SUNDAY, AUGUST 24th, 2008
We extend our sympathy to Dan Osterman on the death of his brother, Thomas Moriarty. May he rest in the peace of the Lord.
OFFERTORY FOR THE WEEK OF AUGUST 2-3, 2008:
Envelopes (608) $19,381.50
Loose Checks (26) 42.00
Loose Donations 607.50
Total $20,731.00
May God reward you with His blessings for your continued support of your parish.
MONEY COUNTERS FOR THE WEEK OF AUGUST 24TH –Ken Santo, Tony Ippoliti, Mike Spiers, Dee Gooch.
Congratulations to the families of Maxwell Adamets, Austin and Aiden Aiello, Michael Quinn, Jr., Gage Nommay, and Nicholas Schuyler, who this Sunday were welcomed into our faith community through the Sacrament of Baptism.
Tuition Information
The tuition office will be closed Monday, September 1, through Friday, September 5. September tuition is due on the 5th. Payments can be dropped off at the school office between the hours of 7:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. For questions concerning EFT, contact AJ Alvarez at 875-3322. If you do not remember your payment amount, please contact Debbie at 875-5411 or by e-mail at dippoliti@olphsaints.org by August 29. The tuition office will reopen on Monday, September 8.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults
Are you interested in learning about the Catholic Faith? Perhaps you are interested in becoming a practicing Catholic. If so, RCIA is for you. RCIA begins on September 11, from 7-9 pm in the Life Center. RCIA is a process for any non-baptized adult to receive baptism. It is also the process for any adult wishing to join the Catholic Church from another Christian or other faith denomination. Finally, it is the preparation process for those adults who are already baptized Catholic and wish to receive First Communion and Confirmation.
Pamphlets are available in the Gathering Space on the Countdown to RCIA poster! Come join us!
Parish School of Religion (PSR)
PSR begins on Sunday, September 7. Registration forms are available in the Gathering Space (they are not mailed). All public school students, grades 1-8, are invited to attend PSR. PSR is also the way of preparation for the Sacraments of Reconciliation, First Communion, and Confirmation.
Parish School of Religion
Staff Staff Opening meeting next Saturday, August 23, in the Parish Life Center from 9-12. All PSR staff should have received a letter of welcome in the mail.
Sunday Preschool Sunday Preschool begins on Sunday, October 5. It is for children ages 3 through kindergarten and takes place during the 9:30 am Mass in the school classrooms. A parent open house is scheduled for Sunday, September 28, from 9-9:30 am in the school. Registration forms for Sunday Preschool are available in the Gathering Space.
Children’s Liturgy Team Meeting Are you interested in helping with or teaching Children’s Liturgy this year? This wonderful group of volunteers will be meeting next weekend, after the 9:30 Mass, on Sunday, August 24. This will be an organizational meeting where the calendar for the year will be determined. All are welcome. (Reminder: All those working with children in any capacity must have attended a Protecting God’s Children session and have been fingerprinted.)
PROTECTING GOD’S CHILDREN AT OLPH
A Protecting God’s Children session will be held at Our Lady of Perpetual Help on Tuesday, September 9, at 6:30 p.m., in the Parish Life Center. Register on-line at www.virtus.org.
Sunday, Aug. 24 - A Life Night for Parents only! 6-8pm. Parents, why should you encourage your teens to come to Life Nights? Come, see for yourself!
The first Life Teen Mass of the year is Sept. 6 at 5pm.
Fr. Mike Gribble will return to celebrate the Life Teen Mass with us. After Mass all our high school and middle school families are invited to join us for our Family Potluck and Cookout. Life Teen will provide burgers, dogs, buns, condiments, and paper products. Please bring: a HUGE side dish or TWO, drinks for your family, and lawn chairs.
Trinity of the Innocence, a teen band from St. Coleman's (Washington Courthouse) will perform in concert after the Potluck/Cookout!
Attention All High School Teens! Could you use a $100 Best Buy Gift Card? Call this number for details: 1-888-668-5545. You only need to call once!
Introducing...The Edge
Edge is a Catholic middle school youth ministry for early adolescents in grades 6-8. Edge approaches catechesis to middle-school youth using the Life Teen model. This first year our Edge ministry will be held the first Saturday of every month. Our middle schoolers are invited to sit in reserved pews behind the Life Teen section. Each month The Edge will provide an opportunity after Mass for our middle schoolers to come together into a large-group environment for gathering activities, short teachings, and prayer. Our goal will be to build solid, Christ-centered relationships that allow them to comfortably explore their Catholic faith and make it relevant to their everyday lives. This helps build safe relationships during some of the most formative years of a teen’s life.
Both our Middle School and High School Parents are invited to check out both The Edge and Life Teen at the Parent's Night on August 24. We need all our parents to make these ministries fruitful. Please come and see what our parish offers you and your teen/pre-teen as compared with what the “world” has to offer.
Adult education is BACK!
Rediscovering Your Faith, an adult faith formation class,will be resuming beginning September 7. We will be meeting the 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month from 7-8:30 p.m. in the latchkey/choir room at the church. This year's topics will be listed each week in the bulletin. All are welcome to attend and spend time expanding their knowledge of the Catholic faith. Questions? Please contact Paula Taliaferro at taliafer@earthlink.net or at 871-4238.
Are you feeling adventurous?
The Great Bible Adventure is coming to OLPH! Beginning in September, this well-known Catholic bible-study program will be held the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month from 7-8:30 p.m. Registrations will be taken after Mass throughout the month of August. The fee is $40 per person to cover the costs of study materials. For more specific information about the program, please pick up a flyer in the Gathering Space.
Financial Peace University is scheduled to begin again on Tuesday, September 9, and run for 13 weeks. So mark your calendars for 7-9pm each week up through December 2. Cost for FPU is $100. This covers the cost of your membership kit. For great detail, go to www.daveramsey.com. Kevin and Kathi Lowry will be the coordinators for this session. They can be contacted at 875-1166 or call Karen Cook, 871-5224. Wouldn't you like a little financial peace? To register send a check payable to OLPH to the Parish Office.
Cub Scout Pack 82 here at OLPH will be having their yearly sign up on September 8th in the cafeteria from 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm. This sign up will be for any boys in grades 1 - 4 who are interested in Scouting. Please call James or Angela Allan at 539-8283 if you have any questions.
The Parish Women’s Association "Favorite Recipes" Cookbook is being sold for $15.00 while supplies last! If interested in purchasing one for yourself or a friend, please contact Andrea Adler (305-1108) or Mary Gamble (871-7475).
Laurelville Clothing Collection: On the weekend of August 30/31, the St. Vincent de Paul Society will have a truck at the church for your clothing and bedding donations to help the needy of Laurelville and surrounding areas.
Although most items which function and are in good condition can be used, children’s and teenagers’ clothing are especially needed. Toys (new and gently used) would be appreciated.
Choir News
Our rehearsals will begin on Wednesday, September 3. Bells will meet at 6:00 PM in the choir room. The choir rehearses in the church at 7:30. If you sing in the 12:00 choir, we will begin on Sunday, September 7, in the choir room at 10:45 AM. Please bring a friend with you to join our music making. We need all voice parts. If you know of musical high school students, please encourage them to share their gift with the choir as well.
This promises to be a very special year for the church at Our Lady as well as for the choir. We look forward to the celebration of the retirement of the church debt, which will be marked by a choir concert and reception. This celebration is scheduled for Sunday, November 30, which is the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We hope that everyone can arrange to be available for this special Sunday evening performance. In order to be prepared for this occasion, we will need to put in a little extra time during the early months of the church year in the form of sectional rehearsals. We hope to schedule these extra rehearsals on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Thursdays, depending on what is best for choir members.
Fr. John Swickard
-With thanksgiving and joy the long awaited news is announced, “Habemus bell tower!” (That first word is Latin for “we have.”) By the time this is able to be read, the foundation for the tower may already be in place. This is located to the left of the main entrance to the church, beside the great canopy. Special prayers of thanks to Our Lady for her intercession and many prayers of thanks for those who have contributed toward this effort are in order. Anyone still interested in donating to this project may do so by placing the donation in the collection basket, designated “Bell Tower,” or bringing it to the parish office. The installation costs for the tower will be in the neighborhood of $15,000. This amount is hoped to cover the cost of the foundation for the tower, the cost of the electrical work needed, and the cost of the two cranes that will be used to erect the tower when it is delivered. The latest word from the bell company is that the bells will be cast sometime in September. They have promised to let us know well in advance so that members of the parish who may want to do so may travel to Cincinnati and witness the casting of the bells. The target date for installation has been set for late October if all things go well. The bells will be inscribed with their names, the largest one “Our Lady,” the middle one “All Saints,” and the little one “Holy Innocents.” Those who have contributed will be acknowledged on a framed tribute board that will be placed inside the church on the wall nearest to the tower. Hopefully, this addition to the parish will be enjoyed by many for a long time and will inspire all who hear them to remember the Living God and to rejoice in His love and interest in us shown so wondrously in Jesus Christ. May the bells always be effective at calling many to Christ.
-The great and happy activity of this year’s festival will have passed (for all those who read this on Sunday morning), and the spontaneous desire to thank all those who worked to make it not only happen but be a success once again springs forth. The entire festival experience is most probably one of the best examples of the reality of stewardship that the parish family has, and it is interesting to note that it was happening long before we began to focus our prayerful attention on stewardship as a way of life here. So many volunteers are needed and used to carry out the many tasks involved in the festival. A central group needs to be active for most of the year to insure that the foundation planning for the festival is secure, detailed, and in place. There is always the holy tension whether there will be enough workers, food, good weather, and general participants. There is always the drama, low key most of the time, but a few times of the cliff-hanger variety (one remembers the year when the electrical service was not in place and operative until just before the festival start-up on Friday evening…Yikes!). So once again profound pastoral and parish thanks go to all those who were a part of the festival event this year. May God in His wonderful fashion reward you in many ways in the days ahead. The results of the festival will be declared in these pages in the near future. These results are always put to a good use for the benefit of the entire parish family. Once again, thanks to all!
-The time rapidly approaches when a new year of our religious education efforts here at Our Lady begins. The grade school opens this coming Wednesday, August 20, and the opening has been optimistically and enthusiastically anticipated by many in the past few weeks. God, always reminding us to rely on His grace first, has kept us close to Him in the slow-moving details involved with getting the modular classroom up and running. The extra patience that this effort has called out of many (the entire cafeteria had to be cleaned twice, for example, due to the plumbing needs for the modular) has been an inspiration to the pastor and to many others, making it clear that grace is involved in all that we do for and with one another in the Lord here. New faculty and staff have shown great enthusiasm to get organized and started, and our veteran staff seems recharged and excited about the new school year. Please pray that all will go well this year and that the love of Christ will be more and more obvious in all that we are about. Our great Parish School of Religion (PSR) program will begin its new year on Sunday, September 7. The number of students and the number of adult volunteers in this effort are a surprise to all those who think this program a little one. The students number in the neighborhood of 375, and the adult teachers, aides, and helpers approach 50. In both programs the support and cooperation of parents are essential. Both these programs exist first and primarily to help parents in their holy duty to raise their children as practicing Catholics. Prayers of all parishioners of support for these efforts are essential. Please do not let a day go by that all offer some prayers and sacrifices for the education of our young people in the ways of the faith. Together the task is possible. May Our Lady be the special help and support in this new year of religious education.
-In an effort to help all members of the parish get to know St. Paul better and to open his magnificent understanding of the mystery of Christ for us in this year of St. Paul, a copy of a famous picture of St. Paul has been placed on the wall in the lobby. The original of this painting (that is displayed in a church in the city of Rome and is about eight times bigger than our copy) was done by the artist Caravaggio several centuries ago. It depicts the moment when Jesus makes Himself known to Paul on the road to Damascus. (In this version we see Paul falling from his horse, a detail that is not present in the Biblical account, but one which illustrates the drama of the event well.) Looking at the picture, it seems Paul is about to fall out of the frame into our arms. From the moment of his conversion, Paul never tires of moving closer to the Lord Jesus and is driven by a holy mission to share the mystery of Christ with the whole world. In many ways, he is still participating in this effort from his place in the church (especially the New Testament writings he produced) and his place in the family of saints in heaven. As Pope Benedict explained in his opening remarks for this holy year, it is his desire that we do not come to know who Paul was but who Paul is. The communion of saints is the family rescued from death and living a life that is centered in the heart of Christ, thus the saints are truly alive in the Lord. (The resurrection of the body will make obvious the truth at the heart of the family of saints. In the meantime as we can think about these matters on earth, the saints in heaven are clothed with the robes of the saints until the day the body is restored, made new through the grace of Christ’s death and resurrection.) Under the picture in the lobby, there are booklets available that sketch a novena to St. Paul that can be prayed by individuals or groups in the home. It is best that only one booklet go to each home. As the year progresses, it is hoped that more and other helps will be made available to the parish family as we try to know Paul better and experience with him the depths of the mystery of the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord. May we all invest the time necessary to make the graces opened for us in this year our own and to share them with as many as possible.
-The feast of St. Pius X is celebrated on Thursday, August 21, this week. This great Pope is best known for his lowering the age for the reception of First Holy Communion to the age of reason, 7 years of age. The wonder of receiving the Body of Christ in the Eucharist is a priceless treasure for the little ones as they make their First Communion. For those who are able to remain faithful to Christ in the Eucharist (and how important the help of their parents is in this effort), the love of Jesus takes deep root in their hearts and they can grow into the new way of love in amazing ways. (Some will even have the courage to become priests!) In an age when Holy Communion is not reverenced as well as this should be, the example and love of this Pope can be a great consolation and inspiration. And on Friday, the feast of the Queenship of Mary is celebrated. There is a new order in the world, an order not based on raw power and dominating force, but on the strength of humility and faithful love so beautifully embodied by Our Lady. She is the Queen of a new way of life, humble service, joy in the reality of the other, drawing all together in loving union free from struggling for position and the competitive edge. This feast is one well worth celebrating and taking to heart in the midst of our world that pushes toward selfish concerns and the looking down on others. Both of these feast day Masses begin at 8:30 in church. All are welcome.