Pastor’s Letter for the May 31, 2020 bulletin
Praise God for a weekend full of reasons to rejoice and to ask for an abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit!
Before touching on the 3 main reasons for rejoicing this weekend, I would like to say “thank you” to the many parishioners who have provided gift cards for our rectory household meals over these past couple of weeks. I was indeed blessed to have both Fr. Nicholas Ward (as of Friday evening, May 29th!) and Jeremiah Hahn residing in our rectory here in Cambridge. We were also able to host Deacon Michael Fulton of the Diocese of Columbus for several days at the rectory at Sts. Peter & Paul in Lore City. Those gift cards helped to stretch our meal budget and to save some time for meal preparations.
I’d imagine almost all of you could probably list the three (at least!) reasons for rejoicing this weekend.
The principal reason is, of course, the return of public Sunday Masses. While it has been helpful to ease back into things with public daily Masses, it’s still not quite the same as Mass on Sunday – or even Saturday evening for that matter. Again, please note that we will be restricted to 50% capacity of our churches and have roped off or taped off every other row for that purpose. And, if you don’t have your own mask or bandana we will have a substantial supply of re-washable masks by the ramp door. A number of those will be wrapped in individual plastic bags. You can either take them with you to wash and use again or leave them in the “used masks” bag by that same ramp door and we will wash them. Even though muffled by all of the masks, I have enjoyed hearing everyone’s participation at Mass. I love how you can tell that someone is smiling even through the mask!
Secondly, we will be welcoming 5 of our RCIA candidates into full communion with the Church both this weekend and next and celebrating Confirmation for 6 adults at several of those Masses as well. Both Pentecost Sunday and Trinity Sunday (next weekend) are so fitting for praying for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon them for spiritual gifts for building up our Church and world community. Congratulations!
Thirdly, this time of year is also typically “ordination season” in the Church as well. Praise God we have the personal parish connections with both Fr. Nicholas Ward and soon-to-be deacon Jeremiah Hahn. May the Holy Spirit empower them to be joyful and courageous servant leaders, configured personally to Jesus!
FYI, we have just established a YouTube channel for our parish. I still need to figure out how to post the videos that we live stream for viewing later as we can with our Facebook page. To keep things simple, when you go to youtube.com, search for “Christ Our Light Parish, Guernsey County, OH” which is the same as for our parish Facebook page. I have only posted one video there so far, but will soon have many others.
May the Lord keep us protected and healthy and, as always, well prepared for the gift of eternal life!