Thanks to so many who contributed generously to Holy Cross at Easter, and to those who, with great difficulty are honoring pledges to the Lift High the Cross campaign. The good news of their generosity will soon appear on the Memorial Wall and be announced in the bulletin. For your dedication and honor to your pledge, the parish is truly grateful.
However, as many of you may have realized, the weekend scheduled for the Bishop's Annual Appeal In-Pew appeal was a weather disaster, and even though our appeal weekend was scheduled for a week later, the weather effects were still obvious. Our appeal response is significantly below the last two years.This week shows our total parish pledge at approx. $26,000 which is 26% of our total requested goal.
In fact, contributions to the Church were substantially down for at least three weeks, beginning the weekend of the storm.
Due to the storm, I must report that even the Pancake Breakfast, though it was a social success, barely broke even financially. Only with the donation of all three 50/50 raffle winners' proceeds back to the church did it realize a profit of $500. While the primary goal of this day was building community, the Men's Group also use the proceeds to help fund our bus to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. and the purchase of other materials for those children and young adults who attend the March.
Happily, it appears that Easter contributions were back on track to at least match last year's, though this depends on our receiving the usual number of Easter contributions in the mail within the next few weeks.
The Diocese is a different matter, however, and they have asked parishes who have not acheived 85% of their goal to repeat an in-pew reminder weekend (without the Bishop's video) on April 24 - 25th. Please be generous and make a contribution once again this year, or consider a new contribution if you have never made one before, so that Holy Cross can do its part to sustain the Church of the Diocese of Trenton of which we are an important part. Please be patient with this effort if you have already made a donation and realize we take part in this effort to be faithful to the local diocesan church from which our identity flows.