Bulletins

February 16, 2014

The Very Rev. Robert Rippy, the Rector of the Cathedral of St. Thomas More and the priest who serves as Vicar Forane for our Deanery, will come to St. John the Beloved on Saturday, February 22 for the Mass of Installation of a Pastor to begin at 1:00 p.m.

That's the good news.

There will be a reception afterwards.

That's the really good news.

There are within our parish boundaries approximately 30,000 souls whose salvation I must promote in about 14,000 households which I must evangelize.

That's the scary news.

I need your help. To prevent me from going to hell I am asking you to assist me with your prayers and your efforts to reach out beyond our community of 5,000 and seek ways to invite your friends, neighbors and colleagues into the beautiful mystery of a life lived in Christ.

You can invite them to go to Mass or to attend a class. If you see indications that they might be receptive to such an invitation, then please do so. We need to be ready to give an account of the reason for our hope. St. Peter said that. We have to have reasons for our faith in Jesus Christ and we should be ready to explain to other people why we believe what we believe. We also ought to be reliable in not making up a rationale for what the Church teaches and why. Please be ready to respond to a hard question with "I don't know. Let me try to find out and get back to you."

A good first step is to pray for your friends, neighbors and colleagues. A further good step it to ask their permission to pray for them and their concerns. Another step is to ask them if they want to pray with you and then to pray with us.

A wise man once said in Latin "non dat quod not habet". You can't give what you don't have. So a prior step should be our developing our prayer life, our relationship with Jesus and our understanding of what He revealed to the Apostles.

And please don't forget to pray for me.

God bless you.

Fr. Christopher J. Pollard

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