Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with Jesus Christ, His Church, and All People
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
St. Paul’s 100th Anniversary Update
     This weekend would have been the closing celebrations of our 100th anniversary year.  As sad as it is, we had to cut many of our events, at least one can say that it was unique and memorable.  Even so we still move forward with faith, hope, and love.  One of our hopes is that now with our new bishop installed, perhaps we can host him here in the near future.  Ideally I think our Feast Day on Jan.25, 2021 would be great!   In the meantime, one of our parishioners, Hanna Lidderdale, has put together a slide show to honor the past year.  The slideshow is on our new parish YouTube channel.  You can access it from our website.
Livestream Moving to YouTube
      Speaking of our YouTube Channel, you will have noticed last week that we switched our live-streaming platform from Facebook to YouTube.  We will still maintain our parish Facebook page, but the live-streaming of Masses will be on YouTube.  One of the reasons is to make the finding and watching of our parish content a bit more user friendly.  Especially as we move forward post-covid, which will most likely involve more video communication, YouTube provides some features that can help more than Facebook.  For instance, if we do faith formation or sacramental preparation videos, they can be posted and viewed more easily. So please subscribe to the St. Paul YouTube channel.
Prayer for the Upcoming Election
     As we move into October, we will be praying prayers for our country as we prepare for the November elections.  In addition I will be posting good resources on our website to help Catholics form their consciences well.  I will also preach specifically on how our Church calls us to approach our responsibilities as American citizens as well as citizens of God’s Kingdom.
Continued Gratitude for Your Generosity
      In these difficult times, even as many are still unable to participate at Mass in person, you still show your support through sending in your offertory envelopes.  You faithfulness to the parish is admirable and appreciated.  We are to continue paying our bills and furthermore we are moving on a project I mentioned a while back: to finish the LED lighting replacement in the church!  We took care of the narthex and side nave lights, but we have to finish the main nave and the sanctuary.  Especially as the days will start getting noticeably shorter, we will need the new lighting.  Thanks to Denis Randall who has helped immensely to make this happen (and to happen in a very cost effective way). The new lighting should be installed by mid-October.  
Last Supper Monument Update
     We had several suggestions about what to do with the monument and Denis Randall explored many of them for us.  There was no interest in it from museums or the Diocese and it is too expensive to move because of its weight.  We  thought Holy Cross Cemetery was interested in taking it as a donation, but they declined and said it is not salvageable due to too much granite degradation and a rotting steel frame.  The quote we had to remove it was $1,400 back in October of 2019.  If anyone has a suggestion of how we can dismantle and remove it for perhaps a lower price, please call the rectory.
 
Sincerely in Christ,
Fr.Pfr