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It is with a great measure of gratitude, as well as much sadness, that I announce to you the retirement of our Blessed Trinity principal, Ms. Linda Milewski. Ms. Milewski’s retirement brings to a close a long and fruitful career in Catholic education.

ask you to remember in your prayers in a special way the six men who were ordained to the priesthood on Saturday, May 21, in the Cathedral-Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Please remember in your prayers as well, we, your parish priests, who are celebrating the anniversaries of our ordinations. Father Noone is celebrating 55 years, Father Jack is celebrating 23 years, Father Buck is celebrating 8 years, and I am celebrating 28 years.

I once again respectfully remind you to please consider your gift to the 2022 Catholic Charities Appeal, if you have not already given your gift. My goal as your pastor is for every household and/or every wage earner in the parish to make a sacrificial gift to this year’s Appeal.

I would like to thank all those who took the time and trouble to complete the Disciple-Maker Index Survey, which was administered by the Catholic Leadership Institute (CLI). The CLI says that, on the average, parishes have between 15 and 18% of their Mass-going population complete the survey. Even without CLI having recorded all of our surveys, we are already up to about 45% of our Mass-going population here at Saint Timothy’s having completed the survey.

Many of you already know that Father Buck has been appointed by Archbishop Perez to be the Dean of Men in the College Division of Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. Father Buck’s appointment takes effect on June 30th. Many have asked what exactly the Dean of Men is. Essentially, Father Buck will be the priest who is “in charge” of the seminarians in the college division of the seminary (i.e., the first four years of seminary formation). He will be a father to the men, as well as a mother, a disciplinarian, a shoulder for them to cry on, and, perhaps more than anything else, a great mentor and role model, showing them more by example than by word, what it means to be a good priest.

offer my deep thanks to all those who made our celebration of Holy Week and the Sacred Triduum here at Saint Timothy the beautiful and uplifting experience it was for all of us. Special thanks to Father Buck, Father Noone, and Father Jack, as well as all of our liturgical ministers, including our readers, extraordinary ministers, altar servers, ushers and greeters, music ministers, choirs, sacristans, those who cleaned and decorated the church, as well as anyone else who had anything to do with our celebrations during this past week.

I invite and strongly encourage each and every one of you to be with us during these solemn days. The liturgy of the Church during the Sacred Triduum is rich in word and symbol, and draws us into the very sacrifice of Jesus on the cross which reaches its climax in the celebration of the resurrection at Easter. The schedule for the Triduum and Easter, which you should have received in your home, is reprinted in this bulletin for your convenience.

It is an important aspect of my job as pastor to make sure we, as a parish community, remain financially healthy, and that your generous contributions (i.e., your financial stewardship) are being used prudently and wisely. I take this role as chief financial steward of our parish very seriously, and the fact that I have been entrusted with this responsibility by the Archbishop and by you is humbling. Of course, I could never fulfill this charge alone.

I remind you that on Wednesday, April 6, at 7:00 P.M., we will be celebrating our annual Lenten Penance Service in the lower church. There will be several priests with us that evening to bestow Christ’s mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

To take the Disciple Maker Index survey, please use the link below: https://www.catholicleaders.org/phila-dmi PLEASE NOTE:  When you open the link you will see a list of all the parishes in the Archdiocese. Please select our parish (Saint Timothy, Philadelphia) to complete the Disciple Maker Index survey.

I think it is especially significant that we are honoring Saint Joseph and asking his intercession while our world is being torn apart by this terrible conflict in Ukraine. We are desperately in need of God’s help, and Saint Joseph, the great intercessor, will certainly hear our prayers and plead with God on our behalf. Joseph is a powerful saint, which is why we go to him with many different needs always.

Each diocese throughout the world will carry out the Synodal Process in a way that best responds to their local circumstances. In the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, we are working with Catholic Leadership Institute to implement the Disciple Maker Index (DMI) survey at every parish in the Archdiocese from March 2 to April 4, 2022.

We have, as always, a very full Lenten season planned for our parish community here at Saint Timothy. Inside this week’s bulletin, please find our annual Lenten calendar, (printed on purple paper!), which details for you all of the liturgies, prayer experiences, and events we have scheduled for our 2022 Lenten journey. I encourage you to keep this Lenten calendar at home throughout the season.

The survey will only be available from March 2nd until April 4th and will ask you to reflect on your own spiritual growth and enable you to provide feedback on our parish’s efforts to help you grow.  All responses will be confidential and the parish will only receive information about the community as whole.

Please help us by participating in a 10-15 minute survey online. The survey can be accessed through an online link from March 2nd until April 4th and will ask you to reflect on your own spiritual growth and enable you to provide feedback on our parish’s efforts to help you grow. 

Tolton is a riveting multimedia drama not to be missed. The production runs 75 minutes, and is suitable for middle school age and up. Please join us on Friday evening, February 25 at 7:00. For more information, please call the rectory.

I remind you that Catholic Charities is no longer a second collection in church, like so many other special collections we take throughout the year. It is now a direct mail campaign that basically lasts for a whole year. You should have received a mailing from the Archdiocesan Catholic Charities office, containing a campaign brochure and a gift/pledge card, along with an envelope within which you would be able to send your gift or pledge.

We begin today Catholic Schools Week. This annual observance is a good opportunity for us to give thanks to God for the existence of our Catholic schools, especially here in our Archdiocese, which enabled so many of us to receive our grounding in the faith. We are also reminded of the many sacrifices parents and guardians make, many right here in our own parish, to send their children to Catholic school and, thus, to provide them with the best of a faith-based education.

As I have mentioned in the past, prayer is vital, but so is a personal invitation to these young people. There are surely young men and women in your life --- whether they are family members, friends, neighbors, or those you may see in church week after week --- who you believe would be excellent priests or religious. Why not --- in the name of God and his Church --- invite them personally to consider committing their lives in just such a vocation.

I am happy to report to you, as well, that we have achieved an important goal of mine: Blessed Trinity School is now complete­ ly financially independent from Saint Thnothy Parish and from the other parishes who send children to our school. Our school is pres­ ently in a very strong financial position, allowing us to discontinue the subsidy of the parish(es) to the school (you will recall the fact that, for many years, much of our parish's fmancial resources were used to keep Saint Timothy and, later, Blessed Trinity School sus­ tainable).