Thank you very much to all who offered their talents and time for the Festival of Carols that is serving as a fundraiser for our sister parish in Caracol, Haiti. It was truly a beautiful event and a wonderful way to share faith with St. Elisabeth Parish. This event was part two of sharing faith and music. They had filmed music by their choir and portions of a Mass that they offered for us in January 2020. This Festival of Carols was our return presentation of faith and music, which we had been set to do in March 2020, but was derailed by the lockdowns of that month. Anyway, praise God for this revival of our more personal sharing and communications with St. Elisabeth Parish.
As of today (Friday, December 10th) we have collected $3,509 from this event ($2,084 from the collection at the event, $550 from donations through offerings received in last weekend’s Sunday Masses collections, and $875 from our parish’s Food for the Poor Champions page). I will let you know our final total after we receive some more offerings this weekend. These funds are designated to help restart the lunch program at St. Elisabeth School.
Thank you for your patience with us as we work on improving and having consistency in the livestream of our liturgies. We have progressed a long distance from when I would simply set up my laptop on a table and record the video from the sound gathered from the church’s speakers by the microphone on the laptop computer.
Now we have a camera that receives its audio signal directly from the various microphones in St. Benedict Church. The higher quality signals have required a higher quality upload speed. That’s why recently you might have seen what was being livestreamed was very jumpy, missing a second or two of video and audio and not having the two in synch. We have begun adding connections for the audio at Sts. Peter & Paul when we bring that camera for livestreaming there.
Anyway, with a lot of trial and error – and learning! – we think we will have a more consistent and better quality of livestream. And as mentioned before, for now we will continue to livestream on our parish’s Facebook page, until we can investigate perhaps a different livestreaming site. The next step for me now is to work on better content (better homilies, at least)!
Please mark your calendars for Christmas Mass times, especially noting the times at Sts. Peter & Paul in Lore City: at 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve and at 10:30 a.m. on Christmas Day. We will also have four Christmas Masses at St. Benedict in Cambridge: 5:00 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve and 8:00 a.m. & 10:30 a.m. on Christmas Day.
May Our Lord Jesus Christ help us to experience the transforming power of His mercy as He helps us to be always ready for the gift of eternal life in Heaven!