Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with Jesus Christ, His Church, and All People Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Advent Goings On New Confession Opportunities. Normally our cluster parishes have a penance service in Advent to provide a communal opportunity to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Due to Covid we are changing it up a bit. We are simply spreading out between the four parishes. On select Tuesdays from 4-6pm all the priests of the cluster will be at a particular parish, and then rotate. Thus providing opportunities for different confessors and spreading the crowd around.

Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with Jesus Christ, His Church, and All People Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Covid Safety Reminder At the time of this writing the governor has put into place some restrictions in order to curb the number of Covid cases in the state. This does not affect churches in any legal sense, and I have not heard of any change in diocesan policy or guidelines. So as of right now, our approach remains the same at St. Paul’s. But here are some reminders: if one is sick or particularly vulnerable or worried about being around others, then please remain at home. It is not possible for us to turn the church into a nursing home or hospital with their level of sanitization.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Sunday Mass Schedule Update As you know the current Sunday Mass schedule is finishing our ten week trial period. Having listened to people’s suggestions during this time, parish council met to discern our next steps. We are deciding to continue offering an Extraordinary Form Mass at 9:30am on Sundays and making it a part of our regular schedule into the future. This leads to the question of how our holy day schedule will be affected.

Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with the Lord, His Church, and All People Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I am writing this on Election Day, so hopefully by the time you read this we will know who our next president will be. Regardless of what happens, many people will be disappointed. I pray that respect for the rule of law is maintained and peace reigns rather than discord and violence. As Catholics we are called to witness to the peace of Christ, which is quite different from the peace politicians try to promise and always fail to deliver. True peace is deeper and comes from an understanding of who we are as made in God’s image, but as fallen sinners we need God’s mercy.