Hello friends, 
 
I fear that I don’t have the deepest of thoughts for you on this week’s Gospel, but hopefully I’ll have put something together by the time I have to preach. I do, however, have two things that I’d like you to pray about and consider, one big and one small. 
 
The small one is a request to do your best to get out in front of anointings of the sick whenever possible. I hesitate to even bring it up, because the last thing that Fr. Stegbauer and I want is for anyone to think to themselves, “Father is so
busy, I don’t want to bother him,” when it comes to sacraments or any pastoral need. If you need anointing, call for anointing. If you need confession, call for confession, or come to any of the many scheduled times. We will always do our best to meet these needs whenever possible. It might not always be possible that very minute if it’s not a life or death situation, but we want to be there to bring Jesus to people and people to Jesus. But if you know you or a loved one has an operation coming up and you can get out in front of it, it would be a big help for our schedules. 

Secondly, I wanted to ask everyone to pray for all the families with catechetical age children as we transition into the Family of Faith model of forming our kids. If you haven’t been following the meetings and such, we are moving away from the traditional model of dropping one’s kids off every Sunday for an hour or so and
moving to an hour of formation for the parents and their kids each month so that the parents are better equipped to hand on the faith to their kids. These meetings will be supplemented by community activities that bring together families to celebrate their faith as a group and strengthen bonds in our family of parishes.
Obviously this is a big shift, and I ask that everyone pray that it goes as smoothly as possible so that we can thrive and build confidence in our ability to pass on the faith to the next generation. I appreciate all your prayers, openness, and sacrifices in making this happen, and I’m grateful for everything you do for the family of parishes.