SOLEMNITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, KING OF THE UNIVERSE

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Next Sunday we begin a new liturgical year with the First Sunday of Advent. Rather than giving my usual weekly reflection on the scriptures, I would like to give an end of the year report on all the great works the Lord has accomplished this year in spite of the pandemic and other stressful circumstances the world, the flesh, and the devil throw at us during this difficult time within which we currently are living. In March, we were all shocked by the arrival of the Corona virus pandemic. We were told to stay home and stay safe. That required us to be creative and figure out how to remain connected as a community of faith. I am so grateful to God for the heroic response of the parishioners of St. Scholastica. We had just elected a new Parish Pastoral Council. It had only met once before the shutdown. We were only one day away from our parish visioning day. It too was shut down. We had just hired a new worship coordinator. He only played one Mass publicly before going all virtual. We had never livestreamed a Mass before at St. Scholastica, so we experimented with pre-recording Mass on Saturday mornings for a while before we figured out how to livestream Mass. When we finally attempted to livestream, I was tethering my cell phone “unlimited” mobile data with my laptop computer until the “unlimited” data ran out halfway through my homily at the Easter Vigil. We have come a long way since then. I am humbled by the heroic sacrifice our Parish Pastoral Council, Pastoral Leadership Team, and Finance Council have made over the past 8 months! At out first Zoom meeting together, I asked the question, “what are the most important needs of our people right now and how can we respond as a parish to those needs?” We started calling parishioners. We listened to their concerns. We did our best to continue to love and serve our community along the way. It was a very steep learning curve for all of us! Today, I am so happy to report the amazing accomplishments you all have made over the past 8 months. • We baptized three youth and one adult, received two youth into the church, and confirmed one adult on Pentecost! • We finally had our parish visioning day and the Lord gave us the following vision: “St. Scholastica Parish exists to be a Holy Spirit-filled beacon of God’s love guiding all into a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ.” • We had a 4-week refresher course for parishioners who previously discerned their charisms two years ago with Fr. John Paul and wanted to confirm their primary charisms. • We are in the middle of a 9-week course on discovering our charisms which will run through the end of January. We have parishioners from St. Scholastica, St. Juan Diego, and Corpus Christi Parishes attending. • We have a newly formed Homebound Ministry that will begin to reach out to those who have not been coming in person to Mass but still want to receive Holy Communion in their homes. This ministry will also be assessing many other needs of those who are confined to their homes at this time. • We recently hired William Harrison as our new Worship Coordinator. He has already been an incredible blessing. I have personally been deeply moved by his Sunday worship and always leave Mass filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit. He has incredible plans for our future and I cannot wait to see how God plans to use him to continue to bless us! • We have a new website www.scholastica.church. It has broadened our ability to reach people more effectively both in the parish and outside of the parish. • We will begin weekly faith formation for children and adults every Sunday from 2 to 3:30 pm. We are calling it Family Time with Jesus. This will be done at home through Zoom. The adults will be watching a video and discussing the content while the children watch a separate age appropriate video and discuss the content. At the end, we will all come together to share what we learned. All are welcome to participate in this weekly opportunity for faith formation. • Thanks to Cheryl Sanders and other volunteers, we recently had a clothing drive to support St. Vincent DePaul. Over 100 cars arrived throughout the day to drop off two full garage bays of clothing. • We will be upgrading our sound system to drastically improve the quality of sound in the church. Part of this upgrade will include technology that will allow the hearing impaired to listen through headphones on their person. • We will be installing cameras in the church to capture our liturgies and other worship experiences to be livestreamed through our website, Facebook, and YouTube. • Our parking lot is scheduled to be completely replaced by December 1st, 2020. These are only a few of many blessings God has bestowed upon us as a parish community in spite of the pandemic. With God, anything is possible. I give God thanks daily for each of you and ask Him to wrap you in His mantle of protection. To God be glory and honor now and for all eternity!

Amen!

Fr. Jim Lowe, CC