Good morning everyone! My name is Lorne Raymond. My wife, Maria and I have been members of St. John Vianney Parish since 1979. Our three sons were raised in this parish. You have been our parish family for more than 40 years! While we are not likely to make it for another 40 years we are hoping for maybe 20 or 30!! As most of you know, St John Vianney parish was in serious danger of being closed from 2014 up until the arrival of Fr. Obi in August of last year. We have had to fight hard for more than 5 years to keep our doors open. Now we must turn our attention to revitalizing our parish in every respect. This is our chance to prove that we have a parish that is worth saving! I ask you my dear friends: do we want to keep the doors of our parish open? …Do we want to see our parish revitalized?….
Some good news: we have already taken steps in that direction by re-activating our liturgical committee, by encouraging folks to become involved in ministry & community outreach, by identifying pressing material needs within the parish, and by planning strategies to re-energize all aspects of our parish life. While we are very confident in what the future holds for us, the future will not look like what we want for our parish unless we are all convinced to commit to being involved. We are not asking you to change the world, at least not yet, but we are asking you to help change our parish. To borrow words from Fr. Obi, we want to make our parish into the best version of itself that it can be. I am confident that each one of us wants that for our parish family…but…it cannot happen without you. Will you please join us in doing your part to make it happen? Will you help our parish to thrive…and not just survive?
For the moment, we need to turn our attention to a practical side of our parish life. How do we finance the dream that I have shared with you and that hopefully you also share? My focus today is to talk to you about money…specifically about our annual appeal and our weekly offerings. As Catholics, as parishioners of St John Vianney, we have a variety of responsibilities, including financial. We are a part of a Catholic family, not only at the parish level, but also at the diocesan, national and international levels. As such, we have financial responsibilities at all of these levels. Today, permit me to share with you a few things about our weekly offering and our Pilgrimage of Faith appeal.
When we contribute financially in our weekly offering, we are helping meet the needs of our local parish family, St. John Vianney. Those needs range from paying the utilities bill, to buying hosts and wine for our liturgies, to paying the office staff (secretary, custodian, pastor) and more importantly helping to feed Fr. Obi. Our offering helps the parish also in supporting Holy Cross School, Discovery House, the Pregnancy Support Program and St Vincent de Paul Society. We are enhancing and saving lives – lives of children, fathers and mothers through our giving. Thank you. The total cost of keeping our parish running for one year, not including any renovation projects or support to our larger church family, is over $100,000. Every week we require a minimum of $2,000 in offerings but we have been struggling to meet that budget as you can see from the numbers in our Sunday bulletin . If every parishioner or household offers whatever they can to the Lord every week, we will be able to meet our weekly budget. Considering that the cost of living keeps increasing, an increase in our weekly contributions will be helpful.
The other area of financial responsibility that I want to address rests in the needs of our diocesan family. This is where Pilgrimage of Faith comes in. It may interest you to know that every Pilgrimage of Faith donation also has a direct benefit to us! The annual appeal pamphlet mailed out to all families outlines the special needs supported through the appeal and includes such things as Communications (an example of which is our diocesan magazine “The Catholic Mountain Star”), Pastoral Programs (like Religious Education and Youth Ministry) and assistance to our seminarians and retired priests. As Fr. Obi recently shared, we would not likely have him as our pastor were it not for the educational support he received from the Pilgrimage of Faith.
Our 2020 annual appeal officially began last month following the mail-out program from the diocese, which included the appeal pamphlet, a pledge form and a letter from Fr. Obi. That letter outlined our 2020 diocesan goal of $14,400 and speaks of a yet-to-be finalized parish goal. As of last Sunday, we have received pledges of $7,455, which represents slightly over 50% of our diocesan goal. That is a good start and provides us with a strong foundation on which to build as we move forward with the appeal. In recent years, unfortunately less than half of our parish families have contributed to the Pilgrimage of Faith. Perhaps, because people were concerned that our parish was going to be closed. We now know that is not the case. This year, our Committee goal is to substantially increase the number of parishioners who contribute whatever they can to the appeal effort. We are urging everyone to become involved in the appeal. Wouldn’t it be great to have 100% participation from our parish?? I am sure that would be a record for our diocese. Together, let’s commit to setting that record in our diocese.
Please remember the important phrase is “whatever you can”, each household/person according to his financial ability. This is done through prayer as we ask the Holy Spirit to direct us on what to give and to help us meet the other financial demands of our day-to-day lives. God is never outdone in generosity. He surprises us. Thank you for being good stewards of our church family and for doing your part. It is all about sacrifice and love from the heart. Previous years’ donations have ranged from $25 to $1,500…no donation is too small…we all remember the story of the widow’s mite from the Gospel.
There are lots of reasons that could be used to not contribute to the financial needs of our church. One that I personally used many years ago was that while maybe I couldn’t give much money, I could at least give my time. I came to realize that volunteering my time to the parish is essential and is part of my responsibility as a parish member – but it is not a substitute for the financial responsibility we all share. Another one we have all heard is that “The Church is always asking for money!” Folks, that simply is not true! As previously indicated, our church tries to respond to the needs of many different people in many different situations with many different issues and all of that takes money. As mentioned at the outset, I have been in this parish since 1979 and I have been involved in parish finances at various times since then. In all that time, I have yet to see extravagance in how our money is spent here at St. John’s. You don’t have to look very far to see how frugal we are …folks, we use a stainless-steel serving bowl for a baptismal font …and our church carpet is 35 years old and can no longer be cleaned!
In the coming days, I commit to taking some time to review our personal finances with my wife Maria, to evaluate our list of priorities and to ask ourselves whether our church family occupies the position it should on that list. I am asking you to do the same. The answers to those questions are private but I would ask that we all be guided by those answers and that our contributions or pledges to our annual appeal be submitted to the parish office in the next few weeks.
Should anyone have any questions or concerns about our parish finances or our annual appeal, please let us know and we’ll get you whatever info you need. Rest assured that your input is welcome and that we will be keeping you up to date on our progress on a regular basis. Please join us for breakfast after Mass in the hall and take the opportunity to ask any financial questions you may have.
In closing, I thank you on behalf of our local parish family and our larger church family and I leave you with the commitment of Fr. Obi, our parish council, the finance committee and our POF committee that every effort is being and will continue to be made to make sure your donations are well managed. We will insure our focus is on “needs” not “wants”.
Fr. Obi expresses his gratitude to everyone for helping him fulfill his dreams of being a priest in our diocese through your Pilgrimage of Faith donation and your prayers. You are all in his prayers, as well.
Thank you, …please forgive my long windedness, and … may God continue to bless our amazing parish!
Lorne Raymond
Liturgy Committee Chairman
On behalf of the Parish