Diary of a Parish Priest

Would You Believe?

As you may know, our school children are being escorted to Eucharistic Adoration on Wednesdays during class time once a month by grade. Their prayer time is brief, 15 minutes or less for the younger grades, longer for our older students. By now, all the grades have had one turn at a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. 

Last week, during a routine visit to the fourth grade, I asked the students whether they liked the Eucharistic Adoration or not. The nearly universal response, "yes" surprised me a little, but what the students said nearly bowled me over.

When I asked about what they like most, nearly all remarked on the stillness and the silence. "It was peaceful and reverent," said one girl. Another girl confided that she cried when she prayed for her dead pets. One boy exclaimed that for the first time in his life, he "really felt close to Jesus."  "Yes, yes," added another young man, "it seemed like only me and Jesus and the people I prayed for were there; everyone and everything else kinda disappeared." 

I wondered how long 15 minutes seems to 4th graders suddenly immersed in 15 minutes of silent prayer and asked if anyone thought it was too long, or they got bored. "Father," chided one student, "how can you get bored when you're talking to Jesus?"

I'm not making this up!! Stay tuned for more Eucharistic miracles.

Join us at adoration on Wednesdays from 9 AM to 4 PM. 

Church Project Update

Terence Curley from CCS has been on-site every day for the last two weeks and will continue with us for serveral months. This week we selected individuals for our Campaign Executive Committee and will be extending invitations to those individuals within the next week. Our architect has submitted a list of potential memorials in the expanded church and courtyard; this will be compiled with a list of memorials already taken to create a comprehensive list of memorial donations.

The "Lift High the Cross" campaign is being formally closed. Those donors with outstanding pledges will be asked to either complete their pledge, or complete a memorial inscription for the amount already donated. The final inscriptions will be entered on the memorial donor wall by the end of the year. Thank you to all who donated to this important campaign.

Executive summaries of the Capital Campaign Financial Planning report have been mailed to study participants and parish committees. The summary will be posted on this blog next week and will be included in the parish bulletin.

This weekend the parish annual financial report will be available after all the masses and at the parish office. This report summarizes the financial statements for both the church and the school and represents the diligent efforts of our parish and school finance committees, our business manager and our accountant. 

 

For the Beauty of the Earth

Thank You and Executive Summary to Study Participants

Thank you to all who participated in the Financial Planning Study, including all those who completed a questionnaire at mass. Today we are mailing an executive summary of the study to the 70 parishioners who were interviewed and will be posting the summary on this blog next week.

Terence Curley, our campaign executive from CCS is already in place at Holy Cross dilengently planning the Capital Campaign.  You may reach him at the Parish Office by phone. If can spare the time to help us in any capacity, please get in touch!

Capital Campaign for Holy Cross Church Approved by Diocese

The Diocese of Trenton has today approved a capital campaign to raise the final installements of funds needed to begin our church construction project! Thank you to all who helped, prayed, dreamed and had faith enough to get us this far over so many years.

Though a challenging task of self-sacrifice and generosity remains before us, the diligence and patience of so many people over the years have put us on the threshold of realizing our dream of a church large enough to serve our parish, but intimate in feel and appearance. Modern conveniences like restrooms wouldn't hurt either!

Recruitment and training of campaign volunteers will begin next week under the aegis of CCS, our capital campaign managers. The final case study and educational materials will be developed using the design plans which will be submitted to Rumson Borough this week for approval. A timetable for the campaign will be developed. In November and December, we hope to begin a silent phase of the campaign to solicit major gifts, with a public phase for several months in the beginning of the New Year.

Depending on how efficiently the planning of the liturgical environment proceeds, and we accomplish the other milestones required by civil and church authorities, we're looking at construction beginning in Spring 2012.

 

Progress Report Church Project

On Monday, the preliminary application for our amended zoning application will be submitted to Rumson Borough.

CCS has recommended a $4 million dollar capital campaign as an achievable goal, with hopes we might surpass it. The bishop will approve the campaign as soon as we finalize the dates and our agreement with CCS, who will also conduct the Capital Campaign. We anticipate silent fund raising in November and December, with formal announcements of the public phase of the campaign in 2012.

Construction could begin as early as Spring/Summer 2012 and have so informed our wedding couples.

Look for exciting news and further details when the Borough votes on our new site plan, and as the Liturgy Committee begins work on the interior of the church design. James McCrery, our architect, will visit to discuss details and help us in the planning stage.

 

 

Financial Planning Study Committee Report Tonight

Just a reminder to committee members and a note to parishioners that there will be a meeting tonight of the Financial Planning Study Committee at which we will receive the final report from CCS.

The meeting is open to Committee members only and begins at 7:00 PM in the Parish Conference Room.

 

The Animal Kingdom is Blessed

This year we had two sessions of animal blessings at Holy Cross: one on Saturday morning for those who work during the week and another this afternoon after school. As usual, the animals and their owners who attended praised God and honored St. Francis of Assisi, received a ribbon blessing and a small bag of home-baked doggie biscuits (all natural ingredients, fit for human consumption!).

 

All the creatures of our God and King were pretty well behaved. It's always touching to see the older and infirm dogs who parishioners bring to the blessings and to see the care our children have for their pets.

 

 

When Hackers Attack Part Deux

Those of us who use the Internet frequently are well acquainted with the annoyance and damage that hackers and those who would use the Internet for nefarious purposes can inflict.

On Sunday evening, a brief interruption in the normal operation of the servers hosting our school website was experienced, reported, repaired and restored to normal service.

I note that it was in March that the last significant interruption in service caused by hackers occured. 

Our internal server's security system was operating normally and continues to do so. If you have a question, or concern, in this instance it's probably not good to listen to your ten year old...call the School or our Parish Business manager.

Rumors can fly faster than Spam.

 

Church Expansion Project Update

 We have received the final version of the report from the Financial Planning Study completed several weeks ago by CCS, which includes analysis of the in-pew questionnaires. Many of the comments will be helpful to us in refining our case study and clarifying select aspects of the history of the project. Committees will also get to work on memorial opportunities along with those already subscribed.

A conference call is being held Wednesdayw with our attorney, architect, pastor and engineer to discuss and finalize the site plan for the project. This should happen this week, since all the study documents for the project have now been completed. Once the site plan is reviewed, our amended application can be submitted to Rumson for consideration and approval.

We have also substantially completed the three requests Bishop O'Connell made of us prior to his final approval of the project: 1) a design with fewer columns and improved interior sight lines from the pews; 2) preliminary indications from Rumson on the likelihood of the plans acceptance; 3) a financial planning study. We are in contact with the diocese to determine the timing and method of resubmitting the documentation of these criteria.

We hope a silent capital campaign can be started in November/December with a formal kick-off sometime after the beginning of the new year.

 

 

Faith Seeking Understanding Resumes This Wednesday Night

Remember that we resume Adult Faith Formation sessions Wednesday night. We have been using Michael Barber's book "Coming Soon" as a springboard to read and discuss the Book of Revelation itself.

We left off in the middle of Chapter 8 just before the sounding of the fifth trumpet.

Eileen in our parish office has copies of the book.