Dear Friends,
In the heat of the last few days I heard a sound that reminded me of what is around the corner. As a child, I knew that summer began winding down when I would hear the cicadas make their noise-like cacophony of Reee…ree…Reee…ree. My childhood memories forced me to my calendar to see the reality that summer is almost over and school will be starting soon. Like many of you, I will still scramble to put in a few days of rest and vacation before the fall season starts with all of its gusto.
While it is still summer, I would encourage you to invite your friends who have thought of joining the Catholic Church to seriously pray about it. We will offer a program for those who wish to join the church starting in mid-September. Encourage your friends to pray about it now and give me a call if they have any questions.
This is also the time to encourage your neighbors with school age children to consider sending them to All Saints School. It is a wonderful school with lots of diversity and offers a value-based education founded on Catholic teaching. We have room for students in almost every grade. Encourage them to come and check us out. The school has a brand new heating system and the classrooms are getting new carpet this week! With the move of pre-school and Kindergarten across the street, the school will have a new STEM Lab and a music room.
Work continues on the Christ Child building in order to have some of it ready for school activities in mid-August. And, planning continues with architects and engineers on how to convert the old swimming pool into a parish hall. We are a long way before any construction begins on that part of the project, but the other parts of the building should be usable soon. The Ladies Guild will be hosting a party on the lawn of the new building on August 28th (At the party, they will be raffling off a 55 inch TV). We will have the doors open to the Cabrini Parish Center that day…the offices, classrooms, gym and meeting room areas will be open for you to come in and wander around – so you can see what you now own.
Once the parish offices have moved across the street, we will be in need of a regular group of volunteers to answer the phone and the door. Many parishes in Omaha have parishioners offering their time to do that work. The goal would be to divide the five work days into two halves each and then to have at least ten people committed to coming in once a week. That way no one would have to work too much. Morning periods would run from 9:00 until 12:30 and afternoon periods would run from 12:30 to 4:00. We will be training the volunteers to be able to answer the basic questions. Like, “Could you explain transubstantiation to me?” Easy ones! Please, consider helping us with this. I do not imagine it will be that demanding and you even should be able to find time to read while you wait for the phone to ring or for someone to come to the door.
Enjoy this last week in July!
Peace,
Fr. Damian