Celebrating with the “Local Church”

Celebrating with the “Local Church”

 

In official “church speak,” the terms local or particular Church refer not to the parish but the diocese – as in the presence of the universal Church in the local Boston area. It is in this spirit of unity with our local Church of Boston that we receive Archbishop Henning’s congratulations to celebrate both of our collaborative parishes achieving our financial goals in support of the Boston Catholic Appeal (BCA), under the theme “Together We Are One.” By pledging 101-102% of our goal, we are covering our fair share of the expenses of the ministries of our local church that serve the parishes and many others our parishes on our own would not be able to reach. To better share the load among our parishioners, though, we should still seek 5 more BCA donors from St. Martha and 23 more donors from St. Mary parishes – otherwise we will struggle in the future when our major donors move or are no longer able to contribute. For those who have given, I personally thank you and our local BCA coordinators for your support; if you have not yet supported this campaign, please consider taking an envelope at the entrances to each church.

 

In our common use of the term local, we now turn our focus to supporting our local parish-es. In light of the major projects announced in last week’s column and of inflation in our ordinary operating expenses, we are starting to prepare for an “increased offertory campaign” in the near future. As the Boston Catholic Appeal is a primary source of funding for the ministries and operation of our archdiocese, the Parish Offertory is the primary source of funding for each parish. Other than nominal kick-back for exceeding our BCA dollar goal, our parishes rely on our support as members of the parishes and others who benefit from the ministries in our collaborative. Please pray for this initiative as we continue to plan.

 

Finally, this past Wednesday we had a lovely celebration of one of our patrons on the Feast of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus – the siblings at Bethany who were friends of Jesus and provided him a place to relax and “be at home” from time to time. While our other parish patron is the Blessed Mother and not Mary of Bethany, this feast celebrating the closeness of these family members provides our collaborative parishes with an excuse to celebrate the many ways that you – our parishioners – continue to live our chosen values of welcome, compassion, love, and boldness by the way you embody the profound faith and also act upon it. Thank you for the way you share your home parishes with visitors, new and returning parishioners, and those who are seeking a closer relationship with God in Jesus Christ. This is the heart of our mission as the Church to evangelize by word and action, and especially as lay persons engaging in the world, you are central to our ability to live and share the Good News of God’s love for all!