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Some of you have expressed concerns about the coronavirus vaccine. Fr. Brendan Dawson is the head of our COVID-19 Safety Team, charged with keeping our parish in compliance with all of the coronavirus precautions. The members of the Holy Spirit Parish COVID-19 Safety Team are: Fr. Brendan Dawson, leader, Pastoral Team; Deacon John Carran, Pastoral Team; Marla Brown, Pastoral Council; Dr. Joseph E. Ross, Healthcare Professional; Dr. Sheila Burick, Healthcare Professional; Rose Butch, Maintenance Team; and Susan Dexter, Communications Team.Read More -
2020 is behind us, and here we are January 2021! Unfortunately, the turning of the clock, the passing of the year has not changed the reality of the continuous battle between good and evil. The church begins this new year always remembering the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. Respect for human life is at the heart of a peaceful society. Why do we still see all this unrest in our country? When the fundamental dignity of the human person is disregarded, there is always injustice and violence.Read More -
On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we have a theophany, the manifestation of all three persons of the Blessed Trinity. The voice from the heavens declaring, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” illustrating God the Father. We have the dove descending from the heavens illustrating the Holy Spirit, and the Son, Jesus Christ, coming out of the baptismal waters of the Jordan River.Read More -
On this Feast of Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation of the Lord. We know the story of the Wise Men, coming to the Christ Child and presenting Him gold, frankincense and myrrh. These gifts are very specific and symbolize something of the nature of the Christ Child. The gold symbolizes that He is a king, frankincense that He is divine and the myrrh that He will suffer and die for us. The fact that the Magi are not Jews, but come from the East also proclaims that the Christ Child has come to save all people not just the Jewish people. He is the Savior of the world!Read More -
On this Feast of the Holy Family, we wish to celebrate the family of Holy Spirit Parish. You are an amazing family and you are doing amazing things in the name of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph! In this special bulletin, you will find a listing of the amazing number of accomplishments you have achieved through your selfless service in the name of Christ. We have tried to make this as complete a listing as possible, but we are sure there may have been a few things we have missed—plus, space is limited.Read More -
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, in the name of the entire staff, I wish to express to all of you a very blessed Christmas which we will be celebrating on Thursday and Friday of this week. A huge thank you to our wonderful staff who have been so dedicated throughout the pandemic and have served me and all of you so faithfully. We are extremely blessed with the personnel we have at Holy Spirit Parish. Our priests, deacons, religious and laity truly are a fabulous team. The caring and concern they have for each other is truly Christ-centered and makes our working together a peaceful and joyful experience.Read More -
This is Gaudete Sunday! We have a reason to rejoice! Jesus is our Savior. He has conquered sin and death! We know these are challenging times. But we also know that as people of faith, we are not alone in facing the challenges of life. Thanks to all of you for stepping up and living your faith by persevering in praying for others and for doing what you can to assist those most in need. Living our faith when it counts is a joyful thing. Now is the time; it counts more than ever!Read More -
Why does the Advent season seem to pass so quickly? Before you know it, we are celebrating Christmas. It seems to me, it is very much like our lives. We are born, we learn to walk, we go to school, and in a blink of an eye life is over.Read More -
On this 1st Sunday of Advent, we begin the new liturgical year and move from Year A to Year B liturgically. That means we will be reading primarily from the Gospel of Mark throughout this new year. On this special weekend, we also begin our new Mass schedule which is as follows: Saturday, 4:00 pm Mass St. Camillus; 4:00 pm Mass St. Vitus; Sunday, 8:00 am St. Mary; 9:00 am St. Vitus, 10:00 am Sears parking lot, weather permitting; 11:00 am St. Camillus.Read More -
How appropriate for us to celebrate this feast of Christ our King. It is a powerful reminder that our citizenship is not in this world but in the next. In spite of all the unrest surrounding the election and the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the McCarrick report, we Catholic Christians should still have great inner peace. You might say, or ask, “Father, how can this be?” It should be and is possible because the source of our peace is Christ and not the world in which we live, or the powers that rule the world.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
