Dear St Andrew Family,
Because of your wonderful generosity this past fiscal year, we were able to distribute almost $18,000 in support to the following causes:
¨ Assistance with miscellaneous household expenses
¨ Catholic Social Services food pantry
¨ Assistance with car insurance
¨ Food assistance
¨ Breakfasts for the needy donation
¨ Donations to Saline Area Social Services
¨ Rental assistance
¨ Christmas gifts for needy families
¨ Donation for Fiji hurricane relief efforts
¨ Baby supply assistance
¨ Fuel assistance
¨ Support for Christians in the Holy Land
¨ St. Louis Center Support
Please know that we are so grateful to be able to share these blessings you've given us to share with the less fortunate in our community and in our world. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Dear St Andrew Family,
This week (October 7) we are going to have our First Thursday Holy Hour for Vocations from 7:00-8:00pm. We are also going to be blessing our new statues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the Church at the 9:00am Mass on Sunday, October 10!
The reason that both events are significantly tied together is that we are all called to a Vocation that brings Jesus more into this world. Mary and Joseph give us the perfect example of how to do this and they also help us to realize that it is going to be a difficult journey (rejected at the Inn, exiled in Egypt, watching their Son die on a cross). But the struggles in living a Vocation to Marriage, Priesthood, Diaconate, or to a Consecrated form or life as a Religious Sister or Brother or as a Consecrated Virgin are not signs of failure, but of the call. The call is to the Cross of Jesus where we prove our love for those we are called to be devoted to in a Vocation, whether they be our spouse, our children, our sisters in the community, or our congregation. Only when we truly love these are we truly able to love Jesus.
This is too heavy to bear on our own, and sometimes, those we are devoted to struggle to return our affection and support. That is why statues and icons and stained glassed windows remind us that, when we are together in the Church, especially at Mass, we are not alone in our journey; we are with all the Angels and Saints in heaven!
And when we come together to pray for all of our Vocational calls at the First Thursday Holy Hours, we are also assembled together with all of heaven and before the Lord of Glory whom we adore, and who adores us!
Let us not go it alone on this journey - it’s too hard and there are too many Inns that are not welcoming in this world. But the Church is not one of them, so let’s come together often and become saints together through our Vocations.
Blessings to all,
Fr. John
Dear St. Andrew Family,
This coming week, the priests of the Diocese of Lansing will be joining together in Frankenmuth for our “Convocation”, which literally means, “with the same call.” We will join to encourage each other in the mission of Christ that we share as ordained priests. This will mean that there will be no Mass or Confessions here at St. Andrew on Wednesday, September 29, and no Mass on Thursday, September 30.
This will be an opportunity for us to both thank God for the ordained priesthood and to pray for more men to hear and respond to the call. Please consider coming to Adoration on Thursday, September 30, beginning at 9:00am when Mass would normally begin to thank God for the Sacraments available through the gift of the priesthood and to pray for more priests.
Also, the following week on Thursday, October 7, we will be having our First Thursday Vocation Holy Hour from 7:00-8:00pm. This is an opportunity to pray for all vocations. One that we all share is our Baptism. In Baptism, we are all “with the same call” from God who sends us out on mission. Most of us are called onto further mission in the Sacrament of Marriage, Priesthood, or Deaconate, and some are called to Consecrated Life as religious sisters or brothers or Consecrated Virgins.
No matter the individual call, we together share the gifts of every call. My priesthood belongs to you as much as it belongs to me! Your marriages and consecrations belong to all of us! Every call from God is for the benefit of everyone. Therefore, let’s pray together not only for those discerning a call but also for those living a call. It benefits all when anyone lives their vocation well.
Blessings to all,
Fr. John
Thank you dear brothers and sisters,
I am both very grateful and overwhelmed by the continuing outpouring of love, prayers and support for my mom, Rosemary, and for me and my family at this very difficult time. I am never going to be able to thank all of you enough for the many cards and other offers of prayer and support that you have given so please accept my immense gratitude by way of this humble note.
I know that I join many in losing loved ones recently but I realize, also, that all losses remain even if they are not recent. One thing for sure, however, is that there is a difference when it comes to the loss of a parent, and especially a mother. No matter the things that can make it harder at times to deal with her, she always has a natural devotion and attentiveness to you like no other. This is a gift from God, even if practiced in mom’s human weakness. This gift will never be replicated in this world in quite the same way once she has passed. Therefore, I encourage all of you to strive to be devoted to your parents no matter what you enjoy or struggle with concerning them. Your mom, and your dad, belong to you and you to them by God’s decree, and his decrees are filled with eternal meaning. Devotion to them is devotion to him.
Yours always in Christ Jesus,
Fr. John
We all carry burdens. No matter how old or how young we are, we often suffer from physical, spiritual, and emotional pain. You are not alone in your suffering, nor in your asking for relief.
St. Andrew Parish is beginning a new prayer ministry to help us carry our many burdens. We will entrust our burdens together through the Holy Spirit to Jesus and our Father in heaven. We will pray for and with you in confidence believing that God will hear us and help in whatever way he knows is best, whether that is just to lighten the load or eliminate it!
Our prayer teams want you to know that whatever you are going through, God Loves you and is concerned about you, and so is your family at St. Andrew. The teams will pray for your healing, for your concerns, or for whatever else you want them to pray for.
This opportunity will take place in the Day Chapel on the fourth Sunday of every month after both the 9:00am and the 11:30 Masses. Sunday, September 26, 2021, will be our first offering of this ministry.
May God bless & keep us all very close to him, through the help of each other,
Fr. John
Dear St. Andrew Family,
I want to thank you for all of your support and prayers for my mom, Rosemary, as she took the final steps of her journey on earth.
She passed to the Lord on Wednesday morning, August 18, only moments after she and I celebrated her last Mass on earth.
She loved all of you, without even meeting most of you, and prayed for you all of the time. She often told me that you were my first priority and not to come see her if there was anything I had to do to take care of you.
Therefore, I thank you especially for returning the generous favor to her by allowing me to be a little absent from you in order to be with her in her final days.
She always wanted to be able to offer herself to God just like Jesus offered himself to Our Father. She did not want to be unaware of her passing. God gave her that precious gift and he gave me the precious gift to be right beside her in her offering. And you gave me that gift too.
I hope now that she will no longer need to tell me to attend to you rather than her. My hope is that she and I together will care for you. Her prayers and my hands.
Nevertheless, she would really be upset with me if I didn’t ask you to continue to pray for her and that what I hope for, will indeed be true. Thank you for those prayers and may God answer them all.
Blessings and Peace,
Fr. John
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
On August 4, the Washtenaw County Health Department issued an advisory strongly
recommending masking for everyone in indoor, public spaces. We, as a parish, have been
continuously respectful of all legitimate authority throughout the pandemic. Therefore, we will hold the line for now at where the Health Department has drawn it and are not mandating nor requiring, just recommending mask wearing while inside the Church. We will, however, continue to monitor the situation and will be guided by the Holy Spirit and science for the wellbeing of our parish community.
I would like to remind everyone that the Red Zones (the Day Chapel and the Knights of Columbus room) are currently areas of required masking and distancing. Please do not enter those rooms unless you plan to mask and distance.
I would also ask that we all pray for our St. Andrew family as I am convinced that this Covid crisis is, in some sense, a gift from God. God is giving us a chance (a test of sorts) to practice charity toward our neighbor who may have a very different opinion than our own regarding the direction we should take.
As St. Paul urged us last Sunday in his letter to the Ephesians:
Brothers and sisters: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption…be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.
May God bless and keep us all,
Fr. John