As many of us enjoy doing spring cleaning and sprucing up our living environments, you can see that we’re very much in the midst of a number of summer fix-up projects around our church campuses.
Two of the three parking lots around St. Benedict Church have been resurfaced and the courtyard parking lot will be next. Before then, we have a couple of other projects that are underway, including fixing a broken drain basin and broken drainpipes that were root causes of water backups along the south wall of the St. Benedict Church basement hallway, former music room, Social Hall and rectory basement. With those water issues dealt with, we can then replace the flooring in much of those areas and liven up our Social Hall as well. That former music room is valuable and much-needed space as we need to have more and wider meeting and classroom spaces.
We also have a couple of roof projects slated over the next couple of weeks, one for the school and the other for the front building (former school building) of the church.
Finally, we’ll be preparing the playground for the beginning of the school year as well.
Again, we’re trying to be cautiously optimistic with some groups beginning to meet again. Our local “conference” of the St. Vincent de Paul Society has been both serving people in need in our area mostly by phone and fax and email and meeting for the spiritual formation of our parish volunteers. The Knights of Columbus local “council” has met a couple of times in person spread out throughout the Social Hall for monthly meetings after having conducted those meetings by conference calls in April and May.
Our Pro-Life Committee, which is always open to new members, is likewise planning for its first meeting since the beginning of March. They are working on plans to assist with voter registration for this year’s upcoming election. Please look and listen for information about their meetings because, again, we will have need for many active volunteers for the election.
The Bereavement Haven is meeting this weekend at 2:30 p.m. in the St. Benedict Social Hall on Sunday, August 9th. The topic or focus of each month’s meeting is an independent theme, so anyone can always participate either for the first time or after some time away without needing to “catch up.” For example, this month’s meeting will read and reflect on Chapter 5 of the book, Finding a Loving God in the Midst of Grief. Additional copies will be available so that anyone could participate. This chapter considers the various feelings and emotions we have in our relationship with God in the midst of grief that are not unlike those described between Job and God in the Old Testament Book of Job, even when they include anger.
Finally, the group that is developing our twin parish relationship with St. Elizabeth Parish in Caracol, Haiti, is adapting plans to the current COVID-19 situation. We had hoped to conduct an “evening of sacred music” concert as a fundraiser. And, the folks in Caracol have completed their part of the concert by filming their parish and choir while offering a Mass in February. Because of the persisting virus concerns, we have re-scheduled this concert until Lent 2021. However, please see the bulletin and our website as we post information about specific people of that parish and their very challenging circumstances, made even more dire at this time: no running water, no local health clinic, and subsistence-level food supplies.
May the Lord keep us protected and healthy and, as always, well prepared for the gift of eternal life!!