Pastor's Message

Pastor's Message - June 8, 2008 (audio)

Dear friends of Saint Mark Parish and Visitors:

It has been my custom here and in previous assignments to deliver a "State of the Parish Report" about this time each year. The development of internet communications, our web site, and the Annual Report posted there after each calendar year has given me reason to re-think the verbal report and maybe this spring's celebration of my anniversary is just giving me an excuse; but I have put it off this year.

But before you leave today, I do want to report something and announce an accomplishment that has been achieved by your growing sense and acceptance of Stewardship as a way of life. The construction debt on this building is a tremendous burden that has limited us in many ways. When the entire collection for two Sundays every month goes straight to payment on the debt, there is little to work with for other needs. Yet because the buildings are new there are few repairs to make and so we get by because nothing big ever breaks. I worry sometimes about the future as the place ages and we incur great expenses in maintenance. For that reason, it is important to stay on top of our debt. We do that because 20% of you make a consistent and serious effort to do your share and more. We have steadily worked away at the debt month by month, and this year, it will be reduced to $3M from the $5M when I came. In 2010 we shall renegotiate the loan, and at that time, I hope to make a one time payment on the principal reducing the entire debt to less than $2M which should be reasonable for a parish this size. Therefore it is necessary to budget expenses less than income so that we shall be able to save toward that big one time payment in 2010. We are doing so, and the Annual report on the web site will show this fact.

Last year I challenged this parish to an act of mercy and greater stewardship suggesting that as a parish family we should tithe just as each of us should tithe individually. I proposed that we adopt a Mission project in the third world, and with the help of Catholic Outreach, Cross International, a group of us selected an orphanage in Haiti called "Project Hope". Tomorrow, we shall fulfill that pledge because you were generous. I will send $10,000 to Cross International who will in turn send those funds to Father Marc in Les Cayes, Haiti where more than 800 street children find refuge, food, clothing, education, and hope. Father Marc may some day come here to St Mark Parish to meet us. He is a retired Navy Chaplain who during his service in the military saw the poverty of Haiti while stationed at Guantanomo and could not rest until he found a way to help. He founded Project Hope in 1998 with a soup kitchen and small shelter and school for 15 children. Today it is an entire village, and more than 800 children are there to escape the poverty of that place, the disease, and its hopelessness.

This will be our place in the future to show mercy and compassion beyond the limits of Cleveland County. Someone said to me last week that we need to take care of our own, and I said: St Vincent de Paul Society does that quite well, but after our Baptism, and once we become the Body of Christ, those children are our own as well. There are no boundaries to mercy. I challenge you in the face of our own troubled economy to test the Lord's goodness by even greater stewardship with the gifts entrusted to you by God. Don't hold back from God. God will not hold back from us. Next year our commitment to Project Hope should be even greater as we grow to know them and love them. Today they are strangers tomorrow they are our own. Next year or the year following, I will arrange a Mission Trip to that Village in Haiti. At first it will be a limited adventure; but not for long, I hope.

In the meantime, our commitment to the catholic education of our children will grow as our parish share of the school expenses increases significantly next budget year in order to hold down tuition increases. I personally hold out the hope that once you have known the conversion of life that is recognized as true Stewardship and tithing we shall be in a position to offer free catholic education to every child in the family all the way through High School. That can happen but it takes time, faith, gratitude and commitment. My question is: Do you have that?

So for now, the State of the Parish is sound. We have grown slowly but steadily. We are now 1274 families an increase of 29. Actually 129 new families came, but 100 families moved away or got mad about something and left. Our average Sunday attendance is 1395 which is something of a disgrace since 1274 families ought to mean an attendance of something like 3822 per Sunday thinking of three persons per family. This is a matter for our serious reflection. The rest of the story is told in the Annual Report as this parish obviously responds again and again to the needs of the others through St Vincent de Paul, Food For Friends, Daily Bread, Birth Choice, and the Charitable Works of the Knights and the Ladies. Our Education programs are strong but need further development that can only come from presence, participation and involvement: by these I mean our Youth Ministry Program, Religious Education Program and All Saints School.

The gym will be built in the coming year. The raising of funds has brought this project within reach. It will be a facility very available and useable by this parish. There will be a St Mark night reserved for our use, consequently the help of the whole parish for this project benefits everyone. We are close to signing a construction contract, but we must pay cash for this building all the way, and the dept service on the construction of the school will not permit additional loans. If you have passed up a request to help, give it a second thought and enjoy the knowledge that you made it happen.

With this I send you forth for the week, hoping that next Sunday you will join me in thanksgiving and crowd into the 11:00 am Mass with my family and friends from other parishes and out of town. I am not just grateful to God for the opportunity and the gift of these 40 years. I am grateful to you for your patience, your encouragement, and your response to the call of God I am privileged to deliver. I do not know how to tell you how grateful I am other than by simply showing up week after week and giving you the best I can. Let us pray.