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August 7
Congratulations to Patrick Neve, our youth director. Patrick and his wife, the former Phoebe Johnson, were married by Fr. Anthony Sciarappa on August 1, 2020 at Ascension Parish in Melbourne FL. Also, welcome, Thomas Belsterling, our new middle school Faith Formation Coordinator who provided the following information.Read More -
July 31
AUGUST! Can you believe it’s already August? And we are STILL struggling with this coronavirus pandemic! I don’t know what’s worse, the pandemic or the political turmoil as we gear up for a presidential election? One thing is for certain, these are very surreal and challenging days! My sincere gratitude to all of you who are remaining faithful to the Lord and assisting your neighbors. I am particularly grateful to those of you who stepped forward to help serve our parish. This parish of Holy Spirit is extremely important to this community. You provide not only a source of spiritual hope and inspiration, but also many corporal works of mercy from serving thousands of families over these many months through our food pantry, to thousands of phone calls made to all of our registered parishioners as well as the many cards sent to those who are sick or grieving the loss of loved ones, to many sacrifices so many of you have made to support our parish financially and through other in kind donations!Read More -
July 23
Holy Spirit Parish has 59 parcels of property and 29 buildings! As you know, we have followed all the regulations and guidelines to divest ourselves of St. Lawrence site and property given the unusable state of St. Lawrence Church. The church was not able to be used for the past four years. With our council’s approval and the approval of the bishop, the property has been sold to Gary Pezzuolo. Gary is a lifelong member of the parish and lives in Hillsville. We are very grateful to Gary for all his assistance in what is a very difficult reality for everyone. Of course, all the sacraments celebrated there live on in the lives of everyone touched by God on those premises. We are very sensitive to the fact that all our properties, especially our churches, have significant meaning in the lives of our people. We do not take this lightly.Read More -
July 17
It is hard to believe that we are already in the middle of the month of July! I know that we, as a parish, are very excited about the newly established Holy Spirit Academy and our prospects for this coming school year. Here is an update from our principal, Ed Sharbaugh, regarding Holy Spirit Academy.Read More -
July 9
Congratulations to our First Holy Communion children as we begin to celebrate this wondrous sacrament with them this month. Because of the Covid-19 restrictions, we have to celebrate several First Holy Communions and are not able to do large classes as we have in the past. A huge thank you to our catechists and parents for their tremendous service to the children in preparing them for a sacrament. And for their cooperation in accommodating the schedule brought on by the virus. Watch the bulletin and the website for photographs from these various ceremonies.Read More
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August 4, 2019 Holy Spirit Parish in action
This week, beginning on August 7th, the first major festival of Holy Spirit Parish will begin and continue for four days! A huge thank you to everyone who has donated, volunteered and assisted in any way in making our first festival a reality! Special thanks to the festival committee which has worked for many months pulling this all together. It is a wonderful event of fellowship and fun for the entire community. None of it would be possible without many hours of volunteer help and organization. We give thanks to God for his many blessings and also for the gift of each other. See the schedule on our cover page which highlights the food special of each evening as well as the entertainment.
This past week, Sr. Annie led a summer work camp for girls in the parish of Holy Spirit. Three sisters of St. Francis and nine young teenage girls spent the week doing service projects at the parish sites of Christ the King and St. James. They also helped at the wonderful, young people’s and families’ picnic at St. James site this past Sunday. They washed tables down at St. Vitus for the upcoming parish festival and they hosted a pro-life baby shower with over 100 women and girls who came with gifts for Alpha & Omega and Catholic Charities. They ended their week visiting the Franciscan sisters in the Wexford area.
There was a fabulous family picnic for the young families of the parish hosted at St. James site this past weekend, Sunday, July 28, from 1 to 5 p.m. Thank you to Rose Butch for organizing the Holy Spirit Family Gathering and its activities, and all her volunteers, especially the core crew of Ilana Ilongo, Heather McCosby, Amy Chornenky, Jean Pascale, Joe Mercurio, Pete Pascale, Doug Butch, Lorrie Millette and Chris Baker, who got drenched in the dunk tank. See page 12 for pictures and more information. We look forward to having many such celebrations to get the families with children to know one another! Look out for their next adventure. Rose is already planning for a September 29 event from 5:00 to 9:00 pm.
God love you,
Fr. Mac
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July 28, 2019 Strategic Planning has begun
A few weeks ago, I invited all the interim Pastoral Council and Finance Council members, and some folks who have expressed interest in participating on these councils, to come to a very important strategic planning meeting on Saturday, July 27. This meeting took place from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm in McGurk Hall at St. Camillus. Facilitating this endeavor was consultant, Tom H. Murray.
Mr. Murray, founder and principle of Wexford Run Consulting, assists executives and senior managers with strategic planning, marketing, product management, and M&A activities. He leverages his expertise, structured approach, creativity, and coaching style to help executives and their teams create and implement growth initiatives.
Tom is a proven executive with over 20 years’ experience in high tech strategic planning, marketing, and product management. He has worked for high growth firms, both domestically and internationally, ranging from start-ups to multi-billion dollar organizations. His accomplishments include identifying and justifying strategic acquisition and OEM relationships, developing over 40 strategic analyses/proposals, managing over 15 product lines, conceiving and developing a $100M+ product line, and establishing the marketing foundations for two start-ups.
Mr. Murray is also an adjunct professor of Strategic Planning and Product Management courses at CMU's Graduate School holding a BSEE from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.
Over several hours, he guided us as we studied what it means to be a parish, developing our purpose and our goals as a parish community. In addition, we explored and examined all of our resources and how best we could use them to achieve our goals.
My hope is that after going through this process together and refining it with the leadership team, we will be able to come to all of you as a whole and go through the same process together to glean your input, insights, wisdom, and suggestions. We will host town hall meetings to ensure transparency. Please watch the bulletin and the Holy Spirit Parish website (see note below) at www.hsplc.org for announcements of these upcoming meetings.
God love you,
Fr. Mac
