From the corner office for Oct. 2, 2022

From the Corner Office is Father Mike's weekly bulletin column.

The Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time brings us to a few “cross-roads”. We need to first ask, “Do we say anything or would we feel better if we didn’t say anything?” The First Reading from the Book of Habakkuk laments on the injustices to God for all of the violence, destruction, and discord. Even in St. Paul’s Letter to Timothy we hear this sense of a lamentation since Paul is reminding Timothy of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to give him (them) strength. We can imagine Timothy in his group evangelizing and out on missionary trips, and here is St. Paul sending the group letters of encouragement – from his cell! Jesus, in the Gospel Readingfrom St. Luke, encourages us to keep at it, and “increase our faith.” But this brings us back to the “cross-road”. Do we say anything or just let it all pass, our challenges, struggles, and hardships… I say, we talk to God in our prayer time, get it off our chest, and we’ll see that we’ll feel better and know that we are deepening our relationship with God by our honest prayer time.

Fr. Mike

From the Pastor’s Desk:

Good news ~ and Bad News… The Good News is that the Diocese approved our annual financial report which the parish business manager submitted for review. The Bad News is that I need to present it to the parish and “try to explain” it all. We will be working this week to see how best to explain things so as to be totally transparent. We still continue to have “challenges of the past” to deal with, and each week something else seems to fail or stop working, but it is all good and we continue to move forward.

I think it is very-very important that we be overly appreciative for the good that we do, the blessings that we have, and the right path to doing better that we are all on as a parish. Without the generosity of yourselves, as the benefactors to St. Thomas More, this would not be possible. We need to thank the hard work of the Parish Pastoral Council members both past and current, and the Finance Council members. Additionally, I want to mention an appreciation for the rectory office staff for their help in gathering the numbers for the year. Stay tuned for the forthcoming annual report.