Your Annual Stewardship packets are available in the back of the church until February 18th. Included in your packets are the 2024 Contribution Letters and Stewardship Renewal Forms. Please help us save on postage by picking up your letter after one of the Masses and return the Stewardship Forms to the office by March 21, 2025. Your Time and Talent commitment helps our ministries in their planning for the year. Your commitment of Treasure helps us as we are planning the 2025-2026 budget. Forms may also be placed in a sealed envelope and dropped in the collection basket.

 The 2025 Guidebooks are being mailed directly to your home from Guidebook Publishing. Be on the lookout for them to arrive in the next few weeks.

Thank your generous gifts to SFX on Giving Tuesday!

Thursday, November 28, 2024

In 1789 (only 235 years ago); President George Washington, the second greatest president we will ever have, was the first to proclaim this a day for which to be thankful.  President Franklin Roosevelt, the third greatest president we will ever have, gave us the current calculations in 1939, so people bought their turkeys and stuffed them, or else they went to somebody else’ home, where somebody else stuffed the turkeys.  But there is something more important than stuffing turkeys on Thanksgiving Day, if we are going to give thanks by the calendar in November!  Think about that!  Isn’t that calendar date a kind of “Let’s Be Nice Back to God” Day?

Gratitude Attitude by The Ten Lepers

Human need always laid a claim on the sensitive Spirit of Jesus.  The healing of the 10 lepers is clear evidence of this.  The healing also showed the FORGIVENESS of Jesus. 

Gratitude Attitude on the Personal Level

+ Persistent ingratitude can poison human relationships.  We instinctively feel there is something missing (and draining) in the person who finds it impossible ever to say “Thank You”.  It is very easy for ingratitude to become a fixed response. 

Gratitude Attitude on the Social Level

+ Thanksgiving Day on a calendar is a very appropriate time to be grateful for the blessings of being an American citizen.  But we must be careful of the dangers here: (A) hyper-patriotism [that is to say; giving thanks that we are not like others] (B) not always easy to live IN the world of freedom with a clear conscious.  Freedom can easily be abused.

God, the source of all good gifts

+ No “worthy” Thanksgiving can be celebrated which does not finally express Gratitude to God.

A beautiful card was sent to me this holiday.  It reads:

“It has seemed to me, fit and proper, that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.”

President Abraham Lincoln, THE greatest president we will ever have, wrote that for the National Day of Thanksgiving Proclamation back in 1863… some 161 years ago. 

Still, genuine gratitude has no date, no month, no year. 

It is an attitude that ought to be expressed 24/7…    

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Dear Parishioners and Friends of SFX Parish,

As we commemorate the birth of Jesus, I wish to express blessings and good wishes to all of you in this holy season.  What a treasure it is to be with those we love and how blest we are to have the opportunity to do so.  There are many of our sisters and brothers, especially in the Commonwealth, who are finding this year most difficult because of the loss of life, home and work at the hand of Mother Nature.  We must bond with those who hurt so as to keep Christ’s Light of Hope within sight.  Emmanuel is timeless and lives within everyone through ‘good times and bad’.  A weary world needs to remember that God sent His best effort, His Son, to all generations so that we can move from despair to trust.  He knows how tough it is to do… that is why he sends us Grace so we can move one foot in front of the other.

As pastor, I thank you all for your wonderful support and stewardship of time, talent and treasure that you live every day.  Our ancestors-in-faith see and know what you do in their memory.  How can they not?  They know all things because they now know God as God is.  God does not disappoint… ever.

In Christ the Cornerstone,

Father Dale

Enjoy these reflections during this season of Advent.