Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time - October 9, 2016

Over the past few weeks, I have used this column to talk about the diocesan initiative On Mission for the Church Alive. So to catch up with a number of other items, I am going to do a hodgepodge of topics today. But first I want to stress again how important it is that people attend the consultations sessions for On Mission on October 25 or 26. These meetings will begin at 7 PM in church, and they are away for all of us to express our thoughts and concerns about the plans that the diocese is currently making. Bishop Zubik wants all of us to be part of this process, so please come to one of those two meetings.

I have to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved in our parish festival this weekend. By the time you read this, the festival will be in full swing or will be over. I’m writing before it actually begins, but I am confident that it is going to be another grand success. So many people work so hard to pull the festival off that there is no way I could have room to thank everyone individually. Instead, I will group everyone together and thank you for whatever part you took in the festival, from set up to cooking and serving to clean up and everything else, including those who just came as customers to enjoy and to support the parish. Thank you for your help with this very successful and important event for our parish.

I also offer my thanks to those who supported “Respect Life Sunday” last week. Our “Life Chain” was well attended, and those who took part had a very quiet and prayerful experience. In addition, our parish offered some very good support to the Birthright collection after each of the Masses last weekend.

I also realize that it has been a while since I have giving you a medical update on some of our priest friends. There has not been all that much to report. Fr. Michael Maranowski has settled in as parochial vicar at Saint Thomas More Parish in Bethel Park. If you ask him how he feels, he invariably responds, “With my hands.” But if you ask him more seriously about his health, he just says that he is taking things one day at a time. Meanwhile, he is fully functioning as a priest and is settling in at his new assignment.

For Fr. Patrick O’Brien, it is also a case of taking things one day at a time. He keeps telling me that he is hoping to come back and resume celebrating Mass for us, though he has not been able to say when he would be able to do that. So currently, we are keeping him on the schedule in case he can return, but each week I consider that I will have the Mass for which he is scheduled. I will let you know if anything different comes up. Meanwhile, please keep praying for him.

Finally, if you notice that the ushers seem to be “lurking” in the aisles during Mass, they are counting people. Each year the diocese requires us to count the number of people attending each Sunday Mass during month of October. The trends in the “October count” over the years is part of the data that has been used in preparing the models for On Mission for the Church Alive.

                                                                                               Father H