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October 14, 2020Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus responds to the Pharisee’s question, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar?” with a clever response. Jesus asks the Pharisees to produce a coin for him. This, in of itself proves problematic for Jesus’s questioners. Money was a tricky subject for the Church officials of the time. While they all needed coinage to go about the business of daily life, the coins, with their image of Caesar and the inscription “ Son of God” went against the first commandment to “have no other gods beside me” (Exodus 20:3). Yet Jesus simply responds to his critics by saying that it is up to all of us to live out the word of God in our lives, to give to the world what belongs to the world and to “God what belongs to God.”
Our Holy Father, Pope Francis has encouraged the Church to have a collection this weekend for The Society for the propagation of the Faith. This is Holy Father’s Chief missionary arm, providing resources for more than 1150 mission dioceses the world over. The special second collection will go towards the support of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in their efforts to train some 80,000 seminarians preparing for the priesthood and about 10,000 men and women preparing to serve as religious brothers and sisters. Please go online or use your parish envelopes to contribute to this collection.
Open our Hearts: a Pastoral letter on racism was released in 2018 by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. The USCCB describes this letter as “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and it corrupts the souls of those who harbor racist or prejudicial thoughts. The persistence of the evil of racism is why we are writing this letter now.” I am challenging every one of our parish to go download this letter and review it. Please go to parish website and click directly on the banner/ tile named “Open our Hearts” and it will take you to the pastoral letter.
Copies of the FY 2019 - 2020 financial report and the 2020 – 2021 Budget report are in the Narthex and or online at Sthyacinth.org.
I need to address the approximately the over 1044 registered families here at STHY that we have no record of your giving to the Church. We do acknowledge that many are giving to the Church through the weekend collection; however, STHY needs you start using your envelopes or move toward electronic giving. In this way we can account for all those who are a part of the parish that are truly giving and it is an expense of the church for envelopes to be mailed to registered families. We currently spend close to $10K a year on offertory envelopes and if we could use our electronic giving, this would reduce the expense of mailed offertory envelopes dramatically.
We are living in constantly changing times, but two things that are not changing are our devotion to our parish and it's needs. We know many of our lives have been turned upside down in the last 7 months. The STHY has been too. We need, same as you, to know what's coming in so we can budget what goes out. I'm asking you to give DIFFERENTLY. By going to the website and signing up for RECURRING online giving, you let the parish know we can count on your support weekly. Register for Online giving at https://membership.faithdirect.net/TX526. Thank you the time is NOW and the need is CRITICAL.
Finally, registration for Faith Formation classes is currently happening. All classes for all grades will be offered online through January 2021. Families will be able to work at their own pace as they follow the online home study material that will be provided. To register please go to https://sthyacinth.org/student-registration. Thank you for your patience as we seek the best ways to serve the young people of our parish
God Bless,
Fr. Reginald Samuels