A Message from Fr. Jay
Dear Friends,
By the end of January, I complete nine months at our parish. I am grateful to our Lord, our Bishop Dewane, all my staff team, and all of you, my dearest people. When I was appointed to this parish, priest friends were happy about the appointment but, they forget to comment on how busy the parish could be with loads of responsibilities. As I read the first reading for this weekend, the words of Job strike me, “my days are swifter than a waver’s shuttle”. But unlike Job, I am joyful this way.
Our world today is busy. We either become busy by ourselves or are pushed to be busy by the obligation and demands of a very competitive world! In the Gospel, Jesus seems to be having a heavy schedule being busy in the morning, evening, late evening, and again, He gets up very early before dawn of the next day. The people are long waiting for him in the early morning expecting healings, and he says to them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages…“ Jesus was always in ‘on the go’ mode. We see the same (good) attitude in St. Paul says in the second reading. St. Paul feels ‘Owe to me if I do not preach the gospel’.
Availability and readiness for God is the spirituality of a person who wants to be His disciple as we read in Ephesians 6/15 “… your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace’.
I would also like to share with you some of the things on which we reflected in one of our recent Pastoral Advisory Council meetings. This parish was canonically established on March 1st, 2002, with Fr. Sullivan as Pastor. Taking three years, we built this beautiful Church in 2005 and initiated all our pastoral ministries, realizing the calling of God. We are proud of our growth, the increased number of families and membership, the number of ministries established to engage every person of this parish, and building them into one parish family. This tremendous work of God was possible with the hard work of Fr. Sullivan and Fr. Bob Tabbert, along with the support of an efficient and loving staff team and Pastoral Advisory Council.
Currently we are in the 22nd year from the establishment of this parish. It is the need of the time that we take another ‘three year plan’ in order to welcome the 25th jubilee year of our parish. The planning will be on strengthening the spiritual and pastoral nourishment of our parish by revisiting our mission, vision, goals and objectives with a specific focus on our younger generation, particularly children and youth of our parish. We are blessed with an efficient Pastoral Advisory Council and Strategic Planning Committee, who are diligently working on this. You might hear more in the coming months. I am sure this will be a great spiritual enrichment for our community!
Let’s continue to be busy like Jesus and his Apostles to bring the Kingdom of God.
God Bless,
Fr. Jay Raju
- Reading 1: Job 7:1-4, 6-7
- Reading 11: I Corinthians 9: 16-19, 22-23
- Gospel: Mark 1:29-39
