Weekend of July 23-24, 2022

Dear Friends,

            We are once again sponsoring a Parish Raffle fundraiser. You should have received a mailing in your home, containing a cover letter from me and five raffle tickets. I would like to explain this fundraiser.

            We are participating in this fundraiser with several other Catholic parishes and institutions. We are asking for a donation of $25 for each raffle ticket, and are asking you to please consider purchasing the raffle tickets for yourself, or selling them to family members, neighbors, or friends. The purchaser keeps the right half of the ticket. The left half of the ticket, along with the payment, should be placed in the envelope enclosed in the mailing for return. We also ask you to include any unsold tickets in the return envelope. All tickets and money should be returned by August 1.

            The raffle will be drawn on Saturday, August 13, 2022 at 8:00 P.M. and can be viewed live at www.parishraffle.com

            The prizes for the raffle are excellent. They are all American Express gift cards, and there are 23 prizes in total. The first prize is a $30,000 gift card; the second prize is a $10,000 gift card; the third prize is an $8,000 gift card; and there are twenty $1,000 prizes. The prizes this year are greater in number and greater in value compared to last year!

            I am asking every registered family or individual to participate in this important fundraiser. Besides the excellent prizes, the proceeds are of great benefit to our parish. Again, I am respectfully asking everyone to either purchase the tickets that were included
in the mailing or to sell the tickets to someone else. If you didn’t receive the mailing, or would like more tickets to either purchase or sell, there are more tickets available at the rectory.

            Thank you in advance for your goodness, and for your willingness to participate in this important fundraiser in support of our great parish.

      Next weekend, July 30-31, we welcome Father Daniel Bowen, who is representing his religious community, the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, more commonly known as the Mercedarians, which is the religious community our Mission Co-op collection is benefitting this year. Father Bowen is the Parochial Vicar at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in the Overbrook section of the city, which is staffed by the Mercedarians. Father will speak at all the Masses next weekend, and our collection will directly benefit the good work of the Mercedarians. You will notice that the envelope for the Mission co-op collection is undated, so many of you already made your contribution to this annual collection. If you did not yet make your donation, I would ask you to use that envelope for this important collection. As always, I ask you to be as generous as possible as we help others to proclaim the Gospel which we ourselves have received and accepted.

            I would like to begin again the taking up of the collection at the weekend Masses by ushers, as opposed to everyone placing their donation in the baskets which are positioned in various points in the church. In order to do this, of course, we need ushers, especially since our faithful crew of ushers has been depleted for various reasons. I would ask any man or woman of high school age or older who may be interested in being an usher at any of our weekend Masses, to please call the rectory or see me before or after Mass. I would like to have a meeting with all of our ushers before we set a date to begin taking up the collection in this manner once again. Stay tuned within the next few weeks for the date and time of that meeting. If you have any questions, please see me in church or call the rectory.

Know that you and those you love are daily remembered in my Mass and my prayers.

                                                                                    Love and prayers,
                                                                                    Father Olivere