to attend all five nights, if not, please come to as many as you can. We will soon have information online and in the bulletin. Once we do, I would ask everyone to help spread the word.

One of the things we did to help facilitate the changes in our staff was to upgrade the computer in our finance office. Unfortunately, we had a glitch and lost part of the mass intention list. We are in process of repairing it, but it would be helpful if you could help. If you know the date & time of any mass that you have requested please send Kate a note. I am sorry about this, but we are still not sure of what caused it. So far, the mass intentions are the only thing that we have discovered to have been effected by it.

One of the other things we are working on is a central calendar that will incorporate everything that is going on here at St. Alphonsus. If you or a group that you are involved with are planning anything, especially if it is new, please inform the office. As more and more things happen we want to make sure that we don’t have any conflicts and that we know who is in the buildings and when. Hopefully, this will help us better publicize what is already happening here, as well as, making plans for future ministries and events.

One final thing, years ago when I was ministering with Fr. Maurice Nutt, we began developing annual themes to go with each new year. One of our parishioners was really great at coming up with catchy little rhymes. It is something that I have continued to do. Therefore I offer this theme as a sort of mantra for this new year:

“Expect blessings aplenty, In Twenty-Twenty”

In the Redeemer, Fr. Rick