Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 10 August 2025

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

These weeks of August are time which we are all getting a sense of what the coming year will look like. We have a list of all the things we hope to do this year, as well as a list of all the things we have to do. We must seriously consider if we have the time and spaces to accomplish all of it. There is never enough time and space. Unfortunately, we have to assign priority to the things that are more important. Our young people carry impossible schedules and we often do not put first the things that are most important.

Prioritize now. Intentionally include in your daily schedules quality family time (not just going from one place to another in the car), and time for prayer (again, not just in the car!). Include time spent in community, too, and build your self-awareness not on your individual performance in accomplishing all of your tasks, but learning how we can accompany each other along the way. Write these things with a highlighter on the calendar alongside all the other things that fill your time, and decide to be as conscientious about them as you are with anything else.

Because of the school year and summer vacations, programs in the parish tend to follow the school year, and we are now coming to that crunch time when everything hits at once. We would like to get a head start on getting you involved in real ministry serving God and others, despite that everyone isn’t back until school starts and demands on your time have already made themselves known.

Please, include worship and parish life in your planning. It may well be your and your family’s salvation.

Take this moment to think about what is really important: being a good example for others of Christian values of honesty, kindness, selfless unconditional love, and forgiveness. Prioritize these. Show your children your goodness so that they will desire to be like you. Share your faith freely in everyday, casual words so that faith doesn’t seem like an extracurricular. Saint Paul was known to say, “Put on Christ.” Well, you don’t have to because, in your baptism, you already have. Your mission in the world is to make him visible. The priest and sister Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales simply instruct: “Live Jesus.”

Although the next few weekends are so busy as you come back from travels and summer programs and get acclimated again to parish life, think now about how you would like to be involved here, where you belong. Make your parish your home, and our people your family. Make your beautiful faith sweet and central to your lives again. Rediscover that wonder you may have known as a child: in that space we are open to hear what God wants to say to us. Allow that openness to be the quality of your daily life.

A lot of preparations are underway this week as we prepare for our Parish Life Weekend September 13 and 14. We will be asking you to take an active, intentional role in parish work. We have been confused in the past thinking that all we need to do is join something that will benefit us, like a Bible study or prayer group. I encourage you to consider how you can become the leader that leads that Bible study or prayer group. Not something that will benefit you, but what you can do to benefit others. Live Jesus.

Imagine what community we could be. That is the first step. I will ask you to make a concrete commitment in this opportunity to take responsibility for the life of faith that we enjoy as a community, a life of faith that needs to deepen and broaden outside our immediate circles. I ask you to begin thinking about how you would be able to share your gifts – certainly your talents to build up our community – but also gifts of time and treasure. It is the hallmark of a Christian believer, to give freely of yourself in such a way that when people encounter you, they encounter Jesus.

Don’t be doubtful about your ability to do this. It is too easy to think you are not enough. God made each and every one of us enough, to accomplish our own small miracles of loaves and fishes to feed a multitude. It is not you who accomplish this, but Christ who lives in you. Live Jesus!

The Lord be with you.