Twenty - Second Week In Ordinary Time - St Hyacinth Catholic Church

August 23, 2022

by Fr. Reginald Samuels

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Christianity is a celebration of humility and lowliness. Christ through the scriptures this week invites us to lower ourselves to understand those that are less fortunate then we are. Only when we humble ourselves will we be able to empathize with others. Christ invites us to follow his example and humble ourselves.

I want to thank everyone for making our 57^th parish anniversary, a wonderful experience. This past weekend was full of fun and fellowship. I hope you all took time to celebrate the life of our parish.

I want to start off thanking Ms. Teresa Reynolds, and the casino night committee for a wonderful celebration of Casino Night. Everyone who attended had a great time and the music was awesome. The decorations for casino night were festive and it really helped with the spirit of the event.

I want to thank Mrs. Palmella Pitman, our director of Liturgy and Music for planning and implementing our Day of Reflection along with Deacon Charles Pitman with his help with the liturgy for the Day of reflection. I want to thank Mrs. Pamela Johnson, Our director of Faith Formation along with our Bookkeeper Mrs. Elena Rodriguez, our Parish Secretary Mrs. Mary Jo Howell, our Maintenance Personnel Chris Hoehn and Dan Seward, along with a host of volunteers and the STHY Youth who made the Luncheon special.

We all need to thank Raul Turner for taking on the task of making sure that the raffle tickets for the Parish Anniversary celebration were distributed, sold, and prepared for the raffle giveaway. I want to thank all the parish organizations who donated their time and baskets for our parish celebrations. I want to thank the Men’s and Women’s ACTS community, Catholic Daughters, St. Vincent DePaul society, Knights of Columbus and all the other organizations who have played an important part our parish celebrations.

Religious Education classes will be starting on September 11^th and now is the time to start thinking about the upcoming religious Education school year. Registration is currently in progress. To register online for Faith Formation classes, go to: https://sthyacinth.org/faith-formation-registration-form.

Remember as well that when you are registering your child for Religious Education classes you can also sign-up yourself to be a catechist or aide. We need a number of catechists to teach our children, from the littlest ones in the early grades on through middle school and high school. We’ll train you and give you all the support you need. The Faith Formation staff is happy to answer questions and get you involved.

One of the principal goals of 2022 is to increase the number of people that are contributing to the Church through our electronic giving platform. We have over 1000 registered families here at STHY that maybe giving to our parish in the Sunday collection; however, we don’t have a record of them using their envelopes or electronic giving. You can enroll for online giving through https://www.sthyacinth.org/online-giving .

For our parish anniversary, we are collecting funds for a Statue of St. Hyacinth. A four-foot custom-made linden wood and painted statue of St Hyacinth will cost approximately $18K. (The handmade statue would have St. Hyacinth holding a monstrance and a little statue of a Madonna with Child). We have placed a special donation box is in the Narthex as well as a picture of the statue. You can give online at https://sthyacinth.org/statue-of-st-hyacinth as well. Soo far we have collected just over $8500 toward the statue. Thank you for your generosity.

Finally, as you are aware by all of the news in our community and throughout the country, there is a severe food shortage and all of the food banks including our own SVDP food bank. For the month of August, our own SVDP, is asking everyone specifically to bring cans of fruits, cans of vegetables and cans of soup. The donation box is in the narthex of the Church. A list of SVDP requested donation items are located on our parish website at https://sthyacinth.org/special-events . Thank you for your generosity in supporting SVDP.