My Dear Friends:
Once again, I want to thank all of you for your pledges and donations to the annual fund for the ABCD campaign. I am always overwhelmed by the
generosity of our parishioners when called on to help the poor and our Church. We’ve passed about a third of our goal already with some donations yet to be processed. We’ll start putting a status “thermometer” in the bulletin next to the collection totals next month when we have an accurate assessment of how much has been pledged as a parish. In the meantime, if you are reading this and still have not made your pledge or donation to ABCD, please fill out the envelopes that are in our pew or by our doorways and place the envelope in the collection basket during Mass. Again, thank you!
Last Sunday, the gospel talked about “going out into deep waters.” This is so important for us not only for our personal spiritual lives, but as a parish as well. We need to go into the deep to discover more about our faith so that we can defend it in an increasingly secularized world which makes our Formation Wednesday series so critical. Over the last two weeks, we have opened up the Catechism and discovered what we believe and how God reaches out to us. This Wednesday, Father Omar will be talking about our response to a God who loves us to no end.
In two weeks, our Formation Wednesday series will have its first guest speaker: Dr. Steve Christie. Steve will be presenting his new book that was
released earlier this month: “Speaking for the Unborn: 30 Second Pro-Life Rebuttals to Pro-Choice Arguments.” It is a brilliant book with highest recommendations coming from some pretty impressive Catholic luminaries such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, Bishop Robert Barron, Dr. Scott Hahn, George Weigel, and our very own Archbishop Wenski who writes: “Speaking for the Unborn is a wonderful contribution to the new apologetics necessary in the ascendant secularism of our post-modern society. It is a great resource for those looking to better articulate their Pro-Life position or to understand the truth about abortion.”
What is remarkable about Dr. Christie is that 18 years ago, he was sitting in my RCIA class in my first parish. His wife was (and still is) a participant in daily Mass and their children were in our parochial school, but Steve had many questions. He had not been raised in any particular religion but wanted to learn more about Catholicism. He started going to Adult Formation classes with the caveat that he probably wasn’t going to be baptized at the end of the year, but hallway through the year, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he did indeed ask to be baptized. I still remember how emotional that Easter Vigil was and how much his wife smiled during her husband’s baptism.
This is what “going out into deep waters” can do to a person. Steve took a risk, asked questions about the Catholic faith (boy, did he ask questions! A LOT of questions!), and here he is today: a published Catholic author and doctor defending the sanctity of human life. He will be speaking to the parish on Wednesday, February 23 at 7:00pm in the St. Theresa School Cafeteria. This is such a critical topic especially with abortion before the Supreme Court again, and human life in all its stages is always something that we as Catholics need to defend. I look forward to seeing you there so I can introduce you to this remarkable man.
God bless you all,
